THE FABIAN ESSAYS

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 107, 30 January 1920, Page 8

THE FABIAN ESSAYS

A REMARKABLE STORY.

Mr Sidney Webb has been pointing ■onlt he reniarbible story of those famous "Fate Essays," wliioli were published 30m»aBO, »"«! which h«ve done .0 much by permeating public opinion that "any people to-day fail to know when* they originally derived their ideas. Mr. Webb iii » lecture said:— '•■The writers of. the e«ays were young in those days-and be supposed as cage - ly presumptions as young people on? to be. The Fabian Society was then sk years old; it had neither an office mr a paid secretary, and but a tiny inomc ' Of the seven author* two are dead; but the others are sti 1 attar members of the society or in don touch *"Uen published, the essays stood alone as an exposition, on the lines British thought and experience, of Jw modern Socialist moyciacn. T: w 111 ter<«tiiig >to mark, in the lts'it ™ thirtv years of subsequent experience, and t y years' advance in political^ see:n , where the authors went wrong and W new edition of the , ~ . ' ~,„ "Tt i= per laps, significant tut u« «,*l of the W wWell comes most truimnlnnUv thrOTsh the ™ tel of «« m,n *- Sonis tl.roughout the « "nalvsis. It is not merely the paituil, y friendship that finds in the fir t «m> -bv Bernard Sliaw-a survey of the c.«no' Sic 'evolution of society which .0 terse comprehensiveness and »i man* sas incisive and accura e to-da « She" it -«s written whole generation of WM'"'. , fM) rate, was on National currn3ulu;,^«at u » (l . itely too doings of «J? gradual Iran*preceding our oun. r ° B '' dot inst i. formation, both n Of op" >on a"J. id lfat tutions, co I? basis, *i" J» cowc" j sel d U ,sloi y- „,,- Vnnwoldcg of the social '?TH',i forced Tour country were' and industrial 101 cc>. 1 u laened quire lu -',.,,. soon V eme-, Jphs omission was made gco<l b> the id i" W9O. of " 1,, c. Co-opcrat'vo MoNe- ««!«• »j* about §§Sps Commission of » published m 1009.