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organisation.

The University Fabian Societies are of a different character. Formed by
and for undergraduates, but in some cases, especially at Oxford,
maintaining continuity by the assistance of older members in permanent
residence, such as Sidney Ball of St. John's, who has belonged to the
Oxford Society since its formation in 1895, they are necessarily
fluctuating bodies, dependent for their success on the personality and
influence of a few leading members. Their members have always been
elected at once to the parent society in order that the connection may
be unbroken when they leave the University. Needless to say, only a
small proportion become active members of the Society, but a few of the
leading members of the movement have entered it in this way. Oxford,
Glasgow, Aberystwyth, and latterly Cambridge have had flourishing
societies for long periods, and quite a number of the higher grade civil
servants and of the clergy and doctors in remote districts in Wales and
Scotland are or have been members. Moreover, the Society always retains
a scattering of members, mostly officials or teachers, in India, in the
heart of Africa, in China, and South America, who joined it in their
undergraduate days.

Almost from the first the Executive has endeavoured to organise the
members in the London area into groups. The parent society grew up
through years of drawing-room meetings; why should not the members
residing in Hampstead and Hammersmith, in Bloomsbury or Kensington do
the same? Further, the Society always laid much stress on local
politics: there were County Council and Borough Council, School Board
and Poor Law Guardians elections in which policy could be influenced and
candidates promoted or supported.

In fact it is only in the years when London government was in the
melting-pot, or in times of special socialist activity, and in a few
districts, such as Hampstead, where Fabians are numerous, and especially
when one or more persons of persistence and energy are available, that
the groups have had a more than nominal existence. The drawing-room
meetings of the parent society attracted audiences until they outgrew
drawing-rooms, because of the exceptional quality of the men and women
who attended them and the novelty of the doctrines promulgated. These
conditions were not repeated in each district of London, and in spite
of constant paper planning, and not a little service by the older
members, who spent their tim