e and talents on tiny meetings in Paddington
or Streatham, the London group system has never been a permanent
success. What has kept the Society together is the series of fortnightly
meetings carried on regularly from the first, which themselves fluctuate
in popularity, but which have never wholly failed.[26]

* * * * *

We now return to the point whence this digression started. Our local
societies were then flourishing. They were vigorously supported from
London. We had funds for the expenses of lecturers and many willing to
give the time. W.S. De Mattos was employed as lecture secretary, and
arranged in the year 1891-2 600 lectures, 300 of them in the provinces.
In all 3339 lectures by members during the year were recorded. All this
activity imparted for a time considerable vitality to the local
societies, and on February 6th and 7th, 1892, the first (and for twenty
years the last) Annual Conference was held in London, at Essex Hall.
Only fourteen provincial societies were represented, but they claimed a
membership of about 1100, some four-fifths of the whole.

The Conference was chiefly memorable because it occasioned the
preparation of the paper by Bernard Shaw, entitled "The Fabian Society:
What it has done and how it has done it," published later as Tract 41
and renamed, when the passage of years rendered the title obsolete, "The
Fabian Society: Its Early History," parts of which have already been
quoted. This entertaining account of the Society, and brilliant defence
of its policy as opposed to that of the Social Democratic Federation,
was read to a large audience on the Saturday evening, and made so great
an impression that comment on it seemed futile and was abandoned. The
Conference on Sunday was chiefly occupied with the discussion of a
proposal that the electors be advised to vote at the coming General
Election in accordance with certain test questions, which was defeated
by 23 to 21. A resolution to expel from the Society any member becoming
"an official of the Conservative, Liberal, Liberal Unionist, or National
League parties" was rejected by a large majority, for the first but by
no means for the last time. The Conference was quite a success, but a
year later there was not sufficient eagerness in the provinces for a
second, and the project was abandoned.

* * * * *

Amidst all this propaganda of the principles of Socialism the activity
of