Hutchins--most, if not all, of whom received support from the friends of the Old Gang. Scarcely anything less like revolutionists can be imagined than this list. Mr. Pethick Lawrence, it is true, has since then done some hard fighting in another cause, but he has always acted with seriousness and deliberation. Most of the others might as well have figured on one ticket as the other. The Old Gang including myself had 12 votes and all the experience, against 9 on the other side. But the two sides did not survive the first meeting of the new Committee. There was, as I have already said, no differences of principle between the two parties. The expansion of the parent Society had come about, local Societies were growing up all over the country; Mr. Wells said no more about public authority over the young--indeed his election address made no reference to it--and Mr. Shaw did nothing to establish his Middle-Class Socialist Party. The new Committee quickly settled down to work, but Mr. Wells was already wearying of his rôle as political organiser. He was appointed both to the General Purposes and the Propaganda Sub-Committees, but after attending two meetings of the former, and none of the latter, he resigned from both in October, and of the seventeen meetings of the Executive Committee during its year of office he attended only seven. In April, 1908, he was re-elected to the Executive, again fourth on the poll, and Mrs. Wells who had not been a candidate before was also successful. But in the following September he resigned his membership of the Society, assigning as reasons "disagreement with the Basis which forms the Confession of Faith of the Society and discontent with the general form of its activities," together with a desire "to concentrate on the writing of novels." He explained that "a scheme which proposes to leave mother and child economically dependent on the father is not to me Socialism at all, but a miserable perversion of Socialism." The letter, printed in "Fabian News," goes on to refer to his objection to the "no compensation" clause in the Basis (the real weakness of which is that it refers hypothetically to a complete change of system and is never applied to any particular case[38]), and added that the opportunity for a propaganda to the British middle classes was now over. Mrs. Wells retained her seat on the Executive Committee till March, 1910, and soon after that date the connection of both of them with the Society altogether ceased. * * * * *