SOCIALISM 291 



at hearing that any one they know is a socialist, would be 

 still more amazed if they knew how many of the very salt of 

 the earth belong (or did belong) to this despised and much 

 dreaded body of thinkers. Grant Allen, one of the most 

 intellectual and many-sided men of our time, was one of us ; 

 so is Sir Oliver Lodge, one of our foremost students of 

 physical science ; and Professor Karl Pearson, a great mathe- 

 matical evolutionist. Among the clergy we have the Rev. 

 John Clifford, R. C. Fillingham, and many others among the 

 Christian socialists, who are as much socialists as any of us. 

 Among men of university training or of high literary ability 

 we have H. M. Hyndman, Edward Carpenter, J. A. Hobson, 

 Sydney Webb, Hubert Bland, H. S. Salt, J. C. Kenworthy, 

 Morrison-Davidson, and many others. Of poets there are 

 Gerald Massey and Sir Lewis Morris. The labour members 

 of Parliament are almost all socialists ; while Margaret 

 Macmillan, the Countess of Warwick, and many less known 

 women are earnest workers for the cause. 



I should almost think that Mrs. Humphrey Ward w r as a 

 socialist at heart or as an ideal, or she could not have set 

 forth its principles and the arguments for it so well as she 

 has done in " Marcella." But the weak and illogical con- 

 clusion of that and some other books caused me to write to 

 Grant Allen, urging him to write a thorough socialistic story, 

 which I felt sure he could do better than any one I knew. 

 His reply was so interesting from a literary point of view 

 that I give it here. It is the last letter I received from him. 



" Hotel Royal, Varenna, Italy, April 24. 



" I despair of giving you in writing all the reasons why 

 your suggestion is for me an impossible one. There are 

 eleven thousand ; I will content myself with two. The first 

 is practical. I have to write stories which editors will accept 

 and the public will buy. Now, no editor will take a socialistic 

 story — I have tried, and failed ; and the public will not buy 

 such stories to a sufficient extent to pay for the trouble. As 

 a general rule, the more in earnest I am about a subject, the 



