Although Clarke and Shaw were the only ones to touch directly on imperialism, Sidney Webb and Graham Wallas also offered opinions. Webb wrote:
- ...the perfect and fitting development of each individual is not necessarily the utmost and highest cultivation of his own personality, but the filling, in the best possible way, of his humble function in the great social machine. We must abandon the self-conceit of imagining we are independent units, and end our jealous minds, absorbed in their own cultivation, to this subjection to the higher end, the Common Weal.[1]
These remarks are interesting for two reasons. First, it was the first time Webb spoke of the "need" for greater national efficiency, for Britons to join together in a British Social Commonwealth. This theme was one with which he spent his entire life dealing, and is central to Fabian socialism. Secondly, his remarks are interesting in that they also mirror later statements by proponents of imperial preference and closer unity among the various parts of the British Empire. Lastly, his assumption that larger groupings and organizations were preferable than smaller ones, was one that was shared by many proponents of imperialism throughout the thirty years before the First World War and afterwards as well.
Lastly, Wallas offers a futurist conception of Webb’s "Common Weal," which, while quite nebulous, does seem to anticipate later notions such as ideas promoted by Cecil Rhodes and Winston Churchill, among others, of a union of English speaking countries that would include the British Empire as well as the United States. [2] The idea is also quite interesting in that it prefigures to a great extent, later Fabian notions of efficiency, particularly ones based on the premise of a few large units being more efficient than several smaller ones.
After Fabian Essays, only two references were made to imperialism before 1895 besides two articles about the activities of the Bombay Fabian Society in Fabian News. [3] In 1891, Fabian Secretary Edward Pease wrote an article about his experiences as a delegate at the International Labor of Congress meeting in Brussels, a meeting which adopted a strong stance against militarism and war. [4] A year and a half later, British Social Democratic Party leader H.M. Hyndman, though not a member, gave a lecture to the Fabian Society, arguing that:
- India made us an Asiatic power and kept us in fear of war with Russia. Anglo-Indians urged us to extend our rule, which was a doubtful benefit for the peoples of India or England. The same remains applied to Egypt and South Africa…. To effect harmony our declared policy in India and Egypt should be that of withdrawal. In India we should train the natives to self-government; in Egypt we should recognize that French influence dominated.[5]
