Although [William] Clarke was the only one among the original founders who focused to any great degree on foreign and imperial affairs during the first fifteen years of the society’s existence, he was not the only member to voice opinions on imperialism before 1900. In December 1898, pro-imperialist member Hubert Bland, a fellow contributor in Fabian Essays and a member of the Society’s Executive, wrote that if England did not take advantage of imperial opportunities with which it was then presented "other nations would oust her." Furthermore, "England was," Bland argued, "the only country fit to pioneer the blessings of civilization." [1] An assertive policy was necessary, and many Fabians felt that the Society could help effect the necessary changes.
This argument was echoed as well by many guest lecturers in the late 1890s. One of them, Ronald M. Burrows, argued on March 27, 1896 that Socialists should
- ... work for Internationalism in the first place by welding our own Empire together by means of a Zollverein. Under it we could secure that all produce was made with fair wages and proper conditions. The British Empire can thus be self-supporting, and we can let any other nation come in which assents to our conditions of labour and our own standard of comfort.[2]
This argument that the British Empire was an integral part of the world in which socialism must operate as well as the argument for great efficiency was expanded on three weeks later in a lecture given by Sidney Webb. In it he decried the rapid expansion of chartered companies after 1880 arguing that the territories which these companies controlled "became an Alsatia for rum-sellers, illicit diamond-buyers, pirates, filibusters and criminals of all kinds." [3] Blaming this phenomenon of "crime preceding the flag" on the folly of "Old Liberalism," the strenuous resistance to finding money by the Exchequer and the desire on the part of the Foreign Office to avoid any clash over the evading of inconvenient treaty obligations, Webb concluded:
- The conflict of personal interest with efficiency of public administration—bad enough in the case of the contractor for public works—becomes unendurable when it concerns the administration of justice to large populations, the implications of the whole nation in international complications, and the carrying on of war. We must "eliminate the contractor" and get rid of "private enterprise in foreign affairs"; manfully face the problems arising from the overflowing of our Empire; and be prepared to pay for the necessary "policing of the border," and to let the flag follow the criminal.[4]
