By the early 1930s the Fabians could look back on their commitments to elitism, openness, and gradualism with some appreciation for their successes. In his introduction to a 1931 reissue of Fabian Essays, Shaw noted the “air of amazing advance in our po liti cal circumstances.” A Fabian Socialist served as prime minister, two of the society's original essayists were in the House of Lords, and Parliament itself “swarm[ed] with Fabians.” Further, the LSE was fl ourishing. In the two de cades after 1919, its fulltime teaching staff more than qua dru pled, and the percentage of students considered “occasional” had halved. Its rapidly expanding infrastructure earned the school the epithet “the empire on which the concrete never set.”

Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, loc. 53