Rule, and as Labour support was essential to the continuance of the Liberals in power, they were debarred from pushing their own proposals regardless of consequences.  Although therefore the party was pledged to the demand for Women’s Franchise, they refused to wreck the Government on its behalf.  Hence impatient Socialists and extreme Suffragists united in proclaiming that the Labour Party was no longer of any use, and that “direct action” by Suffragettes and Trade Unionists was the only method of progress.  The “Daily Herald,” a newspaper started by a group of compositors in London, was acquired by partisans of this policy, and as long as it lived incessantly derided the Labour Party and advocated Women’s Franchise and some sort of Syndicalism as the social panacea.  Moreover a variant on Syndicalism, of a more reasoned and less revolutionary character, called “Guild Socialism,” was proposed by Mr. A.R.  Orage in the pages of his weekly, “The New Age,” and gained a following especially in Oxford, where Mr. G.D.H.  Cole was leader of the University Fabian Society.  His book on Trade Unionism, entitled “The World of Labour,” published at the end of 1913, attracted much attention, and he threw himself with great energy into the Trade Union enquiry of the Research Department, of which his friend and ally, Mr. W. Mellor, was the Secretary.  Mr. Cole was elected to the Executive Committee in April, 1914, and soon afterwards began a new “Reform” movement.  He had become a prophet of the “Guild Socialism” school, and was at that time extremely hostile to the Labour Party.  Indeed a year before, when dissatisfaction with the party was prevalent, he had proposed at a business meeting that the Fabian Society should disaffiliate, but he had failed to carry his resolution by 92 votes against 48.  In the summer of 1914 however he arrived at an understanding with Mr. Clifford Allen, also a member of the Executive, and with other out and out supporters of the Labour Party, by which they agreed to combine their altogether inconsistent policies into a single new program for the Fabian Society.  The program of the “several schools of thought,” published in “Fabian News” for April, 1915, laid down that the object of the Society should be to carry out research, that the Basis should be replaced merely by the phrase, “The Fabian Society consists of Socialists and forms part of the national and international movement for the emancipation of the community from the capitalist system”; and that a new rule should be adopted forbidding members to belong to, or publicly to associate with, any organisation opposed to that movement of which this Society had declared itself a part.  The Executive Committee published a lengthy rejoinder, and at the election of the Executive Committee a few weeks later the members by their votes clearly indicated their disapproval of the new scheme.  At the Annual Meeting in May, 1915, only small minorities supported the plan of reconstruction, and Mr. Cole then and there resigned his membership of the Society, and was subsequently followed by a few other members.  A little while later the Oxford University Fabian Society severed its connection with the parent Society, and Mr. Cole adopted the wise course of founding a society of his own for the advocacy of Guild Socialism.