BAX, ERNEST BELFORT (1854-1926), English writer and economist, was born at Leamington on July 24, 1854, and educated privately. When a young man he escaped from the strict sabattarian atmosphere of his home, and went to study music in Germany, where he became interested in the work of the German philosophers. He subsequently returned to England, and asso ciated himself with the early history of the socialist movement. He helped William Morris, in 1883, to found the Socialist League, whose members seceded from the Democratic Federation (a league of London working men's radical clubs), and edited its organ, the Commonweal. He left the Socialist League when it became extreme, and joined the Social Democratic Federation, editing Justice for it. In 1894 he was called to the Bar, and in the same year wrote Socialism, its growth and outcome, in collaboration with Morris. He is, however, known rather for his philosophical and historical works than his writings on socialism. The socialist ideal, as Bax understood it, embraced a much wider field than the re-organization of the material side of life, and he believed that in time such a strong bond of sympathy would be created between nations that racial conflicts would no longer be possible. In 1882 he edited Kant's Prolegomena with biography and intro duction. His philosophical works include : Handbook to the His tory of Philosophy (1884); The Problem of Reality (1893) ; The Roots of Reality (1907) ; Problems of Men, Mind and Morals (1912) ; The Real, the Rational and the Alogical (192o). On the historical side he has written on such varied subjects as Jean Marat, the French revolution, German society at the end of the middle ages, the Peasants' War, the Anabaptists. In 1918 he pub lished a volume of reminiscences which are valuable as a picture of the period in which he lived. Bax died in London on Nov. 26, 1926.