"Set the right example, free labour for more useful purposes, save money and lend it to the Nation and so help your Country."
A gruesome, but none the less striking, poster is ent.i.tled: "What is the Price of Your Arms?"
Then comes the following dialogue:
Civilian: "How did you lose your arm, my lad?"
Soldier: "Fighting for you, sir."
Civilian: "I"m grateful to you, my lad."
Soldier: "How much are you grateful, sir?"
Civilian: "What do you mean?"
Soldier: "How much money have you lent your Country?"
Civilian: "What has that to do with it?"
Soldier: "A lot. How much is one of your arms worth?"
Civilian: "I"d pay anything rather than lose an arm."
Soldier: "Very well. Put the price of your arm, or as much as you can afford, into Exchequer Bonds or War Savings Certificates, and lend your money to your Country."
Still another is ent.i.tled "BAD FORM IN DRESS" and reads:
"The National Organising Committee for War Savings appeals against extravagance in women"s dress.
"Many women have already recognised that elaboration and variety in dress are bad form in the present crisis, but there is still a large section of the community, both amongst the rich and amongst the less well to do, who appear to make little or no difference in their habits.
"New clothes should only be bought when absolutely necessary and these should be durable and suitable for all occasions. Luxurious forms, for example, of hats, boots, shoes, stockings, gloves, and veils should be avoided.
"It is essential, not only that money should be saved, but that labour employed in the clothing trades should be set free."
Harnessed to the Saving and Investment Campaign is a definite and organised crusade against drink, ancient curse of the British worker, male and female. It is really part of the movement inst.i.tuted by the Government at the beginning of the war to curtail liquor consumption.
One phase is devoted to Anti-Treating, which makes it impossible to buy any one a drink in England. This was followed by a drastic restriction of drinking hours in all public places where alcohol is served. Liquors may only be obtained now between the hours of 12 noon and 2:30 in the afternoon and from 6 to 9:30 at night. As a matter of fact, the only tipple that you can get at supper after the play, even in the smartest London hotels, is a fruit cup, which is a highly sterilised concoction.
The War Savings Committee has borne down hard on the drinking evil and England"s enormous yearly outlay for liquor--nearly a billion dollars--is used as a telling argument for thrift. A poster and a pamphlet that you see on all sides is headed, "THE NATION"S DRINK BILL,"
and reads:
"The National War Savings Committee calls attention to the fact that the sum now being spent by the Nation on alcoholic liquors is estimated at
182,000,000 a year.
"And appeals earnestly for an immediate and substantial reduction of this expenditure in view of the urgent and increasing need for economy in all departments of the Nation"s life.
"Obviously, in the present national emergency a daily expenditure of practically 500,000 on spirits, wine and beer cannot be justified on the ground of necessity. This expenditure, therefore, like every other form and degree of expenditure beyond what is required to maintain health and efficiency is directly injurious to national interests.
"Much of the money spent on alcohol could be saved. Even more important would be (1) the saving for more useful purposes of large quant.i.ties of barley, rice, maize and sugar; and (2) the setting free of much labour urgently needed to meet the requirements of the Navy and the Army.
"To do without everything not essential to health and efficiency while the war lasts is the truest patriotism."
Under the silent but none the less convincing plea of these posters, backed up by millions of leaflets and booklets explaining every phase of the Savings Campaign, the sale of Certificates rose steadily. From 906,000 in May they jumped to nearly 3,000,000 in June. But this was not enough. "Let us make one big smash and see what happens," said the Committee. Thereupon came the idea for a War Savings Week, which was to be a notable rallying of all the Forces of Thrift and Saving.
No grand a.s.sault on any of the actual battle fronts was worked out with greater care or more elaborate attention to detail than this Savings Drive. No loophole to register was overlooked. It was planned to begin the work on Sunday, July 16th.
First of all, the resources of the Church were mobilised. A Thrift sermon was preached that Sunday morning in nearly every religious edifice in the Kingdom. Following its rule to leave nothing to chance, the War Savings Committee prepared a special book of notes and texts for sermons which was sent to Minister, Leaders of Brotherhoods and Men"s Societies. Texts were suggested and ready-made and ready to deliver sermons were included. One of these sermons was called "The Honour of the Willing Gift," another was ent.i.tled "The Nation and Its Conflict,"
and its peculiarly appropriate text was "Well is it with the man that dealeth graciously and lendeth."
A special address (in words of one syllable) to the children of England embodying the virtues of penny saving and showing how these pennies could be made to work and earn more pennies, as shown in the concrete example of a War Savings Certificate, was read by thousands of Sunday school teachers to their cla.s.ses throughout the nation.
Nearly every human being in Great Britain got the Message of Thrift that week. Boy Scouts and Girl Guides went from house to house bearing copies of the various kinds of instructive literature that had been prepared for the campaign. Typical of the thoroughness of the detail is the fact that in Wales all this material was printed in the Welsh language. The only country where no special efforts were made was Scotland, where to preach thrift is little less than an insult.
For seven days and nights the almost incessant onslaught was kept up.
When the smoke cleared and the count was taken, it was found that 3,000,000 Certificates had been sold during the week while the total for the month was 10,700,000.
So vividly was the phrase "War Savings Week" driven home that the War Savings Committee decided instantly to capitalise this new a.s.set. In a few days hundreds of bill boards and fences throughout the Kingdom blossomed forth with this sentence, painted in red, white and blue letters: "Make Every Week National War Savings Week."
Not content with splashing the bill boards with the injunction to save, the National Committee hit upon what came to be the most popular medium for disseminating the Gospel of Thrift. It enlisted the movies. A film called "For the Empire" was made by a number of well known motion picture actors and actresses who gave their services free of charge.
It was a moving and graphic story of the war showing how a certain English lad volunteers at the outset and goes to the front. You get a vivid picture of life in the trenches shown in actual war scenes. Then you see the young soldier fall while gallantly leading a charge: his body is brought home and he is buried with military honours. Then the screens hurls the question at the audience: "This man has died for his Country. What are you doing for the Nation in its hour of trial?" Now follows a vivid lesson in how to save and buy a War Savings Certificate. This film has been shown in 2500 cinema theatres up to the first of the year and was booked to be shown in 1000 more within the next few months.
So widespread has the Thrift movement become that the War Savings Committee now publishes its own monthly magazine called _War Savings_.
The first issue appeared on September first and included such timely articles as "The Might of a Mite," a lesson in penny building: "The Final Mobilisation," which showed how the last 100,000,000 would win the war: a third article explained the Economy Exhibition now being held all over Great Britain as part of the Thrift crusade. There was also an article on the War Saving movement by Reginald McKenna, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and a very illuminating appeal, "Every Household Must Help Win the War."
This leads to one of the most instructive branches of the whole campaign, the one devoted to the elimination of waste in the household.
Under the direction of the Patriotic Food League a voluminous and helpful literature has been prepared and distributed. One booklet devoted to "Waste in the Well-to-do Household" shows how gas, coal and electric light bills, and the whole cost of living can be reduced.
Another called "Household Economies" has helpful hints for mistress and maid: a third is "The Best Foods in War-Time." A stirring plea was made to every household in the shape of a card surmounted by a picture of Lord Kitchener and containing his famous warning to the English people: "Either the civilian population must go short of many things to which it is accustomed in times of peace, or our armies must go short of munitions and other things indispensable to them." Below this quotation was the stirring question:
"Which is it to be: economy in the household or shortage in the Army and Navy?"
Under the t.i.tle of "War Savings in the Home" a plan of campaign has been sent to every household in England for operation during the whole period of war. Among other things it urges every family to give up meat for at least one day in the week, and in any case to use it only once a day.
Margarine is recommended instead of b.u.t.ter. Home baking is strenuously suggested. It is shown how reduction in personal and household expenditure can be effected, for example, in the laundry by using curtains and linen that can be washed in the house. A special appeal to dispense with starched and ornamental lingerie is made. In these and many other ways the style of living is simplified so that the amount of domestic service in every home is greatly cut down and much labour set free for war work and general production.
Indeed, no phase of Life or Work has escaped the Search-Light of the benevolent Inquisition which has wrought Conservation out of Waste.
It has a larger significance than merely changing habits and converting pounds and pence into guns and sh.e.l.ls. It means that England is creating a Sovereignty of Small Investors, thus setting up the safeguard that is the salvation of any land. The War Savings Certificate will have a successor in the shape of a more permanent but equally stable Government bond.
When all is said and done you find that huge reservoirs of Savings at work form a country"s real bulwark. Through investment in small, accessible, and marketable securities a people become independent and therefore more efficient and productive. It mobilises money.
Behind all the spectacular publicity that has swept hundreds of millions of British shillings into safe and profitable employment is a Lesson of Preparedness that America may well heed. It means a form of National Service that is just as vital to the general welfare as physical training for actual conflict. A nation trained to save is a nation equipped to meet the shock of economic crisis which is more potent than the attack of armed forces.
What does it all mean? Simply this: no man can touch the English thrift campaign without seeing in it another evidence of a great nation"s grim determination to win, whatever the sacrifice.
The British people at home have come to realise that by personal economy and denial they can serve their country and their cause just as effectively as those who fight amid the blare of battle abroad. They are animated by a New Patriotism that is both practical and self-effacing.
It is giving the Englishman generally a higher sense of public devotion: it is making him a better and more productive human unit: it is equipping the nation to meet the drastic economic ordeal of to-morrow.