Again a machine was needed, and once more as in the case of the food campaign one was well oiled and accessible. It was the organisation that had raised, by eloquent word and equally stimulating poster and pamphlet, the great volunteer army of 3,000,000 men. Just as it had drawn soldiers to the fighting colours, so did it now seek to lure the savings of the people to the financial standard of the nation.
The Parliamentary Recruiting Committee became the Parliamentary War Savings Committee and it loosed a campaign of exploitation such as England had never seen before. From newspapers, bill boards and rostrums was hurled the injunction to buy the War Loan and help mould the Silver Bullet that would crush the Germans. It was literally a "popular loan"
in that the five shilling short-term vouchers, bought at the post office, and which paid 5 per cent, could be exchanged when they had grown to five pounds for a share of long-term War Stock paying 4 per cent. The higher rate of interest was the inducement to begin saving and it worked like a charm.
Tribute to the efficacy of this programme is the fact that more than 1,000,000 English workers purchased the War Loan. Through this procedure they learned, what most of them did not know before, that when you put money out to work it earns more money. It meant that they had become investors and were starting on the road to independence.
But this campaign, admirable as it was in scope and execution, failed in its larger purpose of reaching the great ma.s.s of the people. While more than 1,000,000 workers partic.i.p.ated in the loan their holdings really comprised but a small percentage of the immense total. The bulk of the buying was by banks, corporations, trustees, and wealthy individuals.
The message, therefore, of permanent thrift combined with a more or less continuous investment opportunity for every man still had to be delivered. All the while the Empire hungered for money as well as for men.
Such was the state of affairs when the Chancellor of the Exchequer appointed the Committee on War Loans for the Small Investor. It had two definite functions: to raise funds for the national defence and to provide through the medium selected some simple and accessible means for the employment of the average man"s money.
This Committee recommended that an issue be made of Five Per Cent Exchequer Bonds in denominations of five, twenty and fifty pounds to be sold at all post offices. It was an excellent idea and was immediately authorised by the Treasury. The Exchequer Bond became part of the swelling flood of British war securities and might have had a distinction all its own but for the enterprise and sagacity of one man who happened to be a member of this Committee.
That man was Sir Hedley Le Bas. You must know his story before you can go into the part that he played in the great drama of British investment that is now to be unfolded. A generation ago he was the l.u.s.tiest lad in Jersey, his birthplace. His feats as swimmer were the talk of a race inured to the hardships of the sea. After seven years in the Army he came to London to make his fortune. From an humble clerical position he rose to be head of one of the great book publishing houses in Great Britain, employing over 400 salesmen, spending over a quarter of a million dollars a year in advertising alone.
Sir Hedley is big of bone, dynamic of personality, more like the alert, wideawake American business man than almost any other individual I have ever met in England. One day he gave the British publishing business the jolt of its long and dignified life by taking a whole page in the _Daily Mail_ to advertise a single book. His colleagues said it was "unprofessional," that it violated all precedent. Sir Hedley thought to the contrary and in vindication of his judgment the book developed into a "best seller." That pioneer page in the _Mail_ was the first of many.
Prior to the outbreak of the present war, Sir Hedley had been consulted by the then Minister of War as to the most advisable means of getting recruits.
"Why don"t you advertise?" he asked.
"It"s never been done before," replied the Minister.
"Then it"s high time to begin," said the hard-headed Jerseyman.
His plan scarcely had time to be considered when the Great War broke.
Sir Hedley was made a member of the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee and with Kitchener helped to face England"s huge problem of raising a volunteer army. How was it to be done?
Hardly had the new War Chief warmed the chair in his office down in Whitehall, than Le Bas came to him with this suggestion: "The quickest way to raise the new army is to advertise for men."
Kitchener"s huge bulk straightened: he looked surprised: the idea seemed unsoldierly, almost unpatriotic. But he knew Le Bas. After a moment"s hesitancy:
"All right. Go ahead."
Under Le Bas was launched the publicity campaign which no man who visited England during its progress will ever forget. This galvanic publisher geared all the Forces of Print up to the idea of selling Military Service. Instead of books the Merchandise was Men.
The most lureful, colourful and effective posters that artist brain could possibly conceive flashed from every bill board in the Kingdom. No one could escape them.
It was Le Bas who created the phrase "Your King and Country Need You"
that went echoing throughout the Kingdom and drew more men to the colours perhaps than any other plea of the war.
When the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee became the Parliamentary War Savings Committee, Le Bas went with it. Its first job was to sell the Great War Loan. The Treasury officials wanted it done in the usual dignified British way.
At the first meeting of the Committee, Le Bas objected to this procedure. Early the next morning he went around to the house of Reginald McKenna, Chancellor of the Exchequer.
"The Chancellor is in his bath," said the footman who opened the door.
"Then I"ll wait until he can get a robe on," said Le Bas.
Fifteen minutes later, the man who holds the British purse strings sat clad in a dressing gown and listened to the suggestion that revolutionised British methods of financial salesmanship.
"If we want to sell the War Loan, Mr. Chancellor," said Sir Hedley, "we will have to advertise in a big way. It"s a business proposition and we must adopt business methods."
"It sounds interesting," said the Chancellor. "Come to my office at ten and we will talk it over."
It was then 8:30 o"clock. By the time he met the Chancellor at the Treasury he had dictated the whole outline of the advertising campaign.
The scheme was adopted: the Government spent fifty thousand pounds advertising the loan but it sold every penny of it.
This then was the type of man who had sat in the six meetings of War Loan for Small Investors and listened to many conventional suggestions.
He instinctively knew that the Five Pound Exchequer Bond was not a sufficient bait to hook the small savings of the great ma.s.s of the people.
"We"ve got to make some kind of attractive offer," said Sir Hedley to himself. "In fact, we must give the investor something for nothing to make him lend his money to the country. A pound note looks big to the average Englishman. Why not give him a pound for every fifteen shillings and sixpence that he will lay aside for the use of the Nation? In other words, why not make patriotism profitable?"
When he laid this plan before the Committee, it was unanimously approved. The maxim of "Fifteen and Six for a Pound" was now unfurled to the breezes and the super-campaign to corral the British penny was on, under the auspices of the National War Savings Committee which now superseded all other organisations as the head and front of the National Thrift idea.
Although he had a strong selling appeal in the fact that he was giving the small British investor something for nothing, Sir Hedley realised that his first bid for savings must have the real punch of war in it.
What was it to be?
He thought a moment and then went over to the War Office where Lloyd George had just succeeded the lamented Kitchener.
"What could a man buy for fifteen and six?" he asked the many-sided little Welshman who was progressively filling every important job in the Empire.
"He could buy six trench bombs," was the reply.
"What else?" queried the publisher.
"He could get 124 cartridges or--"
"That"s enough!" exclaimed Le Bas. "I"ve got it!"
Lloyd George looked a little startled, whereupon his visitor remarked: "You have given me just the thing I wanted. Wait until to-morrow and you will find out what it is."
The very next day Lloyd George and a great part of the whole British Nation knew exactly what Sir Hedley got out of his interview with the War Minister, because the first advertis.e.m.e.nt announcing the new type of War Loan read like this:
"ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FOUR CARTRIDGES FOR FIFTEEN AND SIX, AND YOUR MONEY BACK WITH COMPOUND INTEREST
"Do you know that every 15/6 you put into War Savings Certificates can purchase 124 rifle cartridges?
"How many Cartridges will you provide for our men at the Front?
"For every 15/6 you put into War Savings Certificates now you will receive 1 in five years" time. This is equal to compound interest at the rate of 5.47 per cent.
"Each year your money grows as follows:
In 1 year it becomes 15/9 In 2 years it becomes 16/9 In 3 years it becomes 17/9 In 4 years it becomes 18/9 In 5 years it becomes 1