The War After the War

by Isaac Frederick Marcosson

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 asset. 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 title 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 butter. 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 shells. 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.