GERMANS?" Under this caption is the subscription:
"You are helping the Germans when you use a motor car for pleasure: when
you buy extravagant clothes: when you employ more servants than you
need: when you waste coal, electric light or gas: when you eat and drink
more than is necessary to your health and efficiency.
"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 entitled: "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 entitled "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 instituted 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 quantities 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 assault 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 entitled "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 classes 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 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.
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.
If this lesson of conservation is heeded after the war and becomes a
feature of the permanent British life, then the Great Conflict will
almost have been worth its dreadful cost in blood and treasure. He who
saves now will not have saved in vain.
VI--_The Price of Glory_
When John Jones of the U.S.A. puts his thousand dollars into an English,
French, Russian or German bond he becomes part and parcel of the
mightiest financial structure ever dedicated to a single purpose. He
cannot tell how his funds will be used. They may buy a few hundred
shells, clothe a thousand soldiers, feed a battalion or build a trench.
All he knows is that his mite joins the continuous and colossal stream
of expense that makes up the Red Wage of War.
Now if John Jones employs his money in the stock or bond of a railroad,
corporation, or public utility enterprise he can find out almost
precisely what it does, for it lays down a track, provides new equipment
or builds a power house. The investment, in short, represents something
that produces more wealth.
War, on the other hand, is a gigantic engine of destruction. Instead of
building up, it tears down. It is a monster machine consecrated to
waste. The only possible dividend can be peace.
The cost of the European conflict has a deeper interest for us than mere
curiosity over staggering statistics. The reason is that we have joined
the Paymaster's Corps. In other words, we have backed up our sympathy
with cash. We are silent partners in the costliest and deadliest of all
businesses.
Up to the present stupendous struggle and with the exception of the
Russo-Japanese War in which we floated several issues for the little
yellow men, we have had no definite economic part in the wars that shook
other nations. The losses in money and in men fell on the combatants.
This war, which has shattered so many precedents, has drawn the United
States out of its one-time aloofness. To the dignity of World Trader we
have added the twin distinction of World Banker. Already we have poured
out practically two billions of dollars for securities and credits of
the warring countries. To this must be added an even greater sum
representing our enormous war exports. The price, therefore, of whatever
freedom emerges from these years of bloodshed intimately touches
thousands of American pocketbooks in one way or another.
What is the final toll that Battle will take: more important than this,
what is the future of the treasure that we have laid on its Consuming
Altar?
Before making any analysis of the American stake in the cost of the
European War, it is important to find out first just how much money has
been expended and what the likelihood of future outlay will be. Like
every other phase of the stupendous upheaval this one is both
speculative and problematical.
To deal with these European War figures is to flirt with Titanic
Numerals. They are more the Playthings of the Gods than matters for mere
mortals to juggle with.
Up to the first of January, 1917, the total military expenses of both
sides had reached approximately $61,000,000,000. It is only when you
reduce this enormous sum to terms that every man and woman can
understand that you begin to get some idea of the amazing cost of
conflict.
The amount of money expended for direct war purposes alone since August
1, 1914, is equal to three times the par value capitalization of all
the American railroads. It represents fifty times the net national debt
of the United States: eighteen times the amount of money in actual
circulation in this country: and eleven times the total deposits in all
our savings banks. With it you could build 146 Panama Canals or pay for
the Napoleonic, Crimean, Russo-Japanese, South African and American
Civil Wars and still have a surplus of $34,000,000,000 left. Such is the
New and High Cost of War!
The price of glory is being constantly advanced. The expenditures for
the first year of the war were $17,500,000,000: for the second they had
increased to $28,000,000,000: the estimate for the third year, to end
August 1, 1917, at the present rate of spending is about
$33,000,000,000. This means that by the time the next harvest moon
shines (and no man in Europe to-day doubts that it will gleam on
carnage), the war will have represented a sacrifice for military
purposes alone of $78,500,000,000.
Taking the daily cost of the war you find that England is $25,000,000
poorer for every twenty-four hours that pass: that France must check
out $20,000,000: Russia $16,000,000: Italy $5,000,000. Little Roumania
is cutting her war expenditure teeth at the rate of $1,000,000 per diem.
Cross the frontier (for war expense is no respecter of cause or creed),
and Germany is "discovered," as they say in play-books, spending
$17,500,000 every day: Austria, Turkey and Bulgaria, $11,000,000. Thus
between sunrises that break over these warring hosts very nearly
$100,000,000 has gone up in smoke, splinters or ruin of some kind, or
the upkeep of fighting.
Since England's cost each day is heavier than any of the other countries
at war, due to the fact that she is Financial First Aid to most of her
Allies and is maintaining a fleet almost equal to all the others
combined, let us reduce her enormous daily war bill of $25,000,000 to
simpler form. It means that participation in the greatest of all wars is
costing her $1,410,666 an hour, $17,361 a minute and a little over $289
a second. At this rate of waste John D. Rockefeller would be bankrupt in
forty days; Andrew Carnegie would be in the bread line in ten. The sum
is greater than the entire net public debt of Chicago; it equals the
assessed valuation of all the taxable property in Poughkeepsie, New
York.
Work out this immense daily outlay from still another angle and these
striking facts develop: the war is costing at the rate of 29 cents a day
for every inhabitant of the United Kingdom: 31 cents for every
individual in France: 22 cents for every person in the Kaiser's domain,
and 6 cents for each human unit in the Russian Empire.
Yet this well-nigh overwhelming rush of figures only accounts for the
actual cost of hostilities. By this I mean arms and armament, food and
military supplies, the construction, maintenance and renewal of fleets,
the cost of transport and the pay of soldiers and sailors.
To the vast sum already recorded must be added the loss registered by
the destruction of cities, towns and villages, the sinking of ships, the
wiping out of factories, warehouses, bridges, roads and railways.
Then, too, you must allow for the almost incalculable productive loss
due to the killing and maiming of millions of men: the shrinkage of
agricultural yields and the more or less general dislocation of the
machinery of output. All these factors pile up a total, the calculation
of which would almost cause a compound fracture of the brain. Sufficient
to say it puts a terrific human and financial tax on coming generations
and we in America will feel its effects when the world begins to
readjust itself to the altered social and economic conditions which will
come with peace.
Of course the inevitable question arises: Who is paying the Scarlet
Piper? In seeking the answer you encounter for the first time America's
intimate and all-important part in the costly drama now being unfolded
to the tune of billions. She sits in the armoured box-office with the
Treasurers of the embattled nations.
At the outset of the war all the belligerent countries believed that
they could finance their needs without seeking neutral aid. Less than a
year was enough to dispel this delusion. Although England and France
immediately voted immense credits they were not long in finding out that
they must back up their unprecedented mobilisation of resources with
outside help. They came to us.
When the great Anglo-French loan of $500,000,000 was first discussed as
a possible American financial feat, people over here began to wonder why
Great Britain and France, whose combined wealth exceeds that of all the
other nations at war, should want overseas assistance. Since the reason
for this loan as well as the disposition of proceeds are practically the
same as that of most of the other Allied issues in this country in which
thousands of our investors have participated, it is well worth
explaining because it also carries with it a lesson in international
barter. Here it is:
Before the war our foreign trade was growing fast. England and France,
in particular, were good customers for our wheat and other foodstuffs,
iron and cotton manufactures, oil and automobiles. In exchange we
imported the product of many European factories.
Business relations between nations are not settled like transactions
between individuals and firms, that is, with checks or cash. They are
settled by balances. England's imports from the United States, for
example, are paid by her exports to us. Usually exports and imports so
nearly balance that the difference is paid by gold or with the temporary
use of bank credit. Therefore it is not a question of actual money but
of exchange and this foreign exchange is a commodity whose value
fluctuates with supply and demand.
Along came the war. Millions of artisans in France and England were
withdrawn from lathe and loom to fight in the battle line. What workers
remained at their posts had to produce war supplies. Yet civilian and
soldier needed food, clothing and arms. The demand for our products
increased and the United States suddenly became the work-shop and the
granary of the world.
The Allies, in control of the seas, became our principal foreign
customers. American exports soared: those of France and England declined
correspondingly. A huge balance of trade--the biggest in our
history--swung to our favour.
This balance of trade had to be settled, but on an abnormal basis. What
was ordinarily a comparatively trivial matter of a few millions
suddenly became an item of many millions and it was all owed on one
side. The demand for exchange on New York greatly exceeded the supply
and the inevitable dislocation happened. England and France had to pay a
drastic premium on the American dollar. The English pound, normally
rated $4.86, dropped to $4.50; the franc, ordinarily worth 19.29 cents,
fell to 16.94 cents. This shrinkage in values was not due to any
impairment of the resource or wealth of the Allies but because the
machinery of international payment works automatically and
unsentimentally.
Here was a crisis that without aid from us might have eventually cost us
dear. Rather than submit to the terrific drain on the exchange value of
the pound and franc, England and France could have set about emulating
the example of Germany and become self-sufficient. It was not a month's
work or even a year's work, but ultimately it would have made these
countries more independent of the United States after the war is over.
Of course England and France could have met the situation by shipping
gold. Each had a large reserve but the United States had all the gold it
wanted, and still has. Besides, in such an emergency gold is an inert
and unproductive commodity.
Again, the Allies might have "dumped" their American securities
representing an investment of over three billions of dollars, which
would have upset the American stock market and sent prices down. Either
one of these performances would have done us no good.
It was important, therefore, for the benefit of all interest involved,
that the Allies establish a credit in the United States that would
enable them to buy freely and remove the costly handicap on American
exchange. In a word, instead of having to pay their bills through an
intricate mechanism that rose and fell with the tides of trade and put a
premium on trading with us, a medium was needed that would restore the
whole economic trade balance. It was as essential to us as to our
customers.