Part 15

"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 mass 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 advertisement announcing the new type of War Loan read like this: