Part 19

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 L100,000,000 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.