TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE LAST WEEK OF THE WAR LOIN. BEFORE our next issue the War Loan will have closed. This therefore is our last opportunity for dealing with the nation's need in this respect. It is one which we could not miss without a dereliction of public duty, for none feels more intensely than we do the importance, not merely of securing money for the war, but of interesting all classes in it—making it in fact as well as in name a National Loan. As regards the first requirement, the Loan has proved, or at any rate is proving, a success. The money of the great capitalists is filling the Treasury, and the world has seen with astonishment the British Chancellor of the Ex- chequer, like another Moses, striking the rock and getting from it a full stream. Though the capitalists and the men of riches must no doubt bestir themselves up to the very last moment and keep nothing back for a rainier day, we do not Velieve that in the end any complaint is going to be made in regard to what they have done. The last week of the Loan will show that they realize how intimately success in the was is bound up with the success of the Loan, and how weak as well as how cowardly, how mad as well as how craven, will be the spirit of those who conspire to keep anything back. It is only about the second requirement—i.e., that the Loan shall affect all classes, and so, like the Throne, be " broad-based upon the people's will "—that we feel anxiety. The small men, by whom we mean the wealthier men among the working classes and the men of the minor middle class, are not subscribing to the Loan as they could and should. There are literally hundreds of thousands of men in this country who, either by bringing forth their savings in secret hoards, in banks, or in personal property, or by mortgaging their land or houses, could contribute to the Loan in sums of from £20 to £200. Unfortunately, however, they are failing to do so. What is the reason for this failure ? We are sure it is not want of patriotism. They are the men and women whose sons, brothers, and grandsons have gone to tho war, and made sacrifices not translatable in terms of pounds, shillings, and pence. They are the men and women who stand to lose most if we were to lose the war, as we must lose it if the river of gold were to dry up, and if the Government while victorious in the trenches were to be vanquished in the Treasury. But if it is not want of patriotism, why is it that the money which it is admitted is in the hands of the classes we have named is not rolling into the Bank of England ? We believe we can give the answer in a sentence. It is the Savings Bank habit. That habit is excellent in itself, but it is one which does not make for readiness to buy scrip, however good the security. For good or evil, our people are not investors even when they are savers. It is not the custom of the normal Englishman to buy stocks and shares. He not only does not buy stock, but ho never has bought it, and, what is more, has never understood it. He does not realize that stock is still money, still mobile, still ready to help him at need, like gold in the bank or in the stocking or in the teapot. The :nail English saver, when you talk to him about an investment, e ill say to you, or, if he is voice-shy, to himself : " That will Lever do for me. I want to have my savings ready if need l.o to prevent my business going under or to save the life of ieyself and the Missis. What'll be the use of my savings to me if I turn them into paper ? It's no good for you to talk to me about getting so much a year from it—I didn't :ewe for that, and I don't need it. My business or my own labour will bring me in all I want year by year. My Insurance will look after the Missis when I'm dead, and the Club or the Union will keep me out of the workhouse if I go sick. What's the use of £5 lad. a year to me out of £100 if I never see the (1) again ? "
Even when it is explained to him that £100 invested is not £100 gone, and that Government paper can always be sold and turned again into the money from which it came, he is apt to remain incredulous. He asks who is going to buy it, and where and how and when it can be sold ; and if he is told that there are always people ready to buy Government stock in London or elsewhere, and that the Bank or the Post Office will do the needful and sell his scrip for him, he is grimly sceptical. He hasn't got a bank, he doesn't want Mrs. Jones in his Post Office to meddle with his money, he hates filling up forms, and he can't understand accounts. As for the Bank- " They might do it for a rich man like you, but I'm doubtful if they'd do it for me." Thetis the thought at the back of his mind, or even on his lips. Besides, even if ho does dimly under- stand the sale of scrip, he has a rooted belief that he will always get less for it than what he put into it. Selling, he says, is one thing, and buying's another. " What happened to Farmer Giles ? He had as beautiful a lot of little pigs as ever you saw, really good uns they was, specially the black uns, which was as quick as cats on their feet, but the day he sent them to market there was no buyers, and the man as he sent with them, being wrong in the head or drunk or both, went and sold them instead of bringing them back, and he had to put up with a loss of five shillings on each, instead of getting the profit of ten hillings each he expected. That's what happens to folk that think they can make sure that they'll always have their money back by selling in market." Didn't something similar, he goes on, happen to the blacksmith's daughter, who got such good wages in the Munitions " She bought a gold bracelet with diamonds in it, and they told her she could always get her money back on real stuff like that. And then when she was going to be married and went to sell the bracelet to buy furniture, she only got half what she gave six months before. That won't do for me, no fear," and so on and so on.
It is for reasons such as these that the smaller British saver is either putting his money week by week into insurance against death and illness, or else into the Post Office Savings Bank. In both cases ho knows that the money will be available immediately to meet the emergency which he dreads, and for which he seeks protection. If he dies or is ill, the insurance operates instantly. If his business or trade suffers a temporary eclipse and he must have a sum of money down, then he has only to walk into the Post Office and draw it out of the Savings Bank. With these two forms of saving, splendidly organized, one appealing to him as it were at every street corner in the Post Office, and the other actually coming into his house in the shape of the insurance agent and canvasser, it is hardly to bo wondered at that ho does not try investment, and that all ho knows about it is the awful warning which he hears, say, from some one who lost everything in the Liberator Building Society, or from men with some ancient story connected with unlimited liability Bank shares or Industrial Companies of the gold-brick order. Remember that the men who have been ruined by bad investments complain from the housetops. The small men who have invested profitably keep it strictly to themselves. That is what we mean when we say that it is the Savings Bank habit, plus the insurance and the club habit, which prevent the small capitalist from becoming the small investor and placing his savings or his credit in the hands of the State. He cannot see how his money can be made available in an emergency if he sinks it in the Loan. In face of these circum- stances, the only plan is for those who know better to explain matters and make the small investor understand : (1) that his money will not really be tied up ; (2) that there is always a market for Government securities ; (3) that in all human probability the loss of £.3 or £t in every £100 is the greatest extent to which he could lose in any case ; and (4) that if he lets the War Loan be the alternative to the private hoard of coins or banknotes, ho will be getting 5s. 6d. a year for every hundred shillings which he brings forward to help the nation in its hour of need. It may take a little time and patience to explain these things, but they can be explained, for where money is concerned human being aro generally quick of apprehension.
This being so, we want to make a special appeal to those of our readers, and they must be many thousands, who, as clergymen of all denominations, as employers of labour, as squires and country gentlemen, or as Magistrates and holders of various public offices, are in touch with the more prosperous of the workers or the smaller " men of independent means." It is " up to " them to explain to their less well-instructed neighbours that money is not demobilized by being lent to the Government ; that it can be got out of the Loan almost as easily as out of a stocking ; that the fear of any serious shrinkage will only be entertained by the man who is unpatriotic enough to despair of his country • and finally that if Englishmen keep as steady as they are likely to keep, such depreciation will never occur. It can indeed only occur if we are a nation of funk-sticks. If the whole nation sets its teeth and determines never to despair of the republic, as we are perfectly certain it means to do, then there will be no depreciation. There is plenty of money in the country, and plenty of energy to make good our borrowings. War, as experience shows, is far more likely to bring us an increase than a diminution of wealth- making activity. No one therefore need have an uneasy conscience about persuading men to put their money into the Loan. In fact the greater the war peril, the more absolutely essential it is to them to do that, for they have got to sink or swim with the nation. If the Loan were to fail, the nation would fail, and what then would be the use to any one of having money ready to hand at a moment's notice for a business emergency 1 If the nation perishes, the stern verdict of fate will be : " Thy money perish with it 1" If by way of rejoinder comes the answer : " They can get the money without me," possible investors should be asked whether they really mean to be so craven as to shelter them- selves--at the expense of others, whether they refuse to bear their share of the burden because they feel sure somebody else is going to bear it for them. Are they going to put their hands on the rope and pretend to be pulling when in reality they are saving all their energies for some purely selfish need ? English people are not easy to persuade on matters that concern their own advantage, but they are the easiest people in the world to persuade on matters of duty. Tell Englishmen that they are going to make money out of a thing, and that it is to their own interest, and you will fmd you have got the most uphill task in the world if your hearers are at all inclined to disbelieve you and have to be persuaded out of a prejudice. Tell them, however, that they have a duty to perform, and that they will make nothing out of it but will have to undergo sacrifices, and they listen to you at once. We do not say that they will always do what you want them to do. There is always a percentage of selfish men to whom such an appeal will mean nothing. But depend upon it, as Nelson knew, as Wordsworth knew, and as every one who has understood or understands the heart of the English-speaking man has known and hnows, the appeal to duty with Englishmen will always be the supreme appeal.
If the present writer may be reminiscent, he once found a signal example of this fact in his own experience, when he was endeavouring, at the beginning of the formation of the National Reserve, to persuade the trained men, the ex-soldiers, ex-Militiamen, and ex-Volunteers, to join the Reserve. Incredulous people asked what inducement he could put forward to get men to join. But it was soon obvious that there were no inducements, and could be no inducements, for the Government would give none, and the task was far beyond private effort. Then said the critics of the scheme : ".The thing is doomed to failure." Certainly it looked like it. But the present writer and those who were associated with him in the foundation of the National Reserve tried the appeal to duty, and boldly told their first recruits that there was nothing in it whatever for the trained men, and that not only would they make nothing by registering in the National Reserve, but they would incur a liability for dangerous and arduous service without adequate pay ; that in fact they would have nothing but the honour which comes to men who do their duty. The appeal proved attractive beyond belief. The men who would have haggled over terms till doomsday, and gone away in disgust declaring that if they were worth anything they were worth more than a £5-a-year retaining-fee, when they were told that they could not by any possibility obtain anything, and that they were being asked to give, not to receive, brightened up at once and put down their names. Such is the sense of duty and such the sense of private honour in the British people. That is the feeling to which we want to appeal, but to which appeal has not yet been made. Let us make the apreal at once, and if unfortunately should prove too late in the day, do not let us despair, but let us prepare to, gather an aftarmathlor the Government. It is essential to get every penny for the Loan before it closes. but there must after all be a collection of the fragments that remain through short-term bonds. Let them be made specially attractive for the working man, and let us have a properly arranged system of house-to-house canvassing in regard to them. If the Insurance Companies can hawk their wares down every street and into every house, why cannot the Government go into every house of £50 a year rent and downwards and canvass for investments in Government bonds ? But if they do, let their canvasser appeal, not to the greed or the love of money in the canvassed, but to their sense of duty. Let there be no attempt at bribery or cajolery, but only the plain statement of a plain duty. That will be enough. It has never failed in the past. It will not fail in the present or the future.
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