TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE "SPECTATOR " HOME GUARDS FUND.
WE have to thank our readers for their prompt and generous response to our appeal for funds for the central body which is organizing the Home Guards—the Central Association of Volunteer Training Corps. The Spectator Fund down to Thursday evening reached a sum of £1,175 12s. We are very grateful for this help, but our readers will, we are sure, not misunderstand us when we say that we hope this is only a beginning, and that the splendid example of those who have been first in the field will be largely followed. We say this not from any desire for a bloated subscription list or to exhibit the patriotism of the Spectator readers, but from a very lively sense of the urgent need of money in large amounts by the Central Association if it is within any reasonable time to get the Home Guards properly organized, trained, equipped, and armed. A Fund of £10,000, or even £100,000, would be by no means too much for such work. Indeed, when people ask us how much money is required, all we can say is that the more money the Central Association has at its disposal the more work it will be able to do. It is never likely to have too much.
Our only anxiety is one which has arisen in the last two days. A friend of the present writer who had been a subscriber to the Fund made as his first comment upon the German raid on the East Coast : " This ought to bring you in subscriptions by the thousand." We do not doubt that this thought came into the minds of a great many people, but we are by no means sure that the result will be good. On the contrary, we are a little alarmed lest it may slacken effort. Every- body will be saying that the Spectator will have no trouble now in getting the money it wants for the Home Guards. Therefore A, B, and C will individually say to themselves that it is quite certain that this good work can now be done without any help from them. " We can keep our money in our pockets till some other good object comes under our notice, secure in the conviction that other people will do all that is needful for the Home Guards." It will be the old story. But, alas ! such a result must be disastrous to our Fund if what is everybody's business is nobody's busi- ness. Therefore we would most emphatically implore our readers not to think that our Fund must be so prosperous in a week like this that there is no need to subscribe to it. There is greater need for support than if this apparent stimulus had not been applied. We ask our readers at once to check in themselves and in their friends the feeling which might prompt them to say : " The Spectator is sure to get its money now, and therefore we need not bother about it."
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