I am glad that in his broadcast talk on Sunday
on coupon clothing the President of the Board of Trade came near saying —I am not sure whether he actually did say—that it would be patriotic to be shabby. It depends, of course, what is meant by shabby. There is no virtue in actually cultivating negli- gence in attire even in war-time, and the neater and tidier old clothes can be made to look, the better. But too much time and energy is devoted to keeping up appearances anyway, and people in all walks of life are prone in consequence to spend beyond what they can reasonably afford on what they do not reasonably need. Captain Lyttelton is making that more diffi- cult, and the general result will be good. The only doubt I have is whether his premisses are really sound. The object of the coupon-clothing scheme is to ensure a fairer distribution of the restricted emount of clothes and boots available. But is it the fact that the lower-incomed classes have been unable to buy the clothes they need because the clothes are not there to buy? If so, they must have suffered in unaccustomed silence, and the Press must have been unusually blind to a situation with a definite news-value.
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