estment. This proved to be one of the master strokes of the campaign.
From the moment these Associations sprang into existence, the whole War
Savings Certificates project began to boom and it has boomed ever since.

War Savings Associations are groups of people who may be clerks in the
same office, shop assistants in the same establishments, workers in the
same factory or warehouse, people attending the same place of worship,
residents in any well-defined locality such as a village or ward of a
town, members of a club, the servants in a household: in short, any
number of people who are willing to work together. Some have been
started with 10 members, others with as many as 500. Up to the first of
January nearly 10,000 of these Associations had been formed throughout
the Kingdom.

Now came the inspiration that was little short of genius for it enabled
the lowliest worker who could only set aside a sixpence a week to become
an intimate part of the great British Saving and Investment Scheme. The
idea was this:

If one man saves sixpence a week, it would take him thirty-one weeks to
get a One Pound War Certificate. But if thirty-one people each save
sixpence a week, they can buy a Certificate at once and keep on buying
one every week. Thus their savings begin to earn interest immediately.
Thus every War Savings Association became a co-operative saving and
investment syndicate--a pool of profit.

How are the Certificates distributed? The usual procedure is to draw
lots. In a small Association no member is ordinarily permitted to win
more than one Certificate in a period of thirty-one weeks, except by
special arrangement. Each Association, however, can make its own
allotment rules. The value of winning a Certificate the first week is
that the winner's 15/6 will have grown to one pound in four years and a
half instead of five. This is broadly the financial advantage gained by
being a member of an Association, although the larger reason is that it
is more or less compulsory as well as co-operative saving.

Britain is buzzing with these War Savings Associations. You find them in
the mobilisation camps, on the training ships, on the grim grey fighters
of the Grand Fleet, even in the trenches up against the battle line. The
London telephone girls have their own organisation: sales forces of
large commercial houses are grouped in thrift units: there are saving
battalions in most of the munition works, and so it goes. In many of