sing
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