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I SAVE ?
to our whim and the vagaries of fashion. Everyone knows that the
French are among the world's most frugal people. Everyone knows
too that the French are—or were prior to the German invasion—one of
the world's most wealthy nations. Free-spending does not necessarily
make for sound business.
An oil king on a desert island, surrounded by his chests of gold, cannot
command the use of a pair of shoes, regardless of the price he may
offer, if there is no pair of shoes on the island. This point of view is as
old as the institution of private property. Its antiquity only emphasizes
its truth. All of us know today that money is not wealth, but only a
representation of wealth. Money means merely purchasing power. How.
then, can we carry on "Business as usual" when world conditions are unusual?
The business of life no longer consists in buying and selling. It consists in
fighting for existence, with limited resources to draw upon.
With everything going out of this country—from wheat to men—and
nothing coming in ; with the exigencies of war demanding more and more of
our vital resources and powers; with our necessities on the increase because we,
too, must fashion guns, make high explosives, build a vast fleet of merchantmen,
construct innumerable motor trucks, and maintain in food, clothing,
shoes, and weapons a vast army of our own, no one other than a selfish
parasite could have in mind any thought but Save.
Legislation will doubtless do its part in checking extravagances. Individual
sanity and honesty also will do their part. There still, however, will remain
those excesses that law cannot govern, and that the conscientious individual
apparently cannot control or influence because they are perpetrated in the
person of another. Against such individuals as will not heed the welfare
of the state, there may always be brought the incalculably powerful pressure
of public opinion.
When a famous prima donna, some months ago in Paris, dared to flaunt
her lavish purchases of laces and silken lingerie, the indignant French women
expressed themselves emphatically and effectually by invective and ostracism.
When the pampered darlings of our neighborhood boast their dozen pairs
of shoes it is an obvious act of patriotism to give the offending individuals
the cold shoulder. It will help to conserve those material things upon which
the lives of our men at the front and the existence of our freedom itself
may, in the long run, depend. THE EDITOR.