peace. When, where and how
to save became the great question. To save money at the cost of
efficiency for essential and urgent work was not true economy. "But,"
said the thrift promoters, "waste is possible even in the process of
attaining efficiency. For example, people may eat too much as well as
too little, they may buy more clothes than they actually need, ride when
they could walk, employ a servant when they could do their own work, use
their motors when they could travel in a tram."

Thus every class came within the range of the lightning that was about
to strike at the root of an ancient evil.

The start was interesting. Before the war was a year old definite order
emerged of what was at the beginning a scattered protest against
reckless spending. But long before the first organised message of saving
went to the home and purse of the worker, the rich began to economise.
Here is where you encounter the first of the many ironies and contrasts
that mark this whole campaign. The people who could most afford to be
extravagant were the first to draw in their horns. This, of course, was
not particularly surprising because the rich are naturally thrifty. It
is one reason why they get and stay rich.

Among the pioneer organisations was the Women's War Economy League
founded and developed by a group of titled women who got hundreds of
their sisters to pledge themselves to give up unnecessary entertaining,
not to employ men servants unless ineligible for military service, to
buy no new motor cars and use their old ones for public or charitable
work, to buy as few expensive articles of clothing as possible, to
reduce in every way their expenditures on imported goods, and to limit
the buying of everything that came under the category of luxuries.
Champagne was banned from the dinner table, decollete gowns disappeared:
men substituted black for white waistcoats in the evening.

The rich really needed no organised stimulus to retrench. The great
target for attack was the mass of the population who did not know what
it meant to save and who required just the sort of constructive lesson
that an organised thrift movement could teach.

Much of the increase in wages among the workers was going for food and
drink. Hence the opening assault was made on the market bill.
Fortunately, an agency was already in operation. At the outbreak of the
war a National Food Fund was started to feed the hungry Belgians. That
work had become mor