“WORK HARD:  SPEND LITTLE: 
SAVE MUCH”

From every bill board and every newspaper were emblazoned: 

“SIX REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD SAVE”

Here are the reasons: 

1.  Because when you save you help our soldiers and sailors to win
the war.

2.  Because when you spend on things you do not need you help the
Germans.

3.  Because when you spend you make other people work for you, and
the work of every one is wanted now to help our fighting men, or to
produce necessaries, or to make goods for export.

     4.  Because by going without things and confining your spending to
     necessaries you relieve the strain on our ships and docks and
     railways and make transport cheaper and quicker.

     5.  Because when you spend you make things dearer for every one,
     especially for those who are poorer than you.

     6.  Because every shilling saved helps twice, first when you don’t
     spend it and again when you lend it to the Nation.

The word “Save” which had dropped out of the British vocabulary suddenly came back.  It was dramatised in every possible way and it became part of a new gospel that vied with the war spirit itself.

The National War Savings Committee became a centre of activity whose long arms reached to every point of the Kingdom.  Branch organisations were perfected in every village, town and county:  the Admiralty and the War Office were enlisted:  through the Board of Education every school teacher became an advance agent of thrift:  the Church preached economy with the Scripture:  in a word, no agency was overlooked.

The sale of Certificates started off fairly well.  On the first day more than 2,000 were sold and the number steadily increased.  But while many individuals rallied to the cause, there was not sufficient team work.

One serious obstacle stood in the way.  While fifteen shillings and a sixpence is a comparatively small sum to a man who makes a good income, it looms large to the wage earner, especially when it has to be “put by” and then goes out of sight for four or five years.  So the National War Savings Committee set about establishing some means by which the average man or woman could start his or her investment with a sixpence, that is, twelve cents.  Even here there was a difficulty.  Millions of people in England could save a sixpence a week, but the chances are that before they piled up the necessary fifteen and six to buy the first Certificate they would succumb to temptation and spend it.

The English small investor, like his brother nearly everywhere, is a person who needs a good deal of urging or the power of immediate example about him.  Thereupon the Committee said:  “What seems impossible for the individual, may be possible for a group.”

Thus was born the idea of the War Savings Association, planned to enable a group of people to get together for collective saving and co-operative investment.  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.