Still another plan has been devised to meet requirements of people who do not care to affiliate with the War Savings Associations.  Any post office will issue a stamp book in which ordinary sixpenny postage stamps can be pasted.  When thirty-one have been affixed they may be exchanged at the post office for a pound Savings Certificate.  These books have this striking inscription on their cover:  “Save your Silver and it will turn into Gold! 15/6 now means a sovereign five years hence.”

The whole Savings Campaign is studded with picturesque little lessons in thrift.  The London costers—­the pearl-buttoned men who drive the little donkey carts—­subscribed to $1,000 worth of Certificates in a single week, although they had made a previous investment of $4,000.

In hundreds of factories the idea has taken root.  In some of them War Savings subscriptions are obtained by means of deductions from wages.  Employees can sign an authorisation for a certain amount to be taken each week or month out of their wages.  They get accustomed to having two, three, four or five shillings lifted out of their wages and thus their saving becomes automatic.

Often the employer helps the movement by contributing either the first or last sixpence of each Certificate or offering Certificates as bonuses for good conduct or extra work.  When one small employer that I heard of pays his men their War Bonus, he gets them, if they are willing, to place two sixpenny stamps on a stamp card, for which he deducts tenpence.  The employees are thus given twopence for every shilling they save.  When these cards bear stamps up to the value of 15/6 they are exchanged for War Savings Certificates.

No field has been more fruitful than the public schools where the thrift seed has been planted early.  In hundreds of public educational institutions Savings Clubs have been formed to buy Certificates.  In Huntingdonshire, where there were less than 150 pupils, more than $35.00 was subscribed in a single morning.  At Grimsby a successful trawler owner gave $5,000 to the local teachers’ association to help the War Savings crusade.  A shilling has been placed to the credit of every child who undertakes to save up for a War Savings Certificate, the child’s payments being made in any sum from a penny up.  Ninety-five per cent of the children in the town have begun to save.  Similarly, a councillor of Colwyn Bay has offered to pay one shilling on each Certificate bought by the scholars of one of the town’s schools, and also offered to add fifty per cent to all sums paid into the school savings bank during one particular week, provided that the money was used to purchase War Savings Certificates.

Almost countless schemes have been devised to instil, encourage and develop the thrift idea.  In certain districts, patriotic women make house to house canvasses to collect the instalments for the Certificates.  They become living Thrift Reminders.  Tenants of model flats and dwelling houses pay weekly or monthly War Savings Certificates at the same time they pay their rent.