Retrenching in Home Trenches
(By Sam Raddon, Jr., Northwest Editor, the Journal.)
Opportunity for broad, constructive, patriotic war-service of permanent value and effect is presented newspaper publishers of Oregon, city and country, in promotion of the government's new war savings certificates and thrift stamp campaign.
The newspapers have been asked to spread the gospel of retrenchment in the home trenches. They will do it, as they have done in the past, and as they will continue to do whenever the request is made until the world has been made safe for democracy.
Thrift, moreover, is a good gospel.
The thrift campaign is to be largely a campaign of education, even though the implied objective of the propaganda is money (of which Oregon's apportionment 1s $17,244,780,) for war purposes.
The real objective is a broader, deeper one, the interest returns upon which cannot be computed. It is the development of the idea of the virtue of thrift, until thrift shall have become a national characteristic, not only for the duration of the war but for all time. The potential results of systematic saving as a national endeavor, are immeasurable.
President Wilson feels that the campaign is a most vital one. "I suppose not many fortunate by-products can come out of a war," said the President in addressing the war-saving committee, "but if the United States can learn something about saving, out of the war, it will be worth the cost of the war. I mean the initial cost of it in money and resources. I suppose we have not known that there was any limit to our resources; we are now finding out there may be if we are not careful."
John F. Hylan, mayor-elect of the city of New York, is a member of the war-savings committee in New York. "The plan for selling the war saving stamps," says Judge Hylan, "appeals to me more than any other financing that has been attempted since the war began. This is because, entirely apart from patriotism, I can see an infinite number of personal benefits of a practical nature that will come to every good American who begins buying stamps at this time. The benefit derived from saving is the most practical benefit in the world. We in America have much to learn about economy and thrift, and any medium by which these virtues are taught will have good effect."
The campaign will be of wide appeal, for it must reach the workers of the nation, offering them opportunity to do their "bit" financially, and it will be a popular campaign and a successful one once its objectives are understood.
It remains then for the newspapers of the state to drive home the virtues of thrift, in war~times and peace, until they are implanted and clinched in every heart in the union.
Next month which one of you is going to send us something we can use! Let it be anything that will interest the newspaper men of the state.
