National Savings Campaign

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23299, 8 April 1941, Page 6

National Savings Campaign

The progress of the national savings schemes introduced by the Government last year has been far from sluggish. From the alternative fcrms of fixed savings’ accounts, with the right to withdraw interest periodically, and of savings certificates discounted to a figure showing a similar return at maturity, the Government has received from the public to date about £3,000,000; and it should be renumbered that oiitright gifts and loans free of interest continue to be offered as well. But the Government! has rightly decided to strengthen the appeal for direct, voluntary'contribution to the financing of the war through the investment of savings. Everyone who opens a war savings account has made a start, but only a start, tpwards the goal which the Government sets before him, the maximum voluntary and co-operative sacrifice of consumer spending power to the nation’s need of money for war. It is not a simple question of thp amount of the opening deposit, or of the first savings certificate purchased. Bet that be as large as the investor can afford. But there remains the more urgent demand that war saving should be regular—}cept up week by week or month by month, so long as the war goes on, Monthly deposits of 10s are better than a first deposit of £5, never added to during the year, not only because the actual contribution is larger but because it will be more easily made and because it is on consistent, calculated saving,’ not on single, impulsive responses, that the full success of the Government’s scheme will be founded, The investor Who has made it possible to divert 2s 6d a week from his ordinary ' expenditure to war savings through six months or a yeaf is likely to have ’ found that he can make it possible to divert 3s 6d or 5s through the next six’’months or a year. But while increases on a set‘margin of saving are likely to be exceptional, if the margin has been well calculated, regularity should be the rule; and this is the particular advantage of the group plan, that it helps the individual to save systematically by making him a paHy to a collective agreement to save, , It would not .be a reckless estimate that, thoroughly roused to it, the people of New Zealand could save and invest £lO a head or £15,000,000 a year. The Prime Minister has said enough to rouse them, He has more than once this year described the situation > into which the war is carrying the Dominion, one which will exact harder labour, greater sacrifices, the resolute acceptance of hardships and deprivations severer than any yet endured. The Government’s de-

mands on the people will be clearer before long. But one is clear already. The people must save: they must give up, from their wonderfully high earning power, some part of what it represents in the luxury of a high standard of living, because that cannot be retained while the forces of production are increasingly turned to war. Saving is the price of victory, the means of fighting for it. It is assessed in terms of money; but it is brought to bear in the strength of a nation organised, trained, and equipped for a life-and-death struggle. The spirit to win it must find and will find the full means, among which saving is indispensable.