PLAYING THE GAME

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 78, 30 June 1943, Page 2

PLAYING THE GAME

QUESTION FOR WAR LOAN INVESTORS Wellington, This Day. The third Liberty Loan has met with a far wider range of public support than the two previous war loans, but how many of the scores of thousands of investors are merely nominal supporters of this essential war effort? asks the National War Loan Committee. When the magnitude of the £35,000,000 loan is taken into consideration, the duty to subscribe to the point of personal and financial inconvenience becomes obvious, because of the paramount need for war finance. Salving one’s conscience with a £lO subscription, when by pledging prospective income or drawing against good assets the investment could be £IOO or £IOOO, constitutes a limited or grudging concession to the nation’s need. To secure £35,000,000 from all the people who come within the investing category for a people’s war loan involves an obligation equal to £75 per head. Such a sum is beyond the resources of many and therefore the average has to be made up by those who are happily in a better position than the average—the class which has more to lose in a material sense if the war effort fails. To illustrate how necessary is investment to the limit, it should be mentioned that if every one of the 400,000 householders of the Dominion subscribed £lO each, the result would only be £4,000,000, while adding the 50,000 shops and offices of all kinds, large and small, and assuming an average investment of £IOO, the loan total would rise by another £ s,ooo,ooo—and the Liberty Loan would be short to the extent of £26,000,000.

It is quite clear from the progress figures of the Liberty Loan, adds the National War Loan Committee, that not only are there scores of thousands of people who think the appeal to back the fighting forces with money means nothing to them, but that there are others who have done something, but need to search their consciences and answer this question frankly and honestly—“Am I playing the game?”