LOCAL WAR LOANS.

Free Lance, Volume XVI, Issue 839, 4 August 1916, Page 8

LOCAL WAR LOANS.

Advertise them Well

A LOCAL" war loan, a loan raised in New Zealand by the Dominion

Minister of Finance to help defray the expenses, in part at least, of New Zealand's share in the war, was foreshadowed in the Budget Speech. The country will expect coming financial events to prove in keeping with the Ministerial shadows. Such a loan would be a complete success if only it were placed properly before the country, if only it is advertised liberally and sensibly. There is no earthly good .putting such a loan before the public in the same curiously apologetic, half-

hearted way in which the last local loan, virtually a public works loan, was put. What on earth is the good of advertising such a loan in the New Zealand "Gazette," a publication .which hardly anybody ever sees, or if they do see it, is generally thrown unopened into the nearest waste-paper basket or dvist-bin? * * *

"What is .wanted is a bold, comprehensive, intelligent, and really effective advertising scheme on the same lines as thoso adopted by the Home Government. You can't get away from these advertisements in the Home papers. They fairly "hit you in the eye"—they are clamant for attention.

Also, all classes of the community are appealed to, and catered for by the terms, which are offered. You are shown how you can invest so small a sum as 15s 6d; how, if you get it into your head that the Huns are to invade London and make Eamsay Macdonald or A. C. Gardiner or some other peace-at-any-price charlatan Governor (under the Kaiser) you can draw the same sum out without notice; how, too. if you are wise and patriotic, and leave your money in the hands of the Government, that 15s 6d will gradually work up to a whole golden sovereign in such and such a time. If you can't "splodge" even fifteen and six all at one full swoop, the Government will issue you savings cards; on which yon can stick a weekly sixpence in stamps until the minimum investment, is made ut> —and your in-

terest begins from the first sixpence! All this and much more is set forth in attractively, clearly-worded advertisements, set in such a way as to command public attention at once- Now if this can be done in England, surely the same thing, or something like it, can be done here? It is "up" to the Minister of Finance to strike out an entirely new ffor New Zealand) line of advertising his local war loan, and we hope Sir Joseph Ward will rise to the occasion.