WAR VERSUS LUXURIES.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume XLV, Issue XLV, 26 October 1917, Page 4

WAR VERSUS LUXURIES.

Gasolene is one of the necessaries of war. Yet no one would think it was, witnessing from day to day its lavish use in the streets and highways of the United. States as an instrument of personal luxury. There has been no appreciable diminution since war was declared of pleasure or other needless riding in automobiles. That is ,one of the first signs of the non-existence here of war conditions and a war consciousness which strikes the eye of every visitor from Europe. The Advisory Commission of the Council of National* Defence has just warned the country that our present gasolene stocks are inadequate. We are using 35,000,000 barrels of crude oil in excess of our production. The consumption of oil for military purposes is going to increase amazingly. Therefore, even if we speed up our production, we shall have to cut down our oil consumption for nonmilitary purposes. It is not the "joy rider" alone to whom the Government's warning is directed. "Joy riding" is nearly as much of an abomination in peace t:me as it is in war time." But there are thousands of other users of gasolene who are indulging in pleasure excursions and other forms of ordinarily harmless but now wasteful travel. It should be made a case of conscience with each of these whether the travel is justified under existing conditions. From every street news stand war scare heads clamor at the passer-by. But once he turns his gaze from the sidewalk and watches the endless procession of pleasure vehicles, most of them on superfluous service, all sense of the reaJity of this war which we are engaged in fades away. The habit of unnecessary travel is necessarily hard to overcome. There has been an orgy of it for several years past. Xew York at night, and far into'the night, is a panorama of speeding pleasure vehicles—nearly everyone representing in its operation an unpr'oi ductive expenditure. We cannot hope to overcome this habit of waste in 24 hours, [ but we can gradually break its hold. We are teaching ourselves to save food because our Allies need it. Food saving may eventually represent a genuino -sacrifice "on the altar of patriotism. Saving gasolene will hardly involve personal hardship to anyone. Yet at the cost of the slight inconvenience involved in saving it we mav contribute materially to win tho war.—New York ' Tribune.'"