Wairarapa Times-Age MONDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1941. WAR SAVINGS AND SERVICE.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 November 1941, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age MONDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1941. WAR SAVINGS AND SERVICE.

■J?ROM today the people of Masterton will have before their eyes in the movement of a “money ball” on the Post Office flagpole, an indication and measure of the progress they are making as a community in their contribution to the National Savings campaign. It will no doubt be a matter ol pride with many citizens to help in raising,the “money ball as speedily as possible to the top of the pole each week, when it will be replaced by a flag, in token that the quota of savings for that week has been attained.

As a direct contribution to the war effort, by providing the sinews of war, and on other grounds, the savings campaign has the strongest claims to the serious and thoughtful consideration of all citizens. All the money provided in this way will be applied meantime to arming and equipping our soldiers or meeting other forms of war expenditure. It will be repaid m the easier times we all hope to attain when this burdensome but most necessary outlay no longer has to be made. It is an elementary duty of every good citizen in these days of grim emergency to do what he or she may to help in providing die money that is needed for the prosecution of the war.

It is not alone from the standpoint of national duty, however, that the savings movement has claims to universal attention and support. It is very definitely in the interests ana to the advantage of citizens, individually and collectively, that national savings should be expanded to their practicable limits. ■This aspect of the matter rests on simple economic facts which are, or easily might be, understood by all. Even in this country, fortunately as it is placed in comparison with many others, we are faced by a great and growing shortage of many kinds of goods, but in spite of war taxation, the extant and available volume of purchasing power is not reduced correspondingly. No question is raised here of the relative distribution of purchasing power as between one section of the community and another. The point is simply that if the amount of money—of purchasing power—in circulation exceeus its due and normal relationship to the quantity of things that can be bought with money, inflation of necessity occurs. In these circumstances a proportion, and an increasing proportion, of the money held by the community goes bad, so to speak, in the hands of those by whom it is possessed and spent. In the simplest terms, it will buy less goods and this state of affairs, once entered upon, always goes 'from bad to worse. The ideal to be aimed at in any community is a true balance between the volume of money and the volume of things that money will buy. Complete attainment of this ideal no doubt is impracticable in time of war, but it is very much to the advantage of each and every member of the community that saving should be carried to its reasonable limits, thus limiting inflation and reserving and postponing purchasing power to a time when an increasing supply of goods and services can be adjusted to a rising demand. The national savings movement offers to all an opportunity of playing a positive part in this wise and prudent policy.

In part, and of course to an important degree, our national economy in these days of war is shaped and governed by the imposition of taxation, the raising of loans and. in other ways. Unless it is carried to an almost impossible extreme, however, State action on these lines must fall considerably short of effecting, in the full measure that is desirable and; necessary, an adjustment of the national economy to war conditions. No official scrutiny can determine accurately the capacity for saving of each and every individual citizen. ■ The national savings movement is an appeal to all to determine, this matter for themselves. For the reasons which have been touched upon, it is at once the duty and the interest of all to put as much as they can into war savings, and to keep on doing it, due account being taken of their own legitimate needs and the needs of those dependent on them.