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As is evident from the above, the Red Cross, in addition to the work on the battlefields and in hospitals, furnishes aid for the civilian population of devastated countries. A remarkable instance of the efficiency of the Red Cross in Emergency this capacity is shown by the speed with which Work. physicians and nurses with medical and surgical supplies and food were rushed to the scene of the recent Halifax disaster.

Y. M. C. A.

The Young Men's Christian Association in cooperation with the Young Men's Hebrew Association has established buildings throughout the cantonments in this country and is erecting buildings at the army camps in Europe. These buildings are in charge of secretaries appointed by the association and have large meeting rooms Amusefor moving picture entertainments and concerts, ments for the Soldiers. correspondence facilities, rooms for educational classes, also games and phonographs. The buildings will also be available for religious services. Similar buildings have also been erected or are in process of construction by the K. of C. Knights of Columbus. At these buildings and at

other places throughout the camps, both in this country and in Europe, and on ship-board, there are camp libraries furnished by the American Library Association,

which provide reading matter for the soldiers

and sailors.

PAYING FOR THE WAR.

The assembling of a vast army and navy, the production and transportation of supplies and munitions of war, the building of a great fleet of transport and cargo-carrying ships, the furnishing of financial aid to our allies, all require that the government raise vast sums of money far in excess of any pre-war requirements.

Money
Needs of
Nation.

For the first year of the war, the business year of the government which ends June 30, 1918, it is estimated that our expenditures including seven billions of dollars loaned to our allies will total over eighteen billion dollars. It is difficult to conceive of such a large sum of money. If it were all in one dollar bills laid on the ground like a carpet it would make a belt eighteen feet wide, wider than the average school-room, extending all the way around the world.

There are two ways for the government to raise money. The constitution provides that "Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes" and "to borrow money on the credit of the United States." It has been estimated that the tax laws in effect when war was declared would raise approximately one billion dollars this business year. When this amount was subtracted from the eighteen billion dollars required this year there was left to Congress the problem of securing by additional taxes or by loans seventeen billion dollars.

War Taxes.

After several months of debate Congress finally passed a war tax bill laying taxes which it is estimated will bring into the treasury about two and a half billion dollars. The principal sources of this vast increase are increased taxes on incomes, liquors and tobacco; taxes on excess or war profits; taxes on facilities furnished by public utility companies as railroad transportation and freight, express, telephone and telegraph service; taxes on automobiles, musical instruments, sporting goods and jewelry; taxes on perfumery, chewing gum and patent medicines; taxes on admissions to amusements; increased postal charges.

The government has inaugurated a program of securing funds directly from the people by a sale of liberty bonds. Already over five billion dollars worth of these bonds Liberty have been sold and additional issues have been Bonds. authorized by Congress. Authority has been granted for an issue of war savings certificates and stamps to the sum of two billion dollars, a method by which even the smallest investor may hold government securities.

In speaking of the objects for which the liberty bonds are issued, Secretary of the Treasury McAdoo said:

"Money is raised in two ways-by taxation and by bond issues. The Congress has just passed a taxation measure which imposes heavy burdens upon the American people, but those burdens are insignificant as compared with the sacrifices that the men who are going to fight for you are going to make. But the amount we raise by taxation is not sufficient, and we must raise by bond issues between now and the thirtieth day of June, 1918, approximately $14,000,000,000.

"To what uses are the proceeds of these Government bonds to be put? Eight billion dollars is going to be used to equip 2,000,000 to 2,500,000 soldiers in the field-to furnish them arms, ammunition, clothing, food and ordnance-to give them the best equipment any soldier ever had; $1,450,000,000 to strengthen our Navy and to give every tar upon our battleships, our cruisers, our submarine chasers and torpedo-boat destroyers the protection he ought to have; $750,000,000 to create an air fleet manned by American operators and pilots; $1,300,000,000 or more to construct a great merchant marine to preserve the line of communication across the Atlantic between America and our boys upon the fields of France, and to carry our commerce, the products of our farms, of our mines and of our factories to all the nations of the earth.

Caring for

"A part of those funds will be used to take care of the dependent wives and children of the men who go to the Front; to pay them just compensation and indemnities for partial or total disability; and if their injuries are of Dependents. such a character that they cannot resume their previous occupations we intend to use enough of these funds to reeducate them into some form of service where their remaining days can be made as happy and useful as possible.

"We intend also to give to our men the right to buy life insurance at cost from the Government. Do you realize what

we do to a man when he volunteers or when he is drafted into the Army? The moment he puts on the uniform, whether he volunteered or was drafted, the Government in effect conscripts his earning power above $396 a year. He may have been earning in private life $1200 to $5000 per annum-it makes no difference; the minute he enters the Army his earnings are reduced to $396. In addition to that the Government takes his life, if necessary, for his country. The moment he enters the Army or Navy it makes no difference how stout his heart or strong his sinews or clear his brain or good his eyesight, or how perfect every vital function, he cannot get a dollar of life insurance in for Soldiers. any life-insurance company in the United States except at prohibitive rates. What is our duty? Our duty is to restore the destroyed earning power of that soldier as far as we can do it by giving him the satisfaction of knowing that the Government will not allow his dependent wife and children to starve or be dependent upon casual charity. We owe it to those men also to restore their insurability."

Insurance

Whether the form in which the Government takes our money be taxes or loans, in the last analysis the only way the war can be paid for is by someone, or better every one, doing without. If our government must have motor trucks, private individuals must do without pleasure cars, for both cannot be manufactured. Not only must there be a tremendously increased production of war goods-ships, shells, guns, rifles, medical supplies, but this production must be made with fewer men, or with women transferred to the ranks of industry, as large numbers of men have been called to the battle lines. We must therefore do without the unnecessary things. "Extravagance now costs blood, the blood of heroes."

THRIFT.

There never was a time in the history of the world when thrift was so important a subject as it is today. The enormous cost of the war and the incident high cost of living have impressed upon the minds of the people the necessity of thrift more emphatically, more seriously, than ever before in American history. It would be difficult to estimate the permanent good which will come to us as a nation and as individuals from the solemn lessons which the world s greatest war will teach us. Not the least valuable of these will be our lessons in Importance thrift. Saving is a matter of habit. Habits are of Thrift. more easily formed in youth than they are changed in age. Enforced thrift will entail many fancied hardships upon people who have never formed the habits of saving. The boys and girls of this generation will have strong incentives to save. The opportunities for the investment of small amounts are available on every hand. It will be easy for our boys and girls to acquire a habit of life long value and at the same time to lay by a sum of money which may be invested in a farm, stock, or business or which may provide for a college education. Psychologists tell us that habits are more easily formed if we are interested in forming them, if we derive pleasure and satisfaction from doing the thing which we desire to become a habit. The value of thrift in the lives of our best informed and most successful men is best shown by quoting extracts from their writings on the subject.

A text book on thrift used in the elementary schools of Philadelphia answers the question of "What is thrift?" in this

way:

ness.

"Thrift is a composite virtue. It includes economy, selfdenial and saving; but it is no relative of niggardliness or meanThe man who would let his grandmother starve; the boy who would disregard his parent's rightful wishes is not thrifty, but a brute in the former case, and the makings of a brute in the latter case.

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