The Monticellonian., 1918-09-06
HERE IS MEANING
 OF LIBERTY BOND
Buying It Is Merely Lending Money to Yourself for a
 Great Necessity.
Us. GOVERNMENT MEANS US
Stupendous Amounts Are Needed to Pay for Work and Materials, So Our oId-Time Extravaeances
 Must Be Dropped.
By JOHN PALMER CAN'T.

By JOHN PALMER CAN'T.
 One of the good results that will ac- crue to the American people from their participation in the war is a better understanding of the purpose and function of money. Also. they will the government and the fact that 1t is their goyernment-as much theirs as their homes and farms and factories. For purposes of poetry and sentiment 1t is well enough to talk about Uncle Sam" your devotion to him, your will ingness to lend to him by the purchase of bonds, War Savings Certificates and Thrift Stamps, and to give your own life and the lives of your sons on the actual fighting front; but you must not lose sight of the fact that after all, the United States, Uncle Sam," U. s." Our Country" and so on-whateyer poetic phrase we use to represent the nation in its united action and aspi- ration-is just US, ourselves in our own proper persons, working and sav- ing and applying our joint strength, for ourselves, our children and our chil- dren's children.
 Too much have we thought of the government, the nation, Uncle Sam, and so on, as something separate from ourselves something to which we give and lend, eagerly or willingly or grudgingly or under compulsion, as the case may be. We have had too little of:sthe practice of team work for t great common purpose--our own pur. pose.
 The Liberty Bond campaigns fur nish occasion for reminding ourselves that 1t is our country. ourselves in our organized capacity, that is engaged in the war to abolish autocracy; that Uncle Sam" is us, in common de- termination to do and give all of our selves to an enterprise as thoroughly worth while as the American Revolu- ton or the war to preserve the Union and free the slaves. And one of the ways in which we can participate di- rectly and actively In this enterprise is to turn our money-all of 1t that is not absolutely and honestly necessary to the essential purposes of living and keeping well and efficient for the other things we have to do to help along the enterprise-over to ourselves in our organized capacity; that is, to the government, for the work of the war which It Is conducting for us.
 Money Useful Only for Exchange.
 Money is nothing In itself-just pa per and metal. It is useless unless somebody else will accept 1t in ex- change for something he has or some thing he can do The measure of its value to you is the other fellows need of the materials or the labor which 1t will in turn command for him. Spend. ing money is the way we have of get. ting from other people the things they have or the work they can do-"Goods and Services" Our responsibility, therefore, lies In the question of the kind of things for which we choose to exchange money, and the time and circumstances in which we exert that choice.
 Now, we have been a very wasteful and extravagant people; we have not thought much about the effect upon ourselves and other people and upon the nation as whole, of the ways In which we spent our money, or the time and circumstances in which we spent it. But the war is compelling us to think about that. Not even the great est nation, or the most powerful gov ernment, or the shrewdest fnanciers can make something out of nothing. And when war the most ravenous kind of waste and extravagance that man hind has devised, comes along to take workers out of industry and off the farms, and to turn them from produc- tion to high-power consumption and destruction--no matter if the ultimate purpose of the war be quite worth its cost in life and property-there simply are not material and labor enough Tn the country to permit both the contin- uance of the old kinds of expenditure and the taking on of the new.
 Why We Must Do Without.
 For the purposes of the war the government of the United States must have stupendous amounts of materials Snd work. and there is not enough of these to give the government what 1t must have and at the same time allow the people generally to have as much material and work for their private uses as they have in ordinary times.
 Therefore we must to the greatest possible extent keep out of the market for materials and labor, so as CD to