compared with the big extravagances that go on without much comment.  Economy is a broad term used to express the many ways in which other people might save money.  Members of Parliament have been known to tell many ways in which women might economize; their tender hearts are cut to the quick as they notice the fancy footwear and expensive millinery worn by women.  Great economy meetings have been held in London, to which the Cabinet Ministers rode in expensive cars, and where they drank champagne, enjoining women to abjure the use of veils and part with their pet dogs as a war measure; but they said not a word about the continuance of the liquor business which rears its head in every street and has wasted three million tons of grain since the war began.  What wonder is it that these childish appeals to the women to economize fall on deaf or indignant ears!  Women have a nasty way of making comparisons.  They were so much easier to manage before they learned to read and write.

The war wears on its weary course.  The high cost of living becomes more and more of a nightmare to the people, yet the British Government tolerates a system which wastes more sugar than would feed the army, impairs the efficiency of the working-man one sixth, and wastes two million dollars every day in what is at best a questionable indulgence, and at worst a national menace.  Speaking of economy, personal thrift, conservation, and other “win-the-war” plans, how would the elimination of the liquor traffic do for a start?

There are two ways of practicing economy:  one is by refusing to spend money, which is not always a virtue; and the other is by increasing production, which is the greatest need of this critical time.  The farmers are doing all they can:  they are producing as much as they have means and labor for.  But still in Canada much land is idle, and many people sit around wondering what they can do.  There will be women sitting on verandas in the cities and towns in the summer, knitting socks, or maybe crocheting edges on handkerchiefs, who would gladly be raising potatoes and chickens if they knew how to begin; and a corresponding number of chickens and potatoes will go unraised.  But the idea of cooeperation is taking root, and here and there there is a breaking away from the conventional mode of life.  The best thing about it is that people are thinking, and pretty soon the impact of public opinion will be so strong that there will be a national movement to bring together the idle people and the idle land.  We are paying a high price for our tuition, but we must admit that the war is a great teacher.

There is a growing sentiment against the holding-up of tracts of land by speculators waiting for the increase in value which comes by the hard work of settlers.  Every sod turned by the real, honest settler, who comes to make his home, increases the value of the section of land next him, probably held by a railway company, and the increase makes it harder for some other settler to buy it.  By his industry the settler makes money for the railway company, but incidentally makes his own chance of acquiring a neighbor more remote!