"We Can, We Will"--We Haven't

The national ten per cent war-bond purchase goal is being rapidly realized, but here at Harvard attempts to reach that percentage have so far proved almost farcical. An average of a dime per man a week stands in glaring contrast to the student's income, and there has been little evidence of any considerable increase in purchases over the past few weeks.

Under the impetus of the new pledge drive by the War Service Committee the Harvard undergraduate goal has been set at a minimum of $1000 each week. Other colleges such as Yale, with comparable enrollments and student allowances, have consistently topped that sum and are continuing to do so. But even these standards are startlingly modest when balanced against the contributions of the millions of wage-earning "ten percenters."

Merely pasting stamps in a book is not enough. Unless each stamp and bond is a direct measure of a student's sacrifice of some article which he would normally have bought, the Harvard phase of the war bond drive will have lost its meaning. Writing home for extra money to buy war stamps is contributing nothing to the war effort. The Harvard drive is intended to collect the student's money, not the family's. No cleverness is needed to spend other people's money.

"Hitting the Harvard man" is especially important, for the greater share of undergraduate allowances is spent on scarce luxury articles. The spiral is given an extra twist every time a student buys records, gasoline, liquors, or similar goods. But all spending, whatever its object, is ultimately inflationary as soon as it gets to other consumers who use it for shortage commodities. This surplus purchasing power floating around the national economy must be sopped up by the sponge of war stamps and bonds.

One thousand dollars a week looks large in the absolute, but it breaks down to only a quarter per man. From one point of view, the Harvard contribution may be only a drop in the bucket; from another, it is the finger in the dike.