In the preceding chapter I told of the introduction of the Simple Life, of the dawn of the Economy Era in war-time England; but it would be hyperbole to intimate that it has been inaugurated on anything but a superficial scale. Luxury and self-indulgence are still rife. To vast numbers of people, in the classes as well as the masses, the war, far from oppressing them, has brought positive affluence, and with their new riches they have gone in for spending instead of saving. Spartanism in Britain remains a good deal of a theory; it has not become a condition. While Germany, shut off by land and sea, contrives to remain at fighting zenith without her customary imports of $2,500,000,000 a year (she calls Jellicoe’s blockade a blessing in disguise because it has compelled her to spend at home what she used to pay out abroad), England’s imports of such articles as oranges, cocoa, tea, coffee, tobacco, cheese, rice, meats, pepper and onions have heavily exceeded her importations of the same articles in corresponding peace periods.[1] The Prime Minister tells the country that "victory seems likely to incline to the side which can arm itself the best and stay the longest." Mr. Asquith declares that "that is what we meant to do." But until, for instance, Englishmen realize that by abstaining from tobacco for a year, $40,000,000 of money would be available for the smoke of battle; that if every man, woman and child in the Kingdom puts away 25 cents a week, a new treasure of $600,000,000 could be piled up for war; and that unless waste, extravagance and slothful habits generally are banished, by duke and by docker, as if they were leprous disease, Mr. Asquith’s brave words will remain a hollow aspiration. They alone will not enable England to "stay the longest" in the world’s most destructive endurance competition. [1] There are ugly rumors that Produce Exchange patriots who burnt _The Daily Mail_ for exposing the "shells tragedy" are the importers of these excessively large stores and are selling them to "Holland"--and other "neutrals" adjacent to Germany at exorbitant profits.