During the Great War, there were constant calls for the people to show belt-tightening economy and frugality in Australia and Britain.
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One hundred years ago this week, Melbourne's Punch published an account by a London witness of how society toffs were setting/not setting an inspirational example to the lower orders.
An Australian artist in England, writing to relatives in Melbourne, says: "I saw the big Savings Campaign meeting at the Guildhall on Wednesday. For a meeting called to induce the people to go in for a cheese-paring policy in their homes, and to try the effectiveness of the effort to sustain life on the smell of an oily rag, this was a preposterously luxurious gathering.
"All the men taking active part, with the exception of Lord Kitchener (the upright military man), were aggressively fat, and the furs on the women might have kept 700 families for seven years.
"Most of the conspicuous persons drove up in high-priced motor cars, attended in many cases by one or two footmen of military age whose calves would have looked much better in putties (because they ought to be wearing the uniforms of enlisted men) than in pale blue silk stockings.
"I'm afraid the rich Englishman's (more especially the rich Englishwoman's) idea of economy is summed up in one by a prominent Labour figure here, who has said 'national economy is the policy of going without, as practised by the people who haven't got'."
