LUXURIES AND CHARITY.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] you give your readers your views as to whether it is desirable or undesirable that the richer classes should cut down their expenditure on luxuries at the present time, pre- suming that they do not in consequence give more to charity than they would otherwise have done P—I am, Sir, &c., Iloselands, Waltham, Cross. EDWARD T. RASHLEIGH.
[This is no time for useless luxuries, but those who give them up should, if possible, use the savings thus made for national and patriotic service. Into the question whether people should merely transfer their expenditure to some other form of spending or saving we do not care to enter. That is a matter they must settle for themselves. If they find they can eat expensive dinners and buy expensive wines and cigars and consume them with zest just now, we can only say that they are differently constituted from the majority of their fellow-countrymen. We feel sure that to the normal man just now soft living, guzzling, and swilling are utterly abhorrent. Of course the cutting off of luxuries which involves dismissals must be done with very great care and discrimination, and in the way that will bring the minimum of suffering to others.— ED. Spectator.]
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