Sept.
Shanghai at the moment 18: being privileged to see the film ion of that remarkable war-
In a few days' filming of "Journey's End" will alo be shown on the screen of another theatre in the Settlement. Both these productions give a permanent record for the future as well as the present generation of two of the most famous war classics of the day. In this respect the talking cinema is able to render to civilization a service far more complete than that to-be obtained by the printed page. By this medium the world is able to grasp and retain the actual visible and vocal impressions of the travail of 1914-1918 in which the nations were involyed, apparently of their own vodition but in reality, as it seems now, by the inevitability of the fate in which their puny incompetence had enmeshed them, The appreciation of the film at the Nanking Theatre appearing on another page shows how poignantly the story of the young German soldiers is made to appeal to the consciousness of men and women of all nations. There can be no hatred in the minds of any who follow the grim tragedy to its set conclusion. A yearning pity for the young lives sacrificed in a holocaust of men's noblest ideals overwhelms the soul.
The brave flutter of the spirit of national pride far back behind the line, is stilled in the trenches to a note of anguished fortitude, from which all ran-cour is exorcised. The passion of hostility is plainly manufac tured—a professional weapon much net, the barrage. is stronger than duty," says Paul Baumer, and in the presence of death German and Frenchman are men and comrades heroically mustering their strength to eliminate hate.
It is widely asserted that plays of this kind must make war impossible. The hope noble; the aspiration is worthy of all the encouragement it can command, Certainly noone who emerges from the theatre after seeing "Journey's End" or "All Quiet on the Western Front" can be filled otherwise than with an intense conviction that war is the supreme futility yet achieved by man, There is the impotent raging of resentment against conditions which can so pitilessly expose young lives to the deprivation of all the joys of istence. There is the sudden wave of protest which evokes the cry "This must not happen again." The cruel exposure of the emptiness of the appeals to patriotism, the shattering revelation of the essential brutality of machine-made discipline, the vision of the crudity of by rulers and unveiling of the true meaning of national pride all seem to "make war unthinkable." The value of this kind of penance should not be despised. Even the thought that all warfare In the past has evoked similar protests should not discourage
maintain that never has man-ideal They can at least kind been so well-equipped for preserving memories of what war really is for the benefit of generations to come and that therefore there is more hope that old failures will not have new reincarnations, Yet it would not be wise to be too confident. The observer of world-events to-day—would indeed be blind if he asserted that all is now quiet, whether in Europe or elsewhere. Old problems are again raising their difficulties and their solitions again seem to run along familiar lines. The easy way is the old way and that leads inevitably in the long run to war. Propaganda against war is not enough. There must be mobilization for peace. And, while the novels and play son which the hopes of the peacemakers are fixed lay stress, as they should do, on the brutality the fiendish cruelty of war they cannot, for their very truth, conceal its one nobility: not the glamour of victory, the high enthusiasm of personal courage but the great quality of human sacrifice of self. Until the move for world-peace can fiat the secret of that quality which is as essential to-day as ever it was for the salvation of man's soul, it will fail to fut a substitute for war. In "A'L Quiet of the Western Front", the German hero, in spite of the author, in spite of the purpose of the play, in spite of the ho:~ ror of his own tortured boy and mind, vividly brings out his thoughts and actions that same heroism which throughout the ages has raised man above the brutes. It is not enough to stigmatize war ae a brutalizing
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.