It came upon me with a sudden sense of revelation, for when I went into the theatre my thoughts were heavy with the weight of war. The friend with whom I had dined had insisted, and though at first I had refused, she had compromised with my objections. "Come and see some pictures, if you cannot face a three-act play," she had said. "I can promise you something quite remarkable, and when you have had enough, just rise and I will follow." But in the end it was my friend who suggested leaving, because she had a long day's work before her and knew that I too had an engagement nearly two hundred miles from town. And when I told her that she had shown me more than she herself had seen, and that I would not have missed that couple of hours' illumination on any account, she merely said she would not attempt to understand, but was very glad.

I have been greatly concerned with problems of peace and war from the woman's view-point. So many women have written to me about the question, some from far-away corners of the States, others from remote English country-sides. I feel the ferment in the blood of every thinking woman; I know how surely and inevitably the time is coming when men and women must face the problem of world control side by side. It has seemed to me that only one force can avail to end war, and that is the force of education supplementing the efforts and strengthening the bands of brotherhood. But how should one make the dry bones of education live for those to whom education is now no more than dry bones? We can reach the children whose imagination is yet immature, how reach the grown up, immersed in the struggle for life and bringing even to their leisure the harassed mind and tired brain? How make the path clear, how stir to the depths their slumbering sense of the world that lies beyond their working day? When I went into the Scala Theatre in London the problem was a baffling one, when I had seen "The Birth of a Nation" I realised the truth that such pictures in the hands of men with insight and vision may yet move the world.

We of England may well forget the follies of our forebears, and the American with Anglo-Saxon blood in his veins may well forgive them, while both tingle with pride at the accomplishment of those "Mayflower" Pilgrims who paved the way for the coming of a nation destined I think in the near future to become the wealthiest, most powerful, and, one hopes, the most progressive on the face of the earth. But who realised, save in a vague and uncertain fashion, the true glory of America's brief history? Who could visualise the scenes to which statesmen and orators recur from time to time? Of the general public few indeed if any, to the rank and file the experience of seeing the past flower into life before them must have been such a one as Keats describes—

A few deep thinkers, men with vivid minds, must of course have seen beyond the limited vision of the multitude, or nothing so sweepingly comprehensive, so splendidly realistic, so artistically complete as "The Birth of a Nation" could have been devised. It is poetry almost in the sense that Hardy's "Dynasts" is poetry, while its educational value, appealing as it can to young and old, learned and illiterate alike, is very real. Whatever the commercial value, and this I am glad to think must be great, the value of the spectacle as a force for the promotion of the highest order of patriotism is greater still. I can only feel delighted to think that such a task could be so carefully undertaken and so satisfactorily achieved.

A picture play may not seem at first sight a very great medium for presenting the truth about history or even a single facet of the great diamond of life; at least if I am honest with myself this would have been my own opinion down to the date of my visit to "The Birth of a Nation." I had misjudged the scope of the picture play in the light of the hoardings, vulgar, fantastic, or silly, that make the streets of even the small provincial towns more than necessarily offensive. I did not understand that in the hands of capable and imaginative artists, not only the present can be put before us, but the past can be reconstructed, and the future suggested. How it would help us to understand not only ourselves, but others of the great group of nations if we could see the history of all countries presented with something of the skill and sincerity that have gone to these graphic outlines of America's past! Often in Warwick Castle, as I have pondered some of the records of bygone time and half-forgotten history, I have marvelled at the pageant that is suggested, but never realised by the pages before me. If we could bring our history before ourselves would it not teach us more of our triumphs and mistakes than any book? And if the history of the struggles and endeavours of other nations could be faithfully presented, would there not be in the vision something to make us more sympathetic, more ready to realise that we are all passing along the same road, a narrow bridge of consciousness spanning the river of life that flows through eternity, with dreamless sleep or life beyond our ken on either hand? Would it not help to teach us that for the people of every race that brief spell of consciousness is associated with so many self-made troubles that the hell of the obsolete theologians is rendered quite superfluous? We cannot in normal times hate the men, women, and children of another race merely because they are not of our own. The same virtues, the same strivings, the same uprising towards the elusive light are shared in common. So, too, are the prejudices and errors with which we strive. Presented with sympathy, and, above all, with humility, the history of the birth and subsequent struggle of all the nations would be a potent force for peace, because it would be the first aid to understanding.

I think that the men and women who have paid their vows to peace, those who, while realising that the present war must go on to the end, will make any sacrifice to deprive it of a successor, may find in the picture play, carefully conditioned to the needs of our fateful times, the fulcrum that will enable them to move the world. I can see it passing from the domain of the theatre to the lecture hall. I can see the best features of the enterprise enlarged and developed until at last the benefits of travel and a knowledge of history are put before those who under normal conditions—or rather the conditions that the Moloch of commercialism has made normal—would never be able to enjoy either. I hold and shall always hold, that the ultimate power of directing their lives is in the hands of the people, it is not rightly in the gift of Kings or Kaisers, diplomats, statesmen, or soldiers. The sunrise of peace waits upon the dawn of knowledge, of knowledge that can be acquired by men, women and grown-up children of the working classes, the classes that accomplish all that is worth accomplishing, and pay the fullest penalty of the greed and vanity of those who live upon their labours. But, as I have so often insisted, the workers are inarticulate, particularly in the southern counties and round the metropolis of England; they do not breathe the fresh air of the north, and it is notorious that London ruins the breed of the workers. The greater the city, the greater the unemployment, the keener the competition, the readier the acceptance of conditions that make men the slaves instead of the masters of their task, the smaller the leisure to think or to study the curious and manifold complexities of existing conditions. Only by making that study easy and by giving it the form of relaxation, by stimulating the tired brain, can the worker be roused. It is a matter of fact rather than of conjecture, that the picture "palace" is beginning to claim his scanty leisure, and his tiny surplus over the paramount demands of a minimum of food and clothing. Democratic in its essence and secure in its appeal, it seems to me that the picture theatre can be developed to the most instructive and useful ends. It can teach the working man the history of his own career and long struggle towards fairer conditions of life and labour, it can show the world's workers all aiming to reach the same legitimate goal and it can enforce the lesson that a unity of ideals, and a stern rejection of the counsels of those who would make mankind his enemies rather than his friends will make war impossible. It may be that in America, that great melting-pot, as Mr. Zangwill calls it, of all jarring nationalities, the lesson is more obvious and more quickly mastered, but there is a work well-nigh as great to be done in England, where if the mixing of the nationalities is less noticeable, the need for knowledge is still greater. The States, wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice, entirely self-supporting, and utterly unchallenged by any Power within striking distance, may well laugh in the face of those who would impose upon them the extravagant horrors of militarism.

We shall have to face militarism over here; it has had its advocates for many years, and—why deny it?—their position will be immensely strengthened by the war. We know by now that our rulers cannot save us, that if we would be saved it must be by ourselves, and we know too that salvation will be born of knowledge and of knowledge alone. I regard the picture theatre as the finest medium for the spread of knowledge now before the public, and I am confident that if the great engineers of enterprise will devote their energies to the sane peace propaganda that consists in showing not only the history but the aims of the great majority of civilised people, the lesson will travel far and sink deep. "The Birth of a Nation" reveals the infinite capacity of the master film makers, their resource and resources, the measure of skill they can command. It also shows by reason of its success the immense public interest, the desire to learn, and to make use of knowledge. It is not often that a venture avowedly commercial in its aims can perform a world-wide service, and I am optimistic enough to believe that those in charge of such a work as that which is responsible for my own conversion and enthusiasm will be quick to see that in serving themselves they can serve humanity.