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Extracts from The Ypres Times Cinema Supplement.
So an industry which began by being non-essential," or nearly so, ended
by becoming one of the Treasury's most accommodating milch-cows!
In 1917 the cinema industry presented to the British Red Cross Society six motor
ambulances for station and hospital work. These were operated by the National Motor
Volunteers and the cost of their upkeep was maintained by the trade. The industry also
equipped Roehampton with machinery and appliances, at a cost of £1,500, for the instruc
tion of wounded soldiers. They fitted up a theatre at the Star and Garter Home, Rich
mond. They equipped the Maxillo Home for facial cases, on behalf of the Red Cross, and
maintained the entire institution for a period of three years. They founded eight centres
in the country in connection with a scheme for training disabled soldiers to act as
cinema operators, a scheme which was subsequently taken over by the Government.
Advertisements of War Savings Certificates and War Roans were exhibited free of charge
on all the screens of the kingdom, and to one issue of War Roan the cinemas subscribed
a whole week's box-office takings. In one day they subscribed the sum of £32,000, by way
of benefit performances, to Rord Haig's (Poppy Day) Fund. The foregoing rough and
disjointed narrative records only the bigger movements among the cinema theatres in
aid of the War. The things done by individual exhibitors in their own territories would
fill the entire issue of this journal.
But the good work did not end with the War. It was carried over into the Peace.
Each year over £70,000 is raised for charitable purposes by means of the cinema enter
tainments given on Sunday evenings under the jurisdiction of the Rondon County Council,
and the Rondon Branch of Exhibitors estimates that it, alone, grants facilities for enabling
fifty charitable appeals to be made annually in Rondon cinema theatres. No appeal of
a Samaritan nature has ever passed unheeded by the cinema theatres. They are now
official alms-collectors as well as tax-gatherers. Not least among the benefits conferred
on the nation by the cinema industry is the task which they have undertaken of explaining
the War which they did so much to assist.
I find it admirable that the high sense of patriotism of British film-makers should
have led them to produce, at considerable commercial risk, such veritable war-documents,
and stirring screen-spectacles, as The Battle of Jutland," Armageddon," Zeebrugge,"
"Reveille," "Ypres," "Britain's Birthright," and other national epics shortly to be
announced for exhibition. Here, however, I trench on the province of my friend, Mr.
E. Gordon Craig. Mr. Craig sponsored most of the films mentioned and has made himself,
by his enterprise and patriotic vision, almost the trustee of national and Imperial destinies
on the screen.
What is the moral of this article on the work done for the nation, in War and Peace,
by the cinema industry, an article which that industry will regard as totally unnecessary
and irrelevant, because it concerns a patriotic issue The moral is that everyone who reads
this article should bring his or her full influence to bear on the side of those who are now
striving to recreate the British film-producing industry. This fight is, as was so well said
a little while ago, a fight for England's soul." All that you think of Britain, all that
you know of Britain, all that you believe and hope of Britainthese things the British
film-producer can and will bring before all our Empire and all the countries of the world.
We are the aristocracy of nations and we need to found a tradition of aristocracy in film-
production. But we shall never be able to achieve that aim without the aid of those who
are influentially in touch with the machinery of State and are able to sway in our direction
the full force of public opinion. Money is needed, too, but this is neither the place nor the
occasion to mention money for film purposes. Not less necessary is your active, moral
support of the British film-movement.
Think about British films! Talk about British films! Write about British films!
Ask for British films! And keep on holding on," as you did at Ypres, until the whole
British Empire rises unitedly to demand British films!
