1. The movies' wide range of usefulness.

2. A Churchman's sane attitude. 3. Educators cooperating with producers.

4. How 12 Morocco tribes were united by motion pictures. 5. An agency for better pictures.

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of

RIMARILY an instrument of amusement, new uses for motion pictures are developed almost every day. Surgery is taught by motion pictures; secretion glands is studied by motion pictures; milder forms of insanity and several forms of nervousness are being cured by motion pictures. They are, in many hospitals, a part of the treatment of children.

Motion pictures are used to demonstrate machines and inventions to prospective buyers. The slow-motion effect that can be obtained in pictures enables the eye to see the most minute movements of every intricate mechanism. Instead of spending three days in inspecting the properties upon which a bond issue was to be floated, representatives of important bond houses recently spent three hours seeing the properties in motion pictures and then purchased the bonds. A stock-breeder clinched his deal with his prospects through motion pictures. Goods are sold at home and in foreign countries through motion pictures.

Chambers of commerce are using motion pictures in place of speakers to promote civic interests, such as

local

zoning, recreation and city manage_ ment. Legends, stories, and historical events are perpetuated, and religious, civic, and charitable movements are made successful by motion pictures. The flight of a bullet can now be seen in motion pictures. The secrets of nature are revealed to the eye by motion pictures.

The Agricultural Department has more than half a million feet of motion-picture films which are used in the promotion of farming and stockraising. Other Government establishments use the motion picture to show their activities.

The news reel service of the mo tion-picture industry is so well organized that there is a camera-man, called "The Minute Man of the Movies,' stationed in almost every important center of the civilized world. Through his efforts the world is becoming one big family. The motion-pictures are carrying messages of public importance-Red Cross, Near East Relief, "educational week," "safety first". to millions of people who would not be influenced by other means. Instead of reading vague descriptions of events we see them in motion pictures just as they are; the camera is incapable of presenting them other. wise.

The first motion pictures of a major event now on record are those of the inauguration of President McKinley, on March 4, 1897. Recently these old films were shown to audiences all over the United States, together with inauguration scenes of President Wilson in 1913. People eagerly looked at these past events

in pictures. The beloved martyred McKinley moving about as if alive has been an inspiration. Imagine the thrill if we could see motion pictures of Abraham Lincoln. Dwell then, if you will, upon what motion pictures have stored up for future generations concerning the World War. Chapters of history are being recorded which will keep alive, in the minds and hearts of the people, the deeds of men and American ideals. Brady recorded with his primitive plate camera the scenes of the Civil War to a degree of accuracy that no artist could ever attain. Today the five large news-reel corporations are as thoroughly organized for pictorially recording events as are the big press associations and the great newspapers.

Pictures of active volcanoes, wide canyons, lofty mountain peaks, and dangerous waterfalls are taken from airplanes. In the early days, night pictures were not possible; but radium flares now make night motion pictures possible. Motion pictures enable millions to enjoy the benefits of travel in the wildest regions. All the world is being filmed.

2. There is great force in a recent statement by Dean Charles N. Lathrop, of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in a report on motion pictures made on behalf of the Federal Council of Churches. He says: "All efforts should be constructive. Emphasis should be placed on the encouragement of the good rather than the suppression of the evil. And the motion-picture screen should be thought and talked of not as a troublesome problem but as one of the chief assets of the community for education and betterment."

3. At the annual convention of the National Education Association in Boston, last summer, a committee of the foremost educators was appointed which will meet with the great producers and together study the whole problem of the use of the motion picture and find means of making classroom pictures which will be scientifically, psychologically,

The pro

and pedagogically sound. ducers want to serve America. They know that there is no more important and lasting service they can perform than to aid the youth of the country, and they propose to make a very definite contribution to the pedagogic forces of the world. There are 15,000 theaters in this country; but there is an untouched field of 260,000 schools.

4. Another effort which we are making is the development of the full usefulness of the motion picture as an instrument of interna tional amity. Just as there is developed between individuals a better relationship based on a better understanding, so it is between nations. When France was endeavoring to mobilize her full man power there were thirteen tribes in Morocco, under French control, which the Government wanted to put into one regiment. This was impossible because the tribes had fought each other for generations. The French Government immediately took motion pictures of these troops separately, showing them playing the same games, living the same sort of lives, and in an incredibly short time they had the thirteen tribes in one regiment fighting for France and for us-one of the best regiments in France-and they are back home now living in peace under one flag.

Members of our Association have taken definite steps to make certain that every film which goes abroad shall correctly portray the purposes, the ideals, the accomplishments, the opportunities, and the life of America. We are going to sell America to the world through motion pictures. I do not have to suggest to you the value of this in improving our international relationships.

5. There has been selected a Committee on Public Relations, which consists of the heads of eighty nationally organized associations for better things. An executive committee of twenty has been formed, meeting frequently, and previewing pictures and making suggestions to our producers, advising the producer about the needs, as well as the wants, of the 12,000,000 members of the great organizations which they represent. As the good pictures are produced these representatives send word to their organizations that will bring the support to which the better pictures are entitled.

Review of Reviews, Jan. '23.

A desert caravan. Remarkable religious selfdenial.

A bulwark against attack. Lure of the mystical mirage. A scene of pandemomium. Halted by the Camel Corps.

routine of a caravan on the

Tmarch is as changeless as the

desert

itself. Awakened by Achmet at three in the morning, we would crawl shivering from our blankets to dress in darkness and bitter cold-cold that pierces one to the bone. By the time Sherin had prepared breakfast, consisting of tea, hard biscuits, scrambled eggs, and tinned sausages, the tent had been struck and, with the camp equipment, packed on the camels. We made it a practice to walk for the first three or four hours, thus varying the monotony and sufficiently tiring ourselves, so that the long hours in the saddle were endured. more easily These pedestrian interludes in the cool fragrance of the early dawn were the pleasantest part of the day; with pipes alight, we would stride along as though out for a tramp in the country, discussing anything, which served to while the hours away. eight o'clock it grew too hot for walking, and we were glad to take to our saddles again. The great caravan routes, which have been used from time beyond reckoning, are usually well defined; not a single beaten road, but a number of narrow trails made by the padded feet of untold generations of camels.

By

Until we pitched camp at sunset there was rarely a halt, nor would anything

have been gained by a midday halt, for there is no shade in the desert, and even had the tents been pitched, the heat beneath them would have been insufferable. Our noon meal, therefore, consisted only of tinned fruit, usually pineapple, and a handful of dried dates and figs, which we ate as we rode. When the sun approached its zenith, I unfurled an umbrella. It was not picturesque, but it afforded considerable protection, and, with the mercury at 130, it is the part of wisdom to take no chances. Hutchings did take a chance, and was rewarded by a sunstroke which kept him in a Bagdad hospital for days.

All day long, day in and day out, we rode across a burning, desolate waste, flatter and hotter than it is possible to describe. The Hamad is level as a floor, yet one gets the impression that it is tilted and that he is forever riding uphill. The sun is pitiless, implacable, terrifying. The skin turns to blotting paper; the lips and gums crack open; the tongue swells, and there is no saliva with which to moisten it. The eyeballs become inflamed; any exposed portion of the body is burned as though by fire. The dust stirred by the camels rises in suffocating yellow clouds, filling nostrils, eyes, and ears. The brain reels. Occasionally there is a breeze, but it is so laden with heat that it is like a blast from a furnace. The sense of solitude is overpowering. Northward, the unbroken, orange waste stretches for 500 miles to the Kurdish mountains, eastward for 1,300 miles to the Afghan border, southward for a like distance to the Indian Ocean. lived over again days spent in cleaner, greener lands, tormenting myself with mental pictures of tumbling mountain torrents; of New England wells brimming with cool, fresh water; of porcelain tubs; of ice tinkling in tall, thin glasses; of plates heaped high with ice cream.

I

our

2. Circumstances necessitated starting on our journey during the fasting month of the Mohammedans, during which no devout Moslem eats, drinks, or smokes between sunrise and sunset. The fanatically pious, indeed, even go to the length of refraining from swallowing their own saliva. Consequently, the Arabs attached to our caravan would travel for twelve, and sometimes sixteen, hours without once touching food or water. I have never seen so re

markable an example of religious selfdenial. Even when sunset came they did not break their fast until, the tents having been pitched, they had formed in line, their faces turned toward the Kaaba, and had gone through the interminable series of prayers and prostrations enjoined upon the faithful including the quick glance over each shoulder, accompanied by a muttered ejaculation, which is supposed to drive away the lurking evil spirits.

3. The caravan leader having selected the camping site, the camels were unloaded with surprising rapidity. Rigid discipline was maintained among the Arabs, and everything done in perfect order. The huge bales of merchandise, sewn up in burlaps, were placed so as to form an inclosure, which would afford almost complete protection in case of attack by marauding Bedouins. Our own tent we insisted on having pitched at least 100 yards from the encampment; otherwise the chattering of the Arabs and the grunting of the camels would have made sleep out of the question. The camels at nightfall were hobbled in a long line immediately without the inclosure. As soon as darkness closed in, the rifles were placed in readiness for instant use, sentinels were posted, and all the other precautions imperative in an enemy's country were rigidly enforced.

4. We experienced several terrible days of mirage. On every hand we saw lakes, brushwood, low hills, and always they proved to be the same dark patches of gravel. Time and time again I could have sworn that we were approaching broad laggoons; we could actually see the reeds along the shore and the wind-stirred ripples on the surface of the water, but no water was ever there. It was easy to understand how men dying of thirst are lured on and on by this curious optical illusion. 5. The fourth night out we encamped at the foot of a butte which rose abruptly from the plain. While supper was preparing I climbed to the summit to look for signs of game or Bedouins. Quite suddenly there appeared in the west what appeared to be a moving wall of purplish brown, which advanced with the speed of an express train, quickly blotting out the fiery ball of the sun. The sky turned from turquoise to indigo, and through it darted incessant spears of lightning. The thunder was continuous, like the roar of cannon. For a moment I stood rooted in fascination, for I had never witnessed a scene so awesome or terrifying. Then I turned and ran, scrambling down the steep face of the butte oblivious of cuts and bruises. Just as I reached the camp the storm struck us. The velocity of the wind was terrific; it was like a blast from an airplane propeller multiplied a thousand times. The air was so filled with driven sand that I could not see a rod

in front of me; it stung and lacerated my face until it felt as though it had been rubbed with emery-paper. The flimsy Arab tents disappeared before the blast like newspapers in a gale. The camels promptly became panic-stricken, and stampeded through the camp, in their mad rush trampling everything that was in their path. In an instant pandemonium reigned. The uproar was deafening: the shouts of the Arabs, the screams of frightened women, the snarling of the camels, the splintering of wood, the clatter of tin-ware, and, over all, the deep roar of the mighty wind and the incessant roar of thunder. The heavens emptied themselvs in a downpour such as I have never dreamed of. The water did not come down in sheets, but in a solid volume, like the falls of Niagara. The storm passed as abruptly as it came, leaving havoc in its wake. In fifteen minutes the rain had ceased and the desert was as breathless as before, but in that brief space the broad wadi on the slopes of which we were encamped had been transformed into a lake a quarter of a mile long and in the center several feet deep. We spent the whole of the next day drying out our belongings and repairing the damage.

6. As we approached the Euphrates the heat became SO intense that I prevailed upon the sheik to advance the hour of starting from four A. M. to midnight. I was riding beside the sheik at the head of the procession, when from a low ridge at our left came a harsh command to halt. Instantly our Arabs unslung their riflesI could hear the rattle of the breechblocks all down the line-and the caravan hastily closed up. At the same moment a score of mounted figures suddenly appeared on our flank, dimly outlined against the graying sky. Ghazi Mansour shouted a question the answer to which was evidently reassuring, for, lowering his rifle, he rode forward to meet them. He came back accompanied by a young Arab, and I caught a glimpse of smartly cut breeches and a brass-buttoned tunic and a Sam Browne belt, so I was not surprised when he was introduced as the major in command of a frontier patrol of the Irak Camel Corps. Then we drew a breath of relief, for we had reached Mesopotamia at last. The major, it appeared, had been informed by his scouts that a mysterious force of considerable strength was approaching by a route seldom used, and, assuming that we must be either gun-runners or raiders, he had arranged for our reception an extremely neat little surprise party. His men, to the number of forty or more, he had posted along the low hills which formed the sides of the valley through which we were advancing, and had set a machine-gun so that it would enfilade a wadi through which we must pass. Centy., Jan. '23.

By James Harvey Robinson HE world today is no longer the

a

was, say, in the days before the American Revolution. Then if farmer wanted to run a drain, say, under the road, he just dug or blasted a ditch across, put down his pipes and put the road back on them. But suppose with the mentality of a man of those days he tried to do the same thing with a modern city street. His first blast would blow up gas mains and water mains, sewer pipes and electric conduits-raise havoc in general.

And daily our inventors, with the fervor and fertility of the genius of the age, are rendering our world more and more complicated and more vitally interdependent. Yet in all that touches the conduct of our supreme concerns today, our leaders think with the concepts of the farmer of pre-revolutionary days-with what terrible consequences!

While our inventors are making more and more complicated the machinery of our day, the minds of those who are put in charge of that machinery lag far behind. The result is such a catastrophe as our late war; and the consequence is that, as many prophesy, it is not impossible that we are in for some 300 years of deterioration.

Already that deterioration has set in, aside from the war. Spiritually it had to, our chief preoccupation being what it is. All the varied possibilities of our life are subordinated in our time to material pre-requisites, much as if we were back again to the stage of impotent savagery, scratch

ing for roots and looking for berries and dead animals.

In our daily life we are constantly defeated in our endeavors and hopes by the gross requirements of our time. Our preachers, story-tellers, editors, for example, don't express the things their they would like to, because bread-and-butter would be affected. Our teachers don't dare teach what many know to be the truth, because their positions would be endangered. Many of our young people don't dare marry unless such and such is the relation of their salaries and the cost of living.

Up-to-date education and the honest facing of things as they are and as they might be are the hope and remedy for this age. We must infuse more of an ideal into our common and daily actions. Let us accept our daily defeats with less docility, put up a stiffer fight against what corrupts us. If you are a reporter and have found facts that your newspaper owner won't like, you will not content yourself with dreaming of a time when you can tell the truth.

You

will take a stiffer chance at being "fired" and tell some of the bitter but necessary facts in your story. If I am a teacher in possession of knowledge the authorities won't let me teach, I must content myself less with dreaming of the ideal academy where there will be complete freedom to teach; and I must exercise greater ingenuity in the fight against the perversion of truth.

We must face new ideas and truth with more frankness and courage. And we must make our lives more expressive of the best we know and learn.