New-York tribune., 1918-11-24
By Kenneth Macgowan

When some erudite gentleman of the
universities wants to dust off his de-
mocracy bit by praising the movies
he usually picks out the filters between
Charlie Chaplin and the particular set
of ringlets starred in the feature film.
pe dilates on the educational poten-
t;alities Of "Harvesting the Grasshop-
per Crop of Nigeria" or "The History
- r. Y. D." or THE Ticket Scalping
Industry of Broadway" He shoves the
~scenics" into the uplift class by his
amorous advances.
Yes. there are "eduoationals" to-day.
But what will they seem beside the
real thing when it comes at last?
Imagine the class in modern history
st the H. &. Wells Memorial High
School of 194S. The story of Napoleon.
for instance. Forget the captions and
reading matter, for the moment. Look
at the pictures. A few flashes of the
French Revolution to start with
table haranguing the mob; the storm
inc OF the empty Bastile Marie An
tojnette riding in tumbril; finally, the
whit Of grapeshotH and an unsuccess-
ful young officer of artillery, who had
oyerstayed his leave four months, made
master of Paris. After that prepara-
ton, gorgeous living canvas of the
Napoleonic wars, beginning in the cru
make all Europe liberated holy land
and ending in imperial menace broken
at Leipsic and smashed at Waterloo.
A particularly interesting closeup
would be the shattered vase with
which Napoleon demonstrated the fra
eilitv of Austria. AS for Bonaparte
before the Sphinx-with few visions
of Alexander. Cesar and Hannibal
we'll only the idiom of Wells can com
pIete it, Printer, give us row Of
periods.
But there would be much besides
pictures in this movie history. Maps
living, moving maps-the frontiers of
Europe in 1898 melting into the shapes
of 1910, and reforming as we watch
the figures at the peace table of Paris
fade in and out.
Then the same Europe of 1898 with
the campaigns of Napoleon marching
across its face in line after line of ad-
yancing legions. Or the map in petto
the Battle Of Waterloo fought by tiny
replicas of the historic Squares" and
By symbols of the charging cuirassiers.
But why history alone? The Joan
crd Peter of 194S will receive a pic
torial course in economics thorough
enough to satisfy Wells himself. The
industrial revolution should be no
more difficult problem than the
French variety. And, for once, charts,
) graphs and statistics will take on the
quick significance of the living thing.
All this is as probable as it sounds
easy. A few years ago Judge Lindsey
told the writer about a remarkable
talk he had had with Edison over the
teaching of elementary arithmetic and
spelling by moving pictures. Perhaps
the problems of the war have turned
the inventor aside but at the time he
was enthusiastically working out the
multiplication tables in live guinea
pigs and demonstrating on the screen
the construction and meaning of
"C-A-T." Judge Lindsey didn't men
ton geography; yet surely that is one
Of the simplest and most promising
tasks of the real educational films.
1t is easy to speculate on in the
future of the thing. Canned lectures
on anatomy by distinguished savants
synchronized with colored movies OF
an operation, are surely not beyond
the reach of the medical school Of the
next generation. Lubin made such
films two years ago. To-day we have
Pathe films which show US plants
growing and blossoming in half 8
minute, and which slow down human
motion to the point where a jumper
glldes through the air with the slow
precision of an airplane, and the play
OF muscle in runner may be minutely
studied. These open UP vistas of some
remarkable courses in botany, anatomy
and entomology.
There are immediate applications il
all this-more immediate than we per
maps imagine. At the moment the
Community Motion Picture Bureau
which controls the distribution of pho
toplays to all the camps, huts and bar