The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1922-01-30
How Great Disasters From
 Small Evils Grow The Four Horsemen of the Apo lypse Teaches That Each Mind a Garden in Which Dragons eth Are Sown.
The greatest books have been writ

The greatest books have been writ ten against the greatest evils As between two works of art that will De the greatest which, other things being equal. points the loftiest. the of the most difficult tasks which come to thinker is that of making his fiction describe an epoch and re- form time. For the mind for the most part has little capacity to un- derstand matters which flow into great rivers of event, as the conse- quence of little streams of good and evil.
 It is difficult to perceive such a vast evil as the world war, as g mere assembiage of the little evils that are In millions of men and women.
 Victor Hugo was writer who could make a story display an epoch. His Les Miserables,'' is a book in point Charles Dickens managed it in "A Tale of Two Cities" Of living writers H. G. Wells is without neer in Interpreting the movements of the universe into terms of daily fife
 Vincente J. Barrez. a Spaniard. Is one of the few men whom the period acters describe the state of the hu- man race. His novel, "The Four Horsemen of Apocalypse" is a tre- mendous epic upon war and its causes. fasnion. into a very powerful picture, which is now showing at PoIi's thea Ire, under the name of the work of fiction from which 1t is taken.
 The qualification 'after a fashion, must not be taken in very serious de- rosat1on of the picture as against the book. The picture is a wonder fpl affair, and it is scarcely possible
 nd definite investigation it should fise to the quality of the book.
 Most pictures are very worthy from the photographic viewpoint. It is common f@ ] e a of photography. The acting in many pictures is of a high quality, and it is more usual than it is unusual that the actors should worthily depict the roles which are given to them.
 In these respects the Four Horse men is not beyond such pictures as Woaia WaS Down Broban Es Riasaos of ths ths others that might be mentioned,
 It obtains its overwhelming super iorfty from the drama, from the story itself, from the book which the great
 The dominating figures of the play are the four horsemen. and the mys- tic who 'knew them all" The prin- ciple of good and evil is presented with such elemental power as to in terest a child and with such complete truth as to awe the most accomplish ed adults.
 own affairs, and have little exper- fence in untangling the skein of life in which all men and women are. bound together, they prefer little stories of individual lives. Love is easy to understand, and hate, and greed and the getting of things by force.
 Harder 1t is to undersand that force. and greed and lust are the very sources of the misfortunes which overwhelm mankind those qualities combined with ignorance.
 We have in the Four Horsemen a certain unity, all making toward the inevitab1e disaster. the great war, lowed by pestlence. famine and death.
 It is not by accident that so much time is given to the development of genuine ranchman, whose herds and focks are countless. It is not for ar bttrary reasons that the two families in his household, French and German in paternal origin, are depicted at shown in dance hall and bagnio mere ly to introduce such scenes into the play. e.
 Here. in the very beginning, the picture presents in their simplest and war. greed, lust, selfishness, hate, ig- norance. The old ranchman person flies a partly intelligent force applied to ignorance The quarrelling over Of those economic hatreds, which have their simplest forms between man and man, and their most mur oeroos cornpsex and dangerous forms between muItitudes of men assem bled together in nations
 Here in this Argentine family are the causes of evil that have harassed me world for countless centuries. and rom tnesc causes the great catastro- pne works to the undofng of the race.