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possibly have been obtained in the conditions that would be involved in the Cabinet Room itself.
Nearly all of these ministers, as well as a number of other distinguished people, had sat specially for me in a studio I had fitted up in one of the Government offices, and naturally, working in conditions of my own choosing, I had obtained good results. This series of 'Kinematograph Interviews' was an old idea of mine, started as far back as five years ago, when such people as the Right Hon. F. E. Smith and the Right Hon. A. Bonar Law came down to the studios at Walton to be 'kine-interviewed' on the subject of Tariff Reform. I had similar interviews about this time last year, but I found that the numerous engagements of these important people made it too difficult to get them out into the country for photographing, and so I postponed further pictures until last winter, when a Government office was placed at my disposal, and specially fitted up as a studio.
There is little more to be said on this point. The committee were in a quandary. My pictures were ready, and if I put them out, the success of their Cabinet film was in jeopardy. On the other hand, they did not feel prepared to ask me to abandon the fruits of many months of work, and let them get their film out first, and so queer mine. The sporting gentleman came forward with a sporting offer of a £1,000 if I would stand aside, and let the charity film come out first, which offer I naturally refused with as much politeness as I could muster. The better suggestion was that I should merge my film in with the other, and make one thoroughly good and complete picture for the benefit of the charity, and incidentally for the trade as a whole. This appeared to me to be the only course, and I gladly adopted it, and I was asked to undertake the whole of the arrangements, and take the Cabinet film myself, so that, as far as possible, there might be one supremely good film for the good of the cause, instead of two incomplete ones.
Then came that unfortunate and ill-advised premature publicity. Somebody got hold of the knowledge that the members of the Cabinet were to be filmed. Somebody else, with a sense of humour more strongly developed than discretion, saw only the funny side of it, and how easily it could be ridiculed. That sense of humour ran riot through the newspapers, and the British public laughed. Cabinet Ministers do not like laughter. Perhaps it takes a strong man to be ridiculed. However that might be, the project was
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