The command is forward : selections from addresses on the motion picture industry in war and peace (1944)

MOVIES AS PROPAGANDA II a record previously unsurpassed for speed and breadth of coverage. Each of these war information films, made at the request of an established war agency or a responsible government official, bears upon its title a legend stating the exact nature of the film and advising the screen audience that it is being produced, distributed, and exhibited as a public service to assist in getting war information to the American people. So much, then, for the function of the motion picture as a medium of communication. In the second place, the motion picture enjoys the freedom of an art — the pictorial art of story-telling which across the centuries has illuminated facts through fiction. Here again the right carries with it an obligation for fairness in presentation. Individuals may appropriately disagree as to the fairness of a particular presentation, but no thoughtful person who believes in the basic principles of democracy can question the right of the motion picture as an art form to present a dramatic portrayal against the background of contemporary events. For more than two thousand years, literary masterpieces have been no less entertaining because they had current significance.* I have no doubt that some of my slave-owning forebears in Mississippi hurled epithets at Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. I am willing to grant them the right to disagree with her as to whether Simon Legree was the rule or the exception among overseers, but none of us would dare to challenge her right to pen this gripping * For a more elaborate development of these ideas, see Freedom of the Films, available in any public library.