Educational screen & audio-visual guide (c1956-1971])

beard Lodge and others attack his Covenant of the League of Nations as a breeder of misunderstanding if not war. Nevertheless, he returned to Versailles to fight all the harder for his association of nations, and, with the exception of Poland's independence, sacrified inuch of his Fourteen Point progr;!m to win the League's acceptance. While Wil.son exnerienced mixed emotions over the grabbing of German territory by the victorious nations, he came to feel that the peace was just. Why else would there be such widespread dissatisfaction with it? His departure from Europe must have been saddened by the mere handful of well-wishers who saw him off, but normally cool New Yorkers gave him a warm reception. Considering the Treaty a "matter of life or death for civilization" Wilson presented it to the Senate in person. Rebuffed there, he tried by correspondence and conference to work out a compromise with Lodge's Foreign Relations committee, but in vain. Determined not to let the Senate consider the Treaty without the Covenant of the League, lest he break his promise to the soldiers that this war would end all wars, he rejected his physician's advice and took the issue directly to the people. In St. Louis he told them they had been betrayed and in Sioux City he warned that the next war would kill millions. But close on his heels came Johnson, Reed and others who described the Treaty as the result of many months of intrigue and as a document which would force American boys to police the world. By the time Wilson reached Los Angeles and San Francisco he felt he was really getting through to the people at last, and his speeches gained effectiveness as he started back across the country. But his fight ended with his collapse at Pueblo. After two days as a prisoner of his railroad car speeding to the White House, he lay there three days in pain and despair, and on October 2 suffered a paralytic stroke. Recovering just enough to have bedside conferences, he insisted that he had no more right to change the treaty, as the Senate insisted, than did any other signatory, including Germany. The Senate finally rejected the Treaty in March, 1920, and a year later the country began its "return to normalcy" while Wilson lived out his three more years as a private citizen in a house on Washington's S Street. Appraisal: Wilson's Fight for Peace is recommended for use in history classes from junior high through junior college, and in adult study groups concerned with matters of public opinion and politics. Its commentary reveals genuine feeling for the subject and the incidental music is exciting and at time foreboding. A rapidly moving but for the most part clear-cut narrative and the use of well selected visuals make the film interesting and dramatic. Certainly Wilson's side of the controversy is presented more fully than is his opposition's, but even so some significant emphases are found wanting. Among these is the President's belief that the League, once established, would remedy most if not all of the wrongs done at the peace conference itself. Nor does the film really try to justify Wilson's personal involvement at Versailles. What of his having personally originated the Fourteen Points and of his important role in sowing among the German people those seeds of dissension which contributed materially to an Allied victory? Again, there is no reference to Wilson's success in securing amendments to the original League Covenant along lines drawn by Senate leaders during the President's interim visit to the United States. Had these demands not forced Wilson, back at Versailles, to bargain for maintenance of our Monroe Doctrine within the framework of the Covenant, for example, he may have avoided violating so many of his own principles in the final document. Wilson's efforts to combat England's and France's plan for a "hard" peace were not helped by advance opposition to the League, voiced bv 37 senators in February, 1919. But there are also omissions to note on the other side of the coin. At no point in the commentary is there reference to possible errors of judgment by the President. Most secondary school textbooks make clear that just before the war ended, Wilson had very unwisely called for the election of a Democrat-controlled Congress for 1919. Even the most elementary accounts stress Wilson's failure to include a single prominent Republican in his peace delegation. As a whole, the film tends to make Mr. Wilson too much the victim of a .so-called "Republican firing-squad." It ignores other contentions such as Theodore Roosevelt's in December, 1918, to the effect that the president had no right to speak for the American people at Paris. De.spite such "irreconcilables" as Johnson, Borah and Lodge, a number of Republicans like Root, Taft and Hughes would have supported the League had Wilson relented and allowed some changes in Article X of the Covenant. Unfortunate as the omissions may be, and certainly they are explained in part by limitations inherent in a film of this length, many teachers will see in them an opportimitv' to promote discussion and research among those who view. Are we realh' justified in criticising Wilson for contradicting his ideals? Would Wilson have won his fight in 1919 had radio been invented? Should the Vice President take over when the President is incapacitated? Who should decide incapacity? Did our aid in defeating Germany in 1918, thereby delaying for two full decades her bid for real world supremacy, make U.S. participation in the conflict worthwhile, even though we lost the peace? For these and other questions like them, Wilson's Fight for Peace provides an admirable springboard. Likewise it affords, especially for younger viewers, a much-needed insight to our national character and to the human qualities of a man whose example has had, over the years, a positive and lasting influence on that character. —Kenneth B. Thurston Airplanes Work For Us (ChtirchiU-Wexler Film Productions, 801 North Seward Street, Los Angeles 38, Calif.) 11 minutes, 16mm, sound, color, or hlack and white, no date. $60 or $110. Description: Airplanes Work for Us presents the common as well as some of the uncommon and exciting uses of aircraft. The film is narrated by an airport control tower operator who first describes the air to ground communication system and many of the auxiliary jobs connected with aircraft other than the actual piloting of planes. The various jobs that planes do include the carrying of passengers, mail and freight. Passengers may travel by plane for pleasure or business having breakfast at home and arriving in distant cities for business appointments just a few hours later. While passengers are descending from one side of the plane, air mail is being unloaded on the other side. Freight may include a birthday present for a boy in Paris, large motors, someone's pet cat, or a baby elephant for a zoo in St. Louis. Smaller planes, such as the Cessna 310, are useful to businessmen who need quick transportation to conduct business in other cities. The audience sees the instruments on the control panel of one of these planes and then accompanies the plane in take-off. Airplanes do special jobs such as • 400 Educational Screen and Audiovisual Guide — August, 1961