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We have found particularly valuable: i. The surveys of opinion made by the International Institute of Educational Cinematograph of the League of Nations, comprising more than 200,000 answers of children to a specially prepared questionnaire and a similar number of replies to other questions addressed to school teachers.
2. The excellent study of the influence of war films on children by Cesar
Santelli, published in June, 1930, indicating generally that war films " give the children a new conception of war, bringing to them a vivid picture of its frightfulness which words or books have never conveyed."
3. The enlightening reaction of 1,500 children to films as set foith by the
Special Cinema Inquiry Committee of Birmingham, England, in a recently published report with its revelation as to the preferences of children, aged eight to fourteen, for war and mystery screen stories.
4. The work begun by Sir James Marchant in England as early as 1926
and still continuing which has contributed so greatly to an appreciation of the value of pedagogical pictures as a direct aid to teaching.
5. Such studies, approached from the medical point of view, as The Cau
sation and Incidence of Fatigue in the Cinema, published by Lewis
H. Savin, M. D., F. R. C. S. Eng., in the June issue of the London Lancet.
From these and other impartial and splendidly scientific investigations we have come to one basic conclusion concerning the approach to the problem of improving motion pictures.
There is no virtue, no serviceability, in an attitude which begins, and often ends, with the throwing up of one's hands in horror at the phenomenon of the motion picture in regard to children or to cultural or racial problems. We arrive nowhere and we are scientifically unsound if we do not recognize at the outset that this contribution of science is, like most other human agencies, mixed of good and evil. We must recognize arid understand the affirmative side of the screen's ledger. We must analyze its contributions for good in order that we may conserve and develop its benificent potentialities. On the other hand, we muss determine, not by guesswork but by scientific inquiry, the items on the debit side of the ledger. We must view clearly and set forth frankly the haim that has been done by the screen and its potentialities for further harm. Then only will we be in a position to work intelligently to minimize the further evil possibilities ot this gift of science and to capitalize its inherent possibilities for service to the race.
The screen's affirmative service.
Every medal has an obverse and a reverse. What assistance to the spiritual growth of the race do we find clearly engraved on the face of the record of motion pictures?