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THE
FRENCH WING IS BEING PUSHED BACK. LITTLE BOY IN LEFT FOREGROUND WILL NOT SHOW IN THE FINISHED PICTURE
made ' ' for a story, ' ' and as I was told this by one of the members of the Moving Picture concern, the director, standing but a few feet from us, shouted: "Here, you, French aide, come over this way, or you wont be in the picture." Then he turned to another man and said: "Get your Germans ready to go down in that hollow. We will begin on the infantry stuff in the second reel ! ' '
As I strolled about, I came upon an ' ' entire German village. ' ' It consisted of three "stone" houses on a blind street, an inn on one side, a large house on the other, and a small cottage at the foot of the street. When I got closer, I found they were made of canvas and other scenic materials, and that they were but the front shells of houses. I must say, however, they were good imitations.
It is not the pleasantest thing in the world to come suddenly upon seven or eight dead heroes piled in a gruesome heap, some with livid saber cuts across their heads. This was the experience I had as I was nosing about with my camera. At first I jumped back in horror, and then I stood and grinned. These "soldiers" had always been dead — they were only dummies, but such cleverly made dummies and piled in such natural confusion that I am sure many a Moving Picture patron will gaze on this scene and shed a
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tear for the thousands of real heroes piled up in the trenches in the cockpit of Europe. These same people will believe they have seen photographs of the soldier dead, nor would you blame them. I believed in them myself when I saw them with the naked eye, while the camera softens them and makes them appear even more natural.
There is reason for all this. War scenes are in demand. The people must have them, and the Moving Picture concerns are in business to give the people what they want. Moving Picture men are not allowed to go to the front ; but even if they were, they could get no pictures reproducible on a screen from a distance that would place them out of the danger zone. Were they to go close enough to get clear pictures, it would take an army of camera men, one to relieve the other, until the pictures were made, inasmuch as it would mean certain and instant death, for they would be shot down ten times as rapidly as the men in the trenches.
The reason for all this started when the first shot was fired upon the Belgian border. The sound of it was, to quote a well-worn phrase, "heard round the world." Especially was it heard by the Moving Picture producers. Men in every part of the civilized globe were struck with horror at the significance of it. Busi