An old fight is being waged upon a new battleground. Generation after generation the so-called “elevation of the stage” has been a project dear to the hearts of many worthy men and women. The scope of the age-long engagement between the powers of darkness and the powers of light to dominate the drama has been vastly enlarged, and while the adherents of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are still in conflict for possession of the stage, their multiplied cohorts are also fighting tooth and nail to put good or evil, God or the Devil, progress or retrogression, civilization or its opposite, in control of the screen. In other words, both the stage and the photoplay are outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual combat the outcome of which is to determine the question whether mankind’s future course is to be upward or downward. For this reason the screen, appealing to a larger clientèle than is influenced by the stage, and one more in need of the uplift that may save humanity from a return to barbarism, becomes logically an object worthy of the most earnest consideration and study by all those of us who believe that Man does not live by bread alone, that the soul of the race can be saved if the various media for impressing it are purged of their evil influences. If it is true that there are sermons in stones, it follows, as the night the day, that there may lurk within the dynamics of the screen the possibility of divine revelations. For be it said right here, the first universal language will be capable ultimately of a saving grace to the race only if it finds a message to deliver to humanity that is not of the earth earthy. It’s the man behind the gun who wins battles. It will be the prophet and seer and poet behind the screen who may eventually bring about the triumph of mankind over the powers of darkness. But when? That is the question. If those in control of the screen to-day should see a group of seers, prophets and poets invading their stronghold there would be something doing most detrimental to the dignity of the interlopers. The camera might, in fact, catch a film, to be subsequently entitled “High-brows Bounced from a Studio,” that would tickle the eyes of millions of groundlings. In short, the real power and glory of the screen are still concealed in the womb of Time. But their advent and their triumph are inevitable. Otherwise, a polyglot world would be doomed to go eventually to the dogs—a racial cataclysm too horrible to be contemplated.