THE MOVIE AS A WORLD POWER _Its Enormous Audiences—It Speaks to all Men—What Message Does it Carry?—The Race at the Parting of the Ways—Have International Marplots Won Control of the Screen?—The Fate of Civilization in the Balance._ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XV THE MOVIE AS A WORLD POWER IN a very important particular the title first chosen for this little book was a misnomer, a fact that grows more apparent to the author as he approaches the end of the task he has essayed. “A Biography of the Movie,” the name I had selected for my projected volume, implies, at this period of the evolution of the picture screen, either too much or too little—too much if it suggests a comprehensive history of a life that has but recently begun, too little if it fails to show that the facts and figures available regarding the development of the motion picture demonstrate the dynamics of the screen as a medium for racial intercommunication. There came, of course, to the writer the temptation to dwell in detail upon the romantic story of the rise of the movie from insignificance to world-dominion, from poverty to affluence, from a plaything to a power, to mention names made famous by the screen, to maintain, in short, the same attitude of mind toward the cinema and all its works that impelled Merton of the Movies to idealize the new art and industry whether he looked at them through a telescope or a microscope. That a work based upon the more personal aspects of the movie’s evolution can be both readable and timely has been proved of late by the success achieved in book form by the personal reminiscences of one of the leading producers in the motion picture realm. But had I succumbed to the inclination to give what may be called the lure that lies in gossip to this little volume, I should have taken merely the path of least resistance and have left wholly undone the real task I have essayed, namely, that of getting an idea, a prophecy, a promise, a possibility—whatsoever you may be pleased to call it—into the minds of my readers, to the end that the project referred to in the first chapter of this book may receive eventually the consideration to which I, with all due modesty, believe it is entitled. In other words, I have been endeavoring to explain briefly how the toy kinetoscope of a quarter of a century ago by becoming a universal medium of expression has made what men and nations say to each other in this new world-language of crucial significance to the future of civilization.