Strange, is it not, that close study of the movie and all its works, both good and bad, should intensify the optimism of one who only a few short years ago had abandoned all hope that civilization could ever again be given the opportunity to regain its higher self and fulfill the promise it had once vouchsafed to the race? One foggy morning in the Autumn of 1917 I found myself, in company with a fellow newspaper-correspondent, representing an English daily, on the French front, in the shell-torn square in front of the grand old cathedral at Rheims. That very morning high explosives from the German lines had done further damage to this ancient glory of Gothic architecture, and torn and shattered, defaced and despoiled, it limped toward Heaven, sadly crippled but forever sublime. As I stood gazing, awe-stricken and depressed at the desecrated façade, the outward and visible sign of Man’s inhumanity to God, my English companion approached me, stuck his monocle into his eye, gazed at the ruin before us, and drawled, “My word, but it has been knocked about a bit, hasn’t it?” Yes—and so has our modern civilization been knocked about a bit, to state the case with typically British reserve. As with Rheims cathedral, so with the social structure Man has patiently and painfully erected through recent centuries; it must be repaired, strengthened, and, above all, defended from the iconoclasm that may menace it in the future. And for this renaissance of civilization, and its protection from the internal and external foes by which it was recently so nearly destroyed and by which it is still threatened, the cinematograph can, if God is willing and Man is wise, be of greater service than the majority of people yet fully realize. Not a day has gone by recently when I have not come upon some new proof that the pessimism which overwhelmed me as I gazed in 1917 at the outraged façade of Rheims is not unreasonably to be replaced by an optimism begotten of the movie. I saw Man in those dark days on the French front in his iconoclastic mood, wantonly destroying the proudest relics of the creative genius of his forebears. To-day I find the screen achieving wonders in conserving, for the sake of posterity, the memory of epic, epoch-making deeds of derring-do that not only glorify our past but inspire us with hope and courage and ambition for the future.