Then that buffalo hunt on Antelope Island, in Great Salt Lake! I shall never forget that. It was thrilling, too; at least Karl Brown, the camera man, thought so. He wanted a close-up of a charging bull buffalo. He had photographed such gems as a hippopotamus, a rhinoceros and several other animals, even an elephant; but he found that a bull buffalo bears a distinct aversion to the camera, or something of the sort. We had a stockade built to protect the camera men, but Brown had to get outside for this particular shot. He got it, but only a narrow shave prevented the buffalo from getting him. One of the cowboys fired in time and we had buffalo steak that night. Some people told me that Brown felt a little delicacy in the matter and would not eat any. We forded the Kaw River with our wagon train and our horses and cattle. We—yes, we got them across. It was a frightful scramble, and all I know is that we reached the other side. In the end I was thankful, as any one can imagine, when the picture was finished. They tell me it’s good. It ought to be. What can not Man learn eventually through the Esperanto of the Eye? History is the tale of his conflict between two elements in his nature, the constructive and the destructive. The picture whose evolution is presented in detail above preserves for posterity a thrilling record of our forebears in their Herculean task of winning a continent from savagery for civilization. It is a representation of Man under the influence of his eternal constructive impetus. Were I drawing an illustration for this chapter, I should depict Rheims cathedral shattered by high explosives beside a prairie schooner drawn by oxen and ask my readers to judge between them, to say which sketch gave us the higher opinion of humanity. Is our race to permit eventually its constructive or its destructive inclinations to dominate its fate? This is the crucial question agitating mankind to-day, and upon the answer given to it the future of all things worth while in the world depends. Who dare assert that that answer is not more likely to be what it should be because the movie is constantly displaying a fuller appreciation of the lofty mission upon earth that has been assigned to it? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XVIII THE MOVIE AS THE HOPE OF CIVILIZATION _Buried Civilizations—They Perished from Lack of Intercommunication—Civilization now World-Wide—Its Salvation Depends on Mutual Understanding—The Screen the Only Universal Tongue—How it can be Made to Rescue the Race—A Dream that Should Come True._ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XVIII THE MOVIE AS THE HOPE OF CIVILIZATION