And the land? The dirt? Well, a lot of foolish people began to buy it and to cover up the weeds and things with houses, which made a lot of other foolish people want it, until its price increased ten, twenty, an-hundred-fold!
X
THE NIGHTMARE OF WAR
Griffith, in England, wrote that he had wanted to enlist, but was being urged by English officials, Lloyd George and others, to do a war picture as propaganda. He might send for Lillian, soon.
“Intolerance” had made a stir in London, and the war situation had made a stir in Griffith. Like his ancestors, he wanted to carry a gun—to go into the trenches and pull a trigger. Lord Beaverbrook said to him:
“That is nonsense. You can do a thousand times more for the cause by making a picture that will show the need of American intervention on the largest possible scale.”
Griffith already had a story in mind—one he had planned on a night when he had been reading of the German desolation of Belgium and the French frontier.
“We will help you,” Lloyd George and other high officials told him. “We will give you the use of our soldiers and training camps; we will put you on the front lines in France.”
Griffith was ever a wary person. Never one to close a door behind him ... to make an irrevocable decision, to fire until charged and primed. He wrote Lillian that he was looking for a location in Paris, guardedly adding that he would not begin work until the war ended. On the strength of which, Lillian, by this time in New York, paid a brief, happy visit to Nell, then living on the “Blue Dog Houseboat,” at Miami.
Two weeks later, with her mother, she was on her way across the Atlantic. In eight days they were in Liverpool where they sat down to wait for Dorothy. It was not decided when they sailed that Dorothy was to have a part in the new picture.
Dorothy sailed May 28. With her was Bobby Harron; also, Griffith’s faithful camera man, Gottlieb Wilhelm Bitzer, a terrible name to carry into England and France. The ship was the Baltic—General Pershing and staff aboard.