"Trying to get the smoke," he called, "but I'm afraid it won't register."
Maybe you want to know how that film took. We hustled it back to London, and it went with a whizz. One hundred and twenty-six picture houses produced "Street Fighting in Alost." The daily illustrated papers ran it front page. The only criticism of it that I heard was another movie man, who was sore—a chap named Wilson.
"That picture is faked," he asserted.
"I'll bet you," I retorted, "that picture was taken under shell fire during the bombardment of Alost. That barricade is the straight goods. The fellow that took it was shot full of gas while he was taking it. What's your idea of the real thing?"
"That's all right," he said; "the ruins are good, and the smoke is there. But I've seen that reel three times, and every time the dead man in the gutter laughed."
"CHANTONS, BELGES! CHANTONS!"
Here at home I am in a land where the wholesale martyrdom of Belgium is regarded as of doubtful authenticity. We who have witnessed widespread atrocities are subjected to a critical process as cold as if we were advancing a new program of social reform. I begin to wonder if anything took place in Flanders. Isn't the wreck of Termonde, where I thought I spent two days, perhaps a figment of the fancy? Was the bayoneted girl child of Alost a pleasant dream creation? My people are busy and indifferent, generous and neutral, but yonder several races are living at a deeper level. In a time when beliefs are held lightly, with tricky words tearing at old values, they have recovered the ancient faiths of the race. Their lot, with all its pain, is choicer than ours. They at least have felt greatly and thrown themselves into action. It is a stern fight that is on in Europe, and few of our countrymen realize it is our fight that the Allies are making.
Europe has made an old discovery. The Greek Anthology has it, and the ballads, but our busy little merchants and our clever talkers have never known it. The best discovery a man can make is that there is something inside him bigger than his fear, a belief in something more lasting than his individual life. When he discovers that, he knows he, too, is a man. It is as real for him as the experience of motherhood for a woman. He comes out of it with self-respect and gladness.
The Belgians were a soft people, pleasure-loving little chaps, social and cheery, fond of comfort and the café brightness. They lacked the intensity of blood of unmixed single strains. They were cosmopolitan, often with a command over three languages and snatches of several dialects. They were easy in their likes. They "made friends" lightly. They did not have the reserve of the English, the spiritual pride of the Germans. Some of them have German blood, some French, some Dutch. Part of the race is gay and volatile, many are heavy and inarticulate; it is a mixed race of which any iron-clad generalization is false. But I have seen many thousands of them under crisis, seen them hungry, dying, men from every class and every region; and the mass impression is that they are affectionate, easy to blend with, open-handed, trusting.