That Marvel—The Movie / A Glance at Its Past, Its Promising Present and Its Significant Future

by Edward S. Van Zile

To-day, however, the universal language known as Esperanto, a survival of the fittest from several tongues designed in recent years for general use, is making real progress in various parts of the world. The report of the General Secretariat of the League of Nations for 1922 says: “Language is a great force, and the League of Nations has every reason to watch with particular interest the progress of the Esperanto movement, which should become more wide-spread and may one day lead to great results from the point of view of the moral unity of the world.”

The astonishing progress of Esperanto in its conquest of a polyglot globe is dealt with by John K. Mumford in a recent most readable article in the New York Herald, in which he says:

Since 1920 on an average a new book in Esperanto has appeared every other day. Text-books and dictionaries exist in French, English, Arabic, Armenian, Czech, Bulgarian, Danish, Esthonian, Finnish, German, Greek, Welsh, Hebrew, Spanish, Dutch, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Georgian, Catalonian, Chinese, Croat, Latin, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Rumanian, Russian, Ruthenian, Ukrainian, Serbian, Slovakian, Slovenian, Turkish and Visayan (Philippine Islands). Many millions of these books have been distributed.

Whatever may be one’s attitude toward the League of Nations, the advocacy of “the moral unity of the world” by that organization must meet with approval by the vast majority of right-thinking men. Through moral unification only can the human race reach that plane of civilization upon which freedom from the major ills which now afflict it can be attained. And that the Esperanto of the Tongue, a universal language that is rapidly enlarging the scope of its influence, can perform a mighty service in the cause of peace and progress can not be doubted. But compared to the Esperanto of the Eye, the universal language sprung from the screen, its conquest of the earth is painfully slow, and its final complete triumph would still leave the world-language of the eye more potent in many ways than the world-language of the tongue.

To illustrate the above, let me quote again from Mr. Mumford, who, in discussing the benefits bestowed by Esperanto upon commerce, says: “In Esperanto a business concern can get out a circular setting forth the merits of a washing machine or a face lotion so that even an Eskimo woman can read it, provided she has taken six months lessons in the universal language.” But in the twinkling of an eye this Eskimo woman could learn from the screen what it might take her half a year to glean from the advertising circular. Furthermore, for many years to come, the Eskimos, not to speak of the more highly civilized races, are more likely to be in constant touch with the Esperanto of the Screen than with the Esperanto of the Printing-Press.

Of course, what men or nations say to each other is essentially more important than the vehicle which they use for saying it. Neither the Esperanto of the Tongue nor of the Eye can be of great service to the cause of civilization unless they disseminate enlightenment rather than confusion, good rather than evil, love rather than hatred, unless they tighten rather than loosen the bonds that hold the nations together in times of peace.

But what Man may do ultimately with his new media for world-wide intercommunication can be, at this juncture, only a matter for vague, though, perhaps, hopeful, conjecture. There is one fact, however, that stands out in startling significance as we contemplate the progress which mankind is making toward the final removal of all barriers toward racial self-knowledge—namely, that humanity seems, for the first time in its career, to feel that the Sphinx whose other name is History is presently to reveal the secret which, throughout all the ages, it has managed to conceal. The disappearance of the last frontier, the solving of Earth’s ancient mysteries, the coming of the wireless and the Esperanto of the Tongue and of the Eye seem to presage some new revelation to the soul of Man that shall remove forever from the entrance to the Garden of Eden that angel with the flaming sword.

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.