The film is now edited, and it goes into the printer's hands. A positive print is made from it on film stock, and after the printing the copies are returned to the dark-room and the process of developing is gone through again, as in the case of a negative.
The print is then dried and joined up in its right order, and so divided that it makes five reels. The titles by this time have been corrected from the military point of view by the War Office, and are printed for insertion in their appropriate position. The length of reading matter controls the length of the title to be printed. In some instances it will take ten seconds to read a title. Ten feet of film is therefore necessary for insertion between the scenes to explain them. In other cases three feet of titling suffices.
The film is then shown to the War Office officials, and once they have approved it, it is packed in a safe and sent to General Headquarters in France. Here it is again projected in a specially constructed theatre, before the chief censor and his staff, and it may happen that certain incidents or sections are deleted in view of their possible value to the enemy. These excisions are carefully marked and upon the return of the film to London those sections are taken out and kept for future reference. The film is now ready for public exhibition.
CHAPTER XVII
the horrors of trones wood
Three Times I Try and Fail to Reach this Stronghold of the Dead—Which Has Been Described as "Hell on Earth"—At a Dressing Station Under Fire—Smoking Two Cigarettes at a Time to Keep Off the Flies—Some Amusing Trench Conversations by Men who had Lost Their Way—I Turn in for the Night—And Have a Dead Bosche for Company.
I have just come from England after seeing the Somme Film well on its way to the public. It has caused a great sensation. I really thought that some of the dead scenes would offend the British public. And yet why should they? It is only a very mild touch of what is happening day after day, week after week, on the bloody plains of France and Belgium. Bloody? Yes, inevitably so. There never was such dearly bought land since creation. The earth in the Somme district has been soaked with the blood of men. Sit out on a field a mile or two from our front line any morning early, when the mist is just rising. Sit out there on the ground which our boys have fought for and won. The place reeks with the horrible stench of countless decaying bodies, and every minute adds to their number.
But the British public did not object to these realistic scenes in the film. They realised that it was their duty to see for themselves. They had been told by the press; they had been told by Parliament; they had been told by lecturers what was happening, but to no purpose. They must be shown; they must see with their own eyes. And the kinematograph camera performed this service. Has it justified itself? I put that question to all who have seen the film. What effect did it have upon you? Did you realise till you saw it what this vast battle-front was like? Did you realise what our Army was doing; how our wonderful soldiers—your husbands, your sons, your brothers—were driving the Huns back; how they were going to their death with a laugh upon their faces and a cigarette between their lips, fighting and dying like true Britons? That those who came back wounded and broken still had that smile?