Swot Without Tears

So-called "educational" films, in nine cases out of ten, are infinitely more artistic and entertaining than the best Hollywood all-star super production. Once the criterion of "popular taste" is banished, the film comes into its own. And Truth suits the films much better than Fiction.

The five films presented by the Biological Society last week were no exception. A large and genuinely enthusiastic audience clapped spontaneously at the conclusion of each film; each contained superlative photography and artistic design, besides being really informative and interesting. And one or two of the films offered much food for thought in non-scientific realms.

The first two films were produced by the University of Chicago—"The Fight Against Disease" and "The Heart and Circulation." and to "Salient." a mere layman, they were thrilling from beginning to end. By means of ingenious diagrams and microphotography, the first film showed the action of bacteria on the system—the three ways in which they could enter the body, their effect upon the blood, cells, and nerves, the steps which Nature takes to protect the body against the invasion, and the artificial means used to prevent the growth of the bacteria.

"The Heart and Circulation" was again intensely interesting. The course of the blood stream was graphically depicted by means of diagrams and working models, and then close-ups of the actual living heart of a turtle were shown. A particularly fine part of this film was a "shot" of one of the heart valves opening and closing us the blood stream passed through.

The next film had no "talkie" commentary. It needed none.

Strong People?

"Healthy Youth—Strong People" was the title written on the Physics room board for us; but the actual title and preliminary explanation were in German, the name of Adolf Hitler being prominent. It appeared to be a review of the methods being used in Germany to-day to ensure that the youth of the country is physically fit. We saw babies swimming, children running through forests, sliding down chutes, balancing on boards, performing intricate evolutions on gymnastic apparatus. We saw sylph-like Nordic lasses doing dances 'nenth the light of the moon, and looking for all the world like the mermaids in "Peccadillo" or the ladies of Hades in "The Plutocrats." We saw demonstrations of physical strength, and remarkable displays on parallel bars.

But we also saw boys clambering through ropes twisted to represent barbed wire entanglements, and leaping out or earth trenches with long sticks in their hands. . . .

The film culminated in a huge physical culture display—thousands upon thousands of young men and women in a great arena—so great that when they moved in unison it looked from above like the wind passing over a field of corn.

And when we saw the girls dancing, we remembered Hitler's statement: "In the education of women emphasis must be laid primarily on physical development. Only afterwards must consideration he given to spiritual values, and lastly to mental development. Motherhood is undeniably the aim of feminine education."

And when we saw the boys leaping "over the top" we thought of Hitler's words in "Mein Kampf": "An alliance whose aim does not Include the Intention of war is worthless nonsense."

As "Salient's" companion said: "If only that were an end in itself instead of a mean to an end!"

"The Development of the Thistle" was the title or the next film. It may sound trite to say that we learned that there was romance and beauty even in a common thistle, but this was exactly the effect of this magnificent film. Pollination, germination, the spreading of the seed, and the subsequent growth were dealt with artistically, a specially brilliant piece of photography being a sequence showing the thistle actually growing from the seed to about half its usual height.

Under-Nourished.

The last film, "Nutrition," with a commentary by Julian Huxley, was longest and perhaps the most Illuminating. Those with full bellies find it difficult to conceive that people may be in a state of semi-starvation, and it must therefore have come as a distinct shock to a number of members of the audience to find that in England to-day four and a half million people have only four shillings a week to spend on food, eighteen million have eight shillings, and a further nine million have only ten shillings.

The film dealt with the recent enquiry made in England as to the food consumed by the people. Exhaustive enquiries were made throughout the land to find out exactly what each class spent on food, and how it was spent. It was found that the food of the poorer classes was almost entirely lacking in the elements necessary to supply the body's fundamental deficiencies; that at least a quarter of the children in Britain were gravely undernourished; and that the future of the British race was seriously imperilled by under-nutrition.

The methods shown in the film and used to combat the evil are estimable, but pitiful. Children are given milk rations. A few schools give free health dinners to the children. Meals and instruction are given to a few expectant mothers. Just scratching the surface.

As Mr. Huxley said: "Some measure of economic change is, of course, necessary, before our children can be properly fed. As long as we live under a system where wages do not depend on what the worker produces, where the means of production are owned by a small class consisting of one tenth of the population, and where the profits of Industry are not used for the benefit of the community as a whole, our children will be undernourished. It is inevitable."

We saw two rats in this film. One a miserable little specimen, had been fed on the average working class diet. The other, fat and bloated, had been fed on a properly constituted diet. And the big fat rat was crawling all over the little miserable one.

—R.L.M.