ECHOES OF MONS.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 276, 20 November 1926, Page 8

ECHOES OF MONS.

It might help the cause of friendship between the Allies in the Great War if they all agreed not to show war fllmg. Some months ago the exhibition in London of an American picture of the war in France, "The Big Parade," i caused much excitement. It was alleged! that it gave the impression that America had won the war. Now a French newspaper criticises the new British film "Mons" on similar grounds. It accuses the producer of exaggerating the part played by the British forces and of minimising the work of the Belgian and French armies. It is a delicate question. Art that is very careful to do justice to every Bide is liable to be unimpressive. The British army is the subject of the film, and if the film is to be effective, that army must hold most of the stage. Two wrongs do not make a right, but the British people will reflect that the French, generally speaking, have givjn the British effort in the war less than its due. Moreover, the value of the original Expeditionary Force in France and Flanders was quite out of proportion to its size. Before the war the German military attache in London warned the Kaiser that he was underrating the British Army, which, he said, was a force of noncommissiohed officers. The Kaiser was not impressed, but wh_i it came to the test, Yon Kluck was. It was Yon Kluek who directed the German right wing in the rush upon Paris, and on the way tried to 6Weep over the British army After the war Yon Kluck said it was the British army that had defeated him. j It is true that this army was tiny, and J that it occupied only a few miles of an.' immensely long battle line, but Yon : Kluck's tribute is apposite. The French comment points to danger in the film as ] an international entertainment. There is j no form of art so likely- to offend the susceptibilities of other peoples.