LIFE A CINEMA SHOW

Grey River Argus, 14 January 1928, Page 2 (Supplement)

LIFE A CINEMA SHOW

“If wo divide mankind, as well we may, into makers and spectators, doers and lookers on, shall we not find that the later class tends to increase and the former to decrease as civilization advances and as science brings more and more of ‘comfort ’. to our doors?” writes Mr M. L. Jacks, headmaster of Mill Hill School, in the St Martin’s Review. “Since the beginning of the century, and particularly since we have been living in a world which makes it increasingly easy to live and yet be a looker on. In the old days when households were self supporting, when villages were cut off from the main stream of life, when there were few books and fewer newspapers, when there were no cinemas, and only occasional visits from strolling players for amusement —in those days a man was

thrown back on himself, not only for earning a livelihooh for his body but also for earning a livelihood for his soul. Now all that has changed. Newspapers, books, theatres, cinemas are all potentially good, but they fail to fulfil their potentiality. The newspaper is folded up, the last chapter is read the curtain falls on the final act, the lights go up in the cinema palace, and the man should go horn? to his bed more of a man. The written word should have led him to read new depths in human life, the spoken play to hear the more solemn music of existence, the moving picture should have moved him nearer to the goal of his spiritual being. In each instance he should have been compelled “to do something about it;’ but usually the doing is all done for him. The whole of life tends to become a cinema-show.” a ,