Another kind of Crowd Picture is The Battle, an old Griffith Biograph, first issued in 1911, before Griffith’s name or that of any actor in films was advertised.  Blanche Sweet is the leading lady, and Charles H. West the leading man.  The psychology of a bevy of village lovers is conveyed in a lively sweet-hearting dance.  Then the boy and his comrades go forth to war.  The lines pass between hand-waving crowds of friends from the entire neighborhood.  These friends give the sense of patriotism in mass.  Then as the consequence of this feeling, as the special agents to express it, the soldiers are in battle.  By the fortunes of war the onset is unexpectedly near to the house where once was the dance.

The boy is at first a coward.  He enters the old familiar door.  He appeals to the girl to hide him, and for the time breaks her heart.  He goes forth a fugitive not only from battle, but from her terrible girlish anger.  But later he rallies.  He brings a train of powder wagons through fires built in his path by the enemy’s scouts.  He loses every one of his men, and all but the last wagon, which he drives himself.  His return with that ammunition saves the hard-fought day.

And through all this, glimpses of the battle are given with a splendor that only Griffith has attained.

Blanche Sweet stands as the representative of the bevy of girls in the house of the dance, and the whole body social of the village.  How the costumes flash and the handkerchiefs wave around her!  In the battle the hero represents the cowardice that all the men are resisting within themselves.  When he returns, he is the incarnation of the hardihood they have all hoped to display.  Only the girl knows he was first a failure.  The wounded general honors him as the hero above all.  Now she is radiant, she cannot help but be triumphant, though the side of the house is blown out by a shell and the dying are everywhere.

This one-reel work of art has been reissued of late by the Biograph Company.  It should be kept in the libraries of the Universities as a standard.  One-reel films are unfortunate in this sense that in order to see a favorite the student must wait through five other reels of a mixed programme that usually is bad.  That is the reason one-reel masterpieces seldom appear now.  The producer in a mood to make a special effort wants to feel that he has the entire evening, and that nothing before or after is going to be a bore or destroy the impression.  So at present the painstaking films are apt to be five or six reels of twenty minutes each.  These have the advantage that if they please at all, one can see them again at once without sitting through irrelevant slapstick work put there to fill out the time.  But now, having the whole evening to work in, the producer takes too much time for his good ideas.  I shall reiterate throughout this work the necessity for restraint.  A one hour programme is long enough for any one.  If the observer is pleased, he will