life; we live the part of the hero or the
heroine. To this day I always leave a theatre with a vague depression of
spirits; everyday humdrum life chills me when I come out to the street.
Reality is always difficult to face. The great popularity of the cinema
is due to this human desire for make-believe. Cinema-going is a
regression to the infantile; we return to the childish phase where the
wish was all powerful. In the cinema the villain is always worsted; the
wronged heroine always falls into the hero's arms at the end. Life for
most of us means trials and sorrows and conflicts, and we long to return
to the nursery phase where life was what we wished it to be. The cinema
and the public-house are the most convenient doors by which we can
regress.

The "moving drama" is the other side of the industrial picture. Life for
the masses means dirt and disease, ugly factories, sordid homes, mean
streets. The moving drama takes the masses away from grim reality; they
see beautifully gowned women in drawing-rooms; they see the King
reviewing his regiments; they see wild and free cowboys chasing Red
Indians. For two hours they live . . . and then they go out again into
their world of mere existence. And it is all wrong, tragically wrong.
The cinema craze means that life is too ugly to face; it means that the
masses are fleeing from reality and to flee from reality is fatal.
Day-dreams are laudable only when they come true. If the masses
day-dreamed of an economic Utopia and forthwith set about building a New
Jerusalem, their phantasies would become realities; but the moving human
drama never leads to building; it is raw whisky swallowed to bring
oblivion. The moving human drama will live and flourish so long as
mankind tolerates the slavery of industrialism. It is a powerful weapon
for capitalism; like the church and the public-house, it keeps the
wage-slaves quiet.

* * * * *

To-night the conversation in Dauvit's shop turned to the subject of
honours.

"They tell me," said Jake Tosh, "that you can buy a knighthood, or a
peerage for that matter."

"Yea, man!" said Willie Simpson, the joiner and undertaker from
Tillymains.

"So there's no muckle chance o' you getting ane, Willie," said Dauvit.

The joiner smoked thoughtfully for a while.

"Na, Dauvit," he said, "there's little chance o' an undertaker gettin' a
title. You would think na that the man that coffined the likes o' Lloy