Francis Hackett, Jane Addams, and others. But it is
still true that it is a wonder in its Griffith sections. In its handling
of masses of men it further illustrates the principles that made notable
the old one-reel Battle film described in the beginning of this chapter.
The Battle in the end is greater, because of its self-possession and
concentration: all packed into twenty minutes.

When, in The Birth of a Nation, Lincoln (impersonated by Joseph Henabery)
goes down before the assassin, it is a master-scene. He falls as the
representative of the government and a thousand high and noble crowd
aspirations. The mimic audience in the restored Ford's Theatre rises in
panic. This crowd is interpreted in especial for us by the two young
people in the seats nearest, and the freezing horror of the treason
sweeps from the Ford's Theatre audience to the real audience beyond them.
The real crowd touched with terror beholds its natural face in the glass.

Later come the pictures of the rioting negroes in the streets of the
Southern town, mobs splendidly handled, tossing wildly and rhythmically
like the sea. Then is delineated the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, of which
we have already spoken. For comment on the musical accompaniment to The
Birth of a Nation, read the fourteenth chapter entitled "The Orchestra,
Conversation and the Censorship."

In the future development of motion pictures mob-movements of anger and
joy will go through fanatical and provincial whirlwinds into great
national movements of anger and joy.

A book by Gerald Stanley Lee that has a score of future scenarios in it,
a book that might well be dipped into by the reader before he goes to
such a play as The Italian or The Battle, is the work which bears the
title of this chapter: "Crowds."

Mr. Lee is far from infallible in his remedies for factory and industrial
relations. But in sensitiveness to the flowing street of humanity he is
indeed a man. Listen to the names of some of the divisions of his book:
"Crowds and Machines; Letting the Crowds be Good; Letting the Crowds be
Beautiful; Crowds and Heroes; Where are we Going? The Crowd Scare; The
Strike, an Invention for making Crowds Think; The Crowd's Imagination
about People; Speaking as One of the Crowd; Touching the Imagination of
Crowds." Films in the spirit of these titles would help to make
world-voters of us all.

The World State is indeed far away. But as we peer into the Mirror Screen
some of us dare t