Farewell to Yesterday

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With guns once again spitting fire and destruction, with soldiers dying and civilian blood pouring these few short years after the last great conflagration, there is quite obviously a lesson to be learned, if that is possible. Here, utilizing the most graphic of all media, 20th Century-Fox, through the instrumentality of Movietonews, and with full and competent access to the vast store of newsreel, military and enemy footage, has tried to tell a story of cause and effect, with a view to the future. Under the experienced production hand of Edmund Reek, employing a base written by Joseph Kenas and with the skillful editing of Louis Tetunic, a splendidly effective and powerful documentary story has been unfolded. It is packed with the power inherent in the dreadful material of men and nations at arms; it is at times touching in a hasty glimpse of a bereaved mother and wife, of a frightened infant, a starving child. It is the expressed desire of Spyros Skouras, president of the 20th-Fox, that the picture achieve maximum circulation. It is well that this should be done. It is for the exhibitor to determine wherein the public interest lies. It is of real and vital importance that many people see the film, for it teaches a vigorous lesson. It is not entertainment, of course; it is knowledge. It is not propaganda for peace or preparedness so much as it is a fearsome re-telling of a black chapter in contemporary history. With narration competently handled by Sidney Blackmer, John Larkin, Kermit Murdock and William Post, Jr., the story opens with Versailles and Wilson, and traces, in effective highlight, and events leading to the tragedy of World War Seen are America's prosperity, the 1929 crash, the rise of the demagogue Hitler, Ethiopia, and the collapse of the League of Nations, the dread and skillful double-crossing game played by Hitler and Mussolini, with Chamberlain a bemused "fall guy." Then into war, assault through the Low Countries, Dunkirk and the fall of France, the Greek episode, Casablanca, the African campaign and the loss of a German army in Russia. Pearl Harbor brings the "Arsenal of Democracy" into action, and follow the invasion of Europe, and the tough, slugging, mud-soaked horror of the Japanese war in the Pacific islands. In sequel, a few graphically terrible sequences picture the open pits of dead, the living skeletons which were once people in concentration camps. Finally, the United Nations and the crisis in Korea. Truman's brave words: "Lawless aggression will be met with force," sound a note of promise, but whether that promise implies peace or another era of terror nobody knows. The picture, as such, strikes with a shattering impact; at once brilliantly effective and heavy with meaning. Yes, it should be seen, by everyone. Whether the dread lesson it teaches will be learned is another matter. The pages of the history book should nonetheless be spread that all who see may read-and remember.