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The Germans have spies in the queues, women who go up and down telling people it's all England's fault." "And people are just the same?" "Just the same; Donons' and the Bear are crowded every day. You can't get a table. So are the cinematographs and the theatres. I went to the Ballet last night." "What was it?" "'La fille mal gardée' Karsavina dancing divinely. Every one was there."
"I don't see," said Tim, "how cinematographs can be blasphemies so long as there aren't any pictures of religious things. I'm sure it must be all right and I can go on with what I want to do. If I can succeed in making the figures stand out from one another, as if they were really there " "You'll add a new terror to life," I said. "But that needn't stop you doing it if you can."
It is a most demoralising weapon, but the explosion is so small that it does much less harm than would be expected. Let us take a typical day with the gunners. Photographs or cinematographs are entirely unsatisfactory in giving any idea of the "movement" of a battery going into action.
In Polchester thirty years ago there were no cinematographs, no theatre save for an occasional amateur performance at the Assembly Rooms and, once and again, a magic-lantern show. On this particular day, moreover, Mr. and Mrs. Cole were immensely busied with preparations for some parochial tea. Miss Trefusis had calls to make, and, of course, Uncle Samuel was invisible.
In the East End of London or of Paris banks are assuredly not a feature of the landscape and for good reason. The cinematograph is possibly, on the whole, a civilizing agent; it might easily be the most powerful force on the East Side. I met the gentleman who "controlled" all the cinematographs, and was reputed to make a million dollars a year net therefrom.
The word, though common on our side of the Atlantic now, was at that time peculiar to the American language. "Cinematographs?" I said. "I've seen them of course. You have them in your circus, haven't you, as part of the show?" "Yes. That's what set me thinking about them.
I saw it all laid out as though I were a great height above it the fashionable streets, the Nevski and the Morskaia with the carriages and the motor-cars and trams, the kiosks and the bazaars, the women with their baskets of apples, the boys with the newspapers, the smart cinematographs, the shop in the Morskaia with the coloured stones in the window, the oculist and the pastry-cook's and the hairdressers and the large "English shop" at the corner of the Nevski, and Pivato's the restaurant, and close beside it the art shop with popular post cards and books on Serov and Vrubel, and the Astoria Hotel with its shining windows staring on to S. Isaac's Square.
This is the idea which has been spread by cinematographs and reviews and which has impressed itself upon the minds of the unthinking masses, who are incapable of rising above a superficial view of things. Nothing, however, is farther from representing her as she really is. The suffragist is a true product of our era of liberty.
I asked. "Why not?" she said, laughing. "We can't do it ourselves. We don't care who does it. The English can do it if they like, only they're too lazy to bother. The German's aren't lazy, and if they were here we'd have lots of theatres and cinematographs." "Don't you love your country?" I asked. "This isn't our country," she answered. "It just belongs to the Empress and Protopopoff."
Always out at cinematographs and theatres and restaurants, and with a lot of boys who mean no harm, I know but they're idiotic, they're no good.... Now, when the war's like this and the suffering.... To be always at the cinematograph! But I've lost my authority over her, Ivan Andreievitch. She doesn't care any longer what I say to her. Once, and not so long ago, I meant so much to her.
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