I’ve just come across a bundle of old newspapers giving accounts of the film of the Somme battle now being shown at the Scala in London. Those “cheery columns of men going into action” were unwittingly a little deceptive, I fancy. Not that I would say a word disparaging the men, Heaven knows. But, in the first place that comfortably seated audience should be told that a camera out here is a phenomenon and a reminder of home which any men anywhere would greet with cheers. And, in the second, I should like to insist that men going into action are usually frightfully depressed at first, so that they grouse, curse their luck, and then become silent and brooding. Later, just to keep their courage up, and because they feel something has to be done, they start singing “Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag,” get excited, and feel their troubles are over—until a shell bursts near. Then the silence is grim. << less