Another system largely employed by Germany in their attempted work of modifying Italy's public opinion is the free supply of photographs and sketches to illustrated newspapers. Above all, however, they have concentrated their endeavours upon the kinema.
The picture-house has ceased to be the means of spending an hour far from business and worry, in a restfully darkened room, watching a moderately amusing and, possibly, highly moral film, which does not suffer if one misses part of it. Now it has become an instrument used by Governments for educating the people.
Germany produces a large number of war films, both for home display and for abroad. There are descriptive, allegoric, sentimental, even comic films inspired by the war: the soldiers of the Kaiser do the most wonderful things. They are strong, generous, good-humoured. Most of these scenes are arranged, and only slices of real life in the case of military revues and parades are introduced.
The German authorities seem to be specially anxious to prove one thing: that the German soldiers are behaving like gentlemen, and that the stories about their deeds in Belgium and France are calumnies.
Perhaps this very earnestness in trying to alter a prevalent belief proves that Germany has not quite a clear conscience on the subject.
So, at least, seem to think the Italian public; and when some such pictures were shown lately in Rome and Milan, nobody took them seriously, and they were considered as childish fakes.
Such films are offered to picture-house managers on extremely tempting terms by special agents, who tour all over Italy. Nearly all the atrocities which were proved to have been committed by the Germans themselves are attributed in these films to the Belgians. In one of them a Belgian woman sets fire to the bed on which three wounded German soldiers are dying, and runs away after taking their watches and pocket-books. In another picture the old tale of the _treachery_ of the Louvain inhabitants is staged in a very fierce manner; I have also seen a picture of a cavalry charge given as having been actually taken during the war in Flanders, but which was really part of a two years' old manœuvre film, easily recognisable because the uniforms have changed since then.
