Aside from the daily newspaper and the radio there is no more potent propaganda weapon in the United States than the motion picture. Hollywood has not been unconscious of its power; through the late 1930's the films ceased to debunk war and gradually, through such efforts as "Arise My Love," made Americans conscious of its implications. In fact, these films provoked certain Senators so far into consciousness that they started an investigation of war-mongering among Hollywood producers last fall. But the movie industry today seems to be resting on its laurels, whatever they may be.

A trifle more than three months have elapsed since America's entry into the war; perhaps insufficient time for the movie moguls to establish their bearings, but enough time to produce a few indicative films to point the general trend of the future. This trend shows that Hollywood is shirking its responsibility as a constructive force in morale building; it is dodging any direct war propaganda films at a time when the issues involved in this war should be effectively presented to the mass of people. That abused word "Escape" categorizes almost all the Hollywood output of the last three months, with one or two exceptions, that show to what bad taste the movies can descend if given a chance. Anyone who has seen "Confirm or Deny" can testify to this. The latest example of Hollywood's attitude to the war is seen in "To Be Or Not To Be," Ernst Lubitsch's new farce, a very comic idea made acutely uncomfortable because the locale of the picture is Warsaw during the German occupation of Poland. In "Ninotchka" Lubitsch ribbed the foibles of the Russians and their Five Year Plan with great humor and relish. But the same formula is not successful in the present picture, for there is something too agonizingly real about the military genius of the Germans in the past three years to make them effective butts for farcical humor. Actually, in all recent war films, Hollywood has shown a propensity to have the Gestapo foiled by the most guileless and pure of people in "Paris Calling," "Man Hunt." "The Great Dictator," and so on. None of these plots had an adult approach to the complicated processes which will lead us to victory. Little wonder, then, that the average American, fed on such treacle, believes that the Germans will crack when faced with the innocence of an Elisabeth Bergner or a Charlie Chaplin.

We cannot look for an adequate war film while the battles rage: only time will give the proper perspective for another "What Price Glory?." But the movies can clarify for the public the issues that lie behind the war. Besides producing entertainment, the films can justify their existence in wartime by giving visual representation to the crisis of the conflict, by presenting facts and not fiction, even in the most romantic and melodramatic of war films.