The television industry is still so bereft of inspiration, more than half a century after its conception and more than a hundred years after the first news-film was made, that it goes on day after day producing programmes of news which frequently include watching people like the President of the United States making speeches when you cannot even hear what they are saying. At least in the so-called silent cinema there was always a lecturer available when such films were shown to explain what was going on and what was being said.
What on earth do people expect a newsreel film to be? And why do they watch them if they are not interested?
For those with more open minds, watch the film again with the end of the oration in front of you, just as the lecturer might have read it to the audience in 1903:
"We do not intend to let slip away from our minds the fact that everything we now have as a nation, all that we now glory in, would be non-existent if the men of '61 had not shown in the supreme hour those qualities for the lack of which no nation and no individual can atone. You showed those qualities. Now, what qualities?
In the first place, power of disinterested loyalty to the idea, the power of being stirred to lofty emotions, of casting aside considerations of self when the welfare of the people as a whole was at stake. Patriotism first; the spirit which manifests itself in time of war, in ability to serve the flag in time of peace, ability to do a citizen's work squarely and decently. First that spirit. Now that was not enough, no matter how patriotic a man was in 1861. If he did not have a fighting edge, his patriotism did not count. It was absolutely necessary to have patriotism, but patriotism was of no use if the man ran away.
Exactly. Now so it is in the ordinary workaday tasks of citizenship at the present day. If the man is not decent, in the first place, then he is not merely useless to the community but a menace to it. In time of war, if the man did not have in him the power of loyalty to the flag, loyalty to the nation, loyalty to his regiment, the more dangerous he was. He had to have that quality first of all. In civil life we need decency, honesty and the spirit that makes the man a good husband, a good father, a good neighbor and a good man to work alongside of or to deal with. That makes a man, consequently, who does his duty by the State. The worst crime against this nation which can be committed by any man is the crime of dishonesty, whether in public life, or whether in private life, and we are not to be excused as a people if we ever condone such dishonesty, no matter what other qualities it may be associated with. "
Billy Bitzer, who filmed this, was on his way to film the Navy (and a bit more of the President) at Oyster Bay (September) and then to join up with Wallace McCutcheon to make further films on the US navy in Long Island Sound and of the amusement park at Glen Island (November). Interest in the navy was of course high because of the move for Panamanian independence from Colombia (a prelude to US control of the canal) which required one of the first important "big stick" operation by the US against its neighbours to the South since Roosevelt's declaration of the policy in 1901. THe USS Nashville prevented the Colombians from subduing the revolution, the poor wretched Panamanians sold the US their canal for a mere $10 million (1904) and the naval base at Guantanamo was built to defend it (1905).
