The experiment, which has fully succeeded in Germany, of compelling
exhibitors to use a percentage of home films is certainly good enough for a trial. Ulti- mately the British film industry will have to stand on its own feet or perish. Survival by fitness in the long run is not ruled out. There is, moreover, another consideration which has nothing to do with fiscal or commercial methods, but which points to the desirability of the quota. The cheapest sort of American films— cheapest in every sense of the word--has so flooded this country that children are in danger of being brought up to see life through American spectacles. The American spectacles may be agreeable because rose-coloured, and they may make things look exciting, but they are not British. To say that is to condemn them, for we have an ethos of our own which must be preserved and developed, and certainly not diverted.
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