As a person with a prejudice for news without propaganda
I am rather concerned to know in what capacity Gaumont-British News is setting up a propagandist business. News at the ordinary cinema is always a popular feature, and it is a pity to use it, except in rare cases, to commend policies that the Government may favour. But it is a greater pity to use it to commend policies that the Government does not favour. Twice in the same news-feature at a cinema I was at the other day the commentator felt it proper to do that. A picture of a Ger- man ship being scuttled was accompanied by the dictum that if it were made known that all German seamen scuttling their ships would be left to their fate scuttling would soon stop. I don't entirely disagree, but that doesn't happen to be the Navy' practice or the Government's policy, and I should like to kn whose views—the commentator's own, the Gaumont-British chairman's or the managing director's or whose—it is that as thus communicated. The same, and more, applies to the com- ment on the picture of the opening of a new British restaurant by, I think, Mrs. Churchill : " And now what we want is more beer ; the British working-man must have his beer." Again, who decides to say that? And what .lies behind a dictum so agreeable to brewers? It seems a pertinent question. a
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