Griffith accepted a commission from the British government to direct
this propaganda piece in the last days of World War I. Compared to his
other films from this period, it lacks subtlety and complexity: the
Hun, expectedly, are ghastly caricatures, but the characterisation
as a whole seems flatter than in such films as Broken Blossoms, and the
distinguished cast gave better performances elsewhere. The battle
footage is efficiently shot and edited, but the horrors of war were more
powerfully portrayed by Abel Gance in his contemporary J'Accuse; this
is actually most compelling for Griffith's delicate staging of the
pre-war scenes of romance.
