Sometimes threats and blusterings succeed when fair words fail. For some weeks U. S. Cinema Censor Will H. Hays has been in Paris speaking none but fair words (TIME, April 2). His ticklish task has been to persuade the Cinematic Control Commission of the French Ministry of Public Instruction that it ought to modify a recent drastic decree. This was, in effect, that U. S. cinema dramas would be licensed for exhibition in France solely upon condition that for every four films so licensed U. S. exhibitors would purchase one French film and display it throughout the U. S.
Week after week...