Everybody’s Business: Film, Food and Victory in the First World War
One month after the outbreak of the Second World War, the ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign was introduced in Britain in an attempt to grow more food to feed a nation in conflict, at which time the government persuaded people on the Home Front to convert their gardens into allotments in order to cultivate vegetables. Correspondingly, strategies were also created to encourage farmers to transform their land as part of the war effort. The campaign for the production of food not only concerned the need to educate in order to provide for the country, but also provided an impetus for community and patriotism. Outlining the need for home-grown products and productive cultivation of the landscape, Dig for Victory in the Second World War was a scheme that was professional from the outset involving the screening of numerous newsreels and documentaries in its implementation. That this plan was mobilised at such short notice owes a debt to the First World War, a period that witnessed the birth of film as official propaganda. However, the main disparity between the two film campaigns lies in their strategies for dealing with the populace. The Second World War was deemed ‘the People’s War,’ using the working class as central protagonists with the aim of disregarding class difference. Alternatively, the First World War deployed upper-and middle-class characters in fiction films in order to educate. These practices were put into operation despite the fact that the cinema audience during this period was predominantly comprised of those fighting starvation, and indeed those actually ‘digging for victory.’ This article analyses the strategies inaugurated in the cinematic food campaign in the First World War in both newsreels and fiction film, and traces a trajectory to the Dig for Victory campaign in the Second World War.
All Work, No Play…: Representations of Child Labour in Films of the First World War
This article analyses the representation of children in short documentary films of the First World War. It suggests that, rather than adopting sentiment which might evoke emotion and mobilise public protest, the films were more pragmatic, aimed at conscripting children for the war effort. Indeed, they deployed a non sentimental approach, instead favouring military order which chimed with the predominating ‘structure of feeling’ of that period. Examining the campaign to encourage children to form part of the workforce and support the patriotic cause, this essay analyses a number of newsreel documentaries within the context of contemporaneous visual culture.
Experimental Study on Acoustic Agglomeration of Fine Particles from Coal Combustion
The removal of fine particles in coal-fired fumes was experimentally studied based on acoustic agglomeration. An experiment facility was designed and set up. In this facility, a fluidized bed coal combustor was used as fume generator, and an Electrical Low Pressure Impact or (ELPI) was used to measure the fine particle concentration and size distribution in the fumes. The results show that under the effect of high intensity sound waves, there is good performance to remove fine particles in coal-fired fumes, which with a number mean diameter of 0.07μm. Especially, under the conditions of the frequency of 1 000Hz and the sound intensity of 161.5dB, the number concentration of 0.0233~9.314μm particles decreased by 85.2%, and their mass concentration decreased by 92.5%.