Victory and Peace

Victory and Peace is a 1918 British silent war film directed by Herbert Brenon and starring Matheson Lang, Marie Lohr, and James Carew. The film was produced by the National War Aims Committee that was set up in 1917 to focus on domestic propaganda during the First World War. The novelist Hall Caine was recruited for the committee by the Prime Minister David Lloyd George to write the screenplay. Lloyd George chose Caine due to his experience in the field of cinema and his "reputation as a man of letters". The film was designed to show what would happen in a German invasion. It was mostly shot in Chester with some scenes filmed at Chirk Castle. Most of the negative of the newly finished film was destroyed in a fire at the offices of the London Film Company in June 1918. It was re-filmed over four months, just as the war ended, and so never went on general release. It is a partially lost film, with only around 1,000 feet of film still surviving. Edward Elgar was to have composed the score. Originally entitled The National Film, its alternative title is The Invasion of Britain.