Trailer

As students watch the newsreel, ask them to note down everything that they can infer from the footage - ie. it was shot behind the frontline, Indian soldiers involved in the fighting, some have been wounded etc.

Students should then feedback their findings as part of a class discussion, which finishes with a consideration of the following question:

• Why might this footage have been produced by a British newsreel company?

Main Attraction

Before embarking on the main activity - ask students to read through the analysis Topical Budget: War and Propaganda (link on the right) to learn about the newsreel company's role during the conflict.

After a quick discussion about Topical Budget and propaganda, divide students into pairs, with each pair writing two separate scripts to accompany the silent footage. Both scripts should be written for a cinema audience of the time, but from two different perspectives: the Liberal Government of HH Asquith and radical Indian Nationalists (not the Indian National Congress as they supported the imperial war effort).

Obviously, the two scripts should end up with very different tones - one jingoistic while the other stresses the suffering of Indian troops in a European conflict. As the teacher moves around the various pairs, students should be encouraged to think about the purpose behind the piece of propaganda they are constructing.

If time allows (this is possibly a 'lead out' task for homework), students can then take one of the anonymous soldiers that they have seen in the extract, and provide a 'back story' for him - ie. a name, a region of India, religion, social background, reason for joining the Army etc. Students can then produce a letter from this soldier back to his family in India talking about his experiences of trench warfare and his feelings about the war and the British Empire.

End Credits

Finish by listening to two examples of each kind of script read out (in suitably strident tones!) as an accompaniment of the visual extract. This can be followed by a class debate on which written piece of propaganda would seem more valid to a modern audience and/or historian and why.