The Million

The Million is a 1914 American comedy silent film directed by Thomas N. Heffron and written by Georges Berr, Marcel Guillemaud and Eve Unsell. The film stars Edward Abeles, Robert Stowe Gill, Ruby Hoffman, Edna Mayo and John Daly Murphy. The film was released on December 31, 1914, by Paramount Pictures.

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The 400 Million

The 400 Million, also known as China in 1938, was a 1939 black-and-white documentary film by Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens about the Second Sino-Japanese War, part of the East Asian theater of World War II. The filmmaker moved between the Republican, Communist, and guerrilla forces of the Chinese resistance to Japanese invasion. Their dialogue in Mandarin is accompanied by English translations read by American actors.

Name

The title refers to the population of China, roughly estimated from the highly untrustworthy official censuses.

Narrative

The film begins with the carnage left by Japanese bombing in northeastern China, describing it as an unprovoked act of aggression. It then provides a brief overview of Chinese history and its connections and importance to Europe and North America. It discusses the modernization undertaken by the Republic and suggests that nascent development provoked Japan's attack. Japan's history of aggression is detailed, with America's continuing exports of iron and steel to the country pointedly noted. The film takes pains to present the Chinese factions as united against the invaders and ends with some small Chinese victories to suggest a turning tide of battle, especially praising the 8th Route Army.

Mary Nourse

Mary Augusta Nourse (1880–1971) was an American educator and writer on China and the Far East, and a co-founder of Jinling College in Nanjing. The best-known of her several books was her first, a popular history of China titled The Four Hundred Million.

Early life and education

Nourse was born to Edwin Henry and Harriett Augusta Beaman Nourse of Lockport, New York on March 11, 1880. She was the sister of novelist Alice Tisdale Hobart and economist Edwin Nourse. The family later moved to Downers Grove, Illinois, in the suburbs of Chicago.

Nourse attended Shimer College, which at the time was located in Mount Carroll, Illinois and served as a women's preparatory school for the University of Chicago. She graduated from Shimer in 1899 and continued to the University of Chicago, receiving her Ph.B. in 1905.

Educational work in China

Our faith in the possibilities of the institution now that the first class is really here are boundless.
—Mary Nourse, 1915

After completing her college education, Nourse briefly taught high school in Rensselaer, Indiana. Soon thereafter, however, she traveled to China to work as an educator and Baptist missionary. She taught for a number of years at Wayland Academy in Hangzhou, where she also served for a time as principal.