Trolley Cars, trucks, cars, horse-drawn wagons, and pedestrians on cobblestone street in Brooklyn, New York. People coming out of the Gem movie theater. Snow on ground. Theater marquee lights lit up reading "The Gem Theatre". A horse standing at the curb. Interior of the theater shows pianist in front playing music to accompany silent films. Newsreel of Russian Czar Nicholas II and family including his wife and children on the screen. Czar Nicholas II inspecting troops and seated with officers. Audience watches. Shot zooms in so footage is full screen and theatre patrons no longer visible. Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary and Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany on royal stag hunt. Shooting from stand with telescope equipped rifle. Line of hunted and killed stags on the ground following the hunt.
From " A Short Survey of The Film in America." On screen English text describing advances in film making in the early years of the motion picture. Description of the years 1908-1918 as pivotal years for American film makers DW Griffith, Thomas H. Ince, and Mack Sennett. On screen text describing DW Griffith's work, "The New York Hat." The actual film follows : Small town gossips scandalously link together the names of a minister and a girl when they discover that he has given her an expensive hat from New York. The turmoil abates when the minister produces the will of the girl's mother, in which he has been asked to buy the daughter "bits of finery."
Kaiser Wilhelm II and party arrive in horse-drawn carriages escorted by British Horse Guards on parade in London, England.
A launch bearing the Russian Imperial Navy ensign, rowed by sailors, transports Kaiser Wilhelm II and his party to a Russian ship at a Baltic Seaport. The Russian royal family, including Czarina Alexandra and her daughters are seen. There is much formal interaction with saluting and such. Russian troops pass in review on a parade ground. The visiting Kaiser and his party depart the Russian ship with fanfare and formality.
Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, who were good friends, are seen in animated conversation at a park in Vienna, Austria. They walk together down a slope from a path. A bicycle leans against a tree on the path. A photographer with camera on tripod is ready to record the event. The two imperial friends are dressed alike, in similar coats and hats. They both wear daggers and carry canes. Their conversation is quite animated.
The Panama Canal plagued by yellow fever during it's construction. United States Army Medical Corps working in a laboratory. Stagnant water and an alligator in the water in a jungle in Panama. Wreckage of DeLesseps French regime vessel or digging apparatus in a waterway near the canal dig. A portrait of United States Army Medical Corps Major Walter Reed. Men construct a railway track at the Panama Canal.