When war is declared, the lovers Else and Alexis (serving as a diplomat for the unnamed foreign power) are divided. She is forbidden by her father, General von Wimpfen, to see him and he returns home to fight for his own country. The General and his son Erik (Psilander) join their own army. In parting, Else has given Alexis a carrier pigeon so that he can contact her during the war.

Inevitably the protagonists all come face to face, with the general and his son commanding an important gun battery in the front lines while Alexis is an officer in the opposing army. Back home the family palace has been converted into a military hospital where Else is serving as a nurse.

There is a traitor in the home camp who crosses the no man's land dividing the two armies to betray details of the all-important battery which he then proceeds to sabotage. A lovesick Alexis decides to dispatch a carrier pigeon with a message to Else warning her of the treachery. She sets off at once for the front to warn her father and brother. The battery blows up but Erik arrives in time to protect his father from the results but the traitor escapes in the confusion. The enemy offensive is then comprehensively defeated and all their retrenchments captured....

....except the one commanded by Alexis, against which Erik is now sent. He and Alexis do literally come face to face in the ensuing fight and he tells his sister, now a nurse in the front line, after the victory that he believes her lover to be dead. They search together for him among the prisoners of war and among the dead and dying on the battlefield...

The rump of the enemy army, the despised and now repentant traitor along with them, has retreated to a mountain bunker where it intends to resist to the last man but Erik has a plan for taking the fortress and, at great personal risk, scrambles across the no man's land to effect his plan....

So the finale, which I shall not reveal, concerns a women and three men - Else (whose loyalties are torn between her family and the man she loves), the honourable enemy Alexis (dead or alive?), the traitor (will he redeem himself?) and the hero Erik (will his plan succeed). The ending (for the US market?) is grotesquely happy (which I suppose rather answers all those questions) and one rather hopes that they shot a darker alternative for the Russian market (which they were in the habit of doing). It is a film, from a detached Danish neutral perspective, without ideological or propaganda content that, despite its title, is more about good old-fashioned personal honour than it is about patriotism.

It is not a particularly inspiring story but Blom directs with his customary skill and the location shooting by Johan Ankestjerne is excellent. Neither had any lessons to learn from D. W. Griffith or Billy Bitzer. Indeed the film looks strikingly "modern" by comparison with The Birth of the Nation which came out at almost exactly the same time. Much more natural in its acting style and mise en scène and without any of the rather old-fashioned tableau effects, "facial" close-ups that Griffith and Bitzer chose to use.

The title (a very common one in these years) comes of course from the famous Horace tag famously described by British poet Wilfred Owen as "the "old lie" Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. Denmark was in an embarrassing and complicated position during the Great War. With significant economic ties both to Britain and Germany, it did its best to stay neutral but was in practice led by purely geopolitical and economic considerations to favour Germany, agreeing to mine the Baltic Sea on their behalf. Later in the war, an Anglo-American blockade of Denmark would cause severe economic difficulties and an increasing reliance on German imports.

So the nation of "patriotism" did not really have quite the same ring for Danes as it did for the more ideologically committed combattants. The war for Denmark was quite simply a nuisance, an embarrassment and and an economic disaster while the country also had a strong pacifist tradition. So this film has none of the propagandist tone that became increasingly marked in British, French and Italian films and reached hysterical proportions in the US Kaiser-bashing films of 1918.

The war shown here is therefore very much s traditional and rather gentlemanly affair (the caddish traitor apart) which shows no awareness of the traumatic realities that the combattant nations were experiencing and which would only really begin to become common knowledge from 1916 onwards. It is, if you like, the war that Europeans thought they weer going to fight in 1914 not the ghastly murderous imbroglio they in fact found themselves immersed in.

In this respect the US had more relevant experience. The American Civil War had very much pointed the way for the horrors to come and the US was, prior to 1914, the only country to have really experienced the reality of modern warfare; the European experience was limited to the one-sided slaughter of colonial warfare. So the scenes of battle in The Birth of the Nation should in a sense have been more realistic except that Griffith and Bitzer follow Ince, the expert in the field, in presenting rather a glamourised picture of trench-warfare. The war-scenes in Blom's film, filmed in part in a sort of matte-shot slide-show (a technique not by any means invented by Bitzer), illustrate both the dominance of heavy artillery and the carnage that followed any offensive but remain more "charge of the light brigade" than "battle of the Somme". The battle-scenes in neither film much resemble representations of warfare that become common in films after 1916-17 (following the release of British and German documentaries about the Battle of the Somme).

The war genre features armed conflicts, both historical and fictional, and the experiences of individuals and groups involved in warfare. This genre explores the physical, emotional, and moral challenges faced by soldiers, civilians, and others affected by war.

Eileen Wells is receiving a call from her fiancé, Lieutenant Masters, when her father, General Wells, and her brother, Gordon, who is a Lieutenant, arrive bringing the startling news that war has been declared against their country by the Government of Lieutenant Masters, who is the military attaché to the embassy of the hostile country. General Wells dismisses him from his house as he is now an enemy. Upon departing for his country Lieutenant Masters returns to bid farewell to Eileen, and she gives him a carrier pigeon so that he may communicate with her. Before leaving for the scene of action, the General and Gordon acquiesce to Eileen's desire to serve as a red-cross nurse. An orderly brings to General Wells' headquarters the announcement that the Prince will, at two o'clock the next day, present the colors to the 5th Battery. This Battery is under command of Lieutenant Powell, who, acting as a tool for the enemy, steals over to the opposing forces to acquaint their commander with the presentation of the colors, and advise a surprise attack at that hour. The traitor quickly returns to his camp. In his own tent, he constructs a bomb, and places the deadly missile in a huge long-range cannon, timing the explosion for the hour of the Prince's presence. Perceiving that there is a traitor in General Wells' army, and realizing the grave danger that threatens his sweetheart's father, after a few moments deliberation, his love for Eileen prevails over his duty to his country. Lieutenant Masters dispatches a note with the pigeon, advising her that a traitor has given information of the color presentation, and that a sudden attack will take place at that hour. Eileen frantically speeds to the front in a motor car, and miraculously eluding the fusillade of the picket, she reaches her brother's camp, and imparts to him the plot. Like a flash he mounts his horse, and rides to the General's headquarters, arriving in the nick of time to save the Prince, his father and staff from the deadly explosion of the bomb. Forthwith a terrible battle ensues, the enemy manifesting splendid heroism, unheeding the multitude of shrieking, bursting shells which mow down many of their number, fairly covering the battlefield with dead and wounded. Gradually all the trenches fall into the hands of the advancing army, save the last one, which, under the command of Lieutenant Masters, offers a most obstinate resistance. The battalion of Lieutenant Wells soon overpowers it; a violent bayonet charge follows, during which Lieutenant Wells witnesses Lieutenant Masters' fall. The enemy is repulsed from its position by Lieutenant Wells' forces, and completely routed. During the interim, Eileen is nobly caring for the wounded soldiers in a field hospital, where her brother finds her, and tells her how he saw Lieutenant Masters fall, firmly clasping his country's flag. Eileen, anxious to learn her sweetheart's fate, induces Gordon to accompany her to the battlefield. After searching for some time, they finally come across Lieutenant Masters lying among the dead, seriously wounded. They have him placed upon a stretcher, and send him to their home, which had been converted into an emergency hospital. Determined to drive the enemy from their last stronghold, Lieutenant Wells volunteers to blow up this fortress. Up and down snow-covered mountains, through the intricacies of barbed-wire entanglements, and overcoming numerous obstacles, he at last reaches the fortress. The sentries guarding the entrance are killed by a bursting shell, whereupon the Lieutenant, entering the court, comes face to face with Powell, who offers his sword to Wells that he may kill him. The latter rejecting the sword, ignites a bomb, the explosion of which shatters the powder magazine, killing and burying under the debris the traitor. Accompanied by strains of martial music, the victorious army marches into the fortress, and receives the surrender of the holding forces, thus consummating a complete victory. Soon after, General Wells has returned to his home, the Prince comes to confer decorations upon him and his son for their heroism. Lieutenant Masters, now convalescing, under the care of Eileen, obtains the consent of her father to their marriage, and receives the praises of the Prince for his services to the country.

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