Patria

Patria does her part to prepare America for war. Most of this 1917 serial has been lost, but the few episodes that survive are crisply shot and move at a brisk pace. The later episode is guilty of the kind of padding that plagued many of these works, but the earlier ones are a lot of fun. The heroine was one half of the noted dancing partnership Irene and Vernon Castle, who would later be played by Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. Warner Oland, playing an oriental for the first time, also features heavily. Not quite sure why the Japanese, rather than the Germans are the villains.