"The Government controlled the film stock supply at this time and all film scripts for films to be made in the UK had to be submitted to the Ministry of Information. If a film was not approved then no film stock would be supplied. In 1939 the BBFC still operated under the broad guiding principles of former President TP O’Connor’s list of ‘grounds for deletion’ which were first published in 1916. These essentially barred: * References to controversial politics * Relations of capital and labour * Scenes tending to disparage public characters and institutions * Realistic horrors of warfare * Scenes and incidents calculated to afford information to the enemy * Incidents having a tendency to disparage our Allies * Scenes holding up the King’s uniform to contempt or ridicule * The exploitation of tragic incidents of the war The aim of all these constraints was to try and ensure that the kinds of films that came out during this period dealt with war in ways that were unlikely to be particularly upsetting or challenging for audiences."