PRIX DE PULITZER

This is the time of year when poets, novelists, historians, scientists, biographers, editorial writers, and playwrights are very busy proving to their friends and admirers that there is no justice, that good taste has no place in modern critical qualities, and finally, that those works which were awarded the Pulitzer Prizes were the ones above all others which should have been rejected with scorn. And in all these intimate post mortems the gargantuan form of reality, of actuality, rears its ugly head; for the prizes have been chosen and nothing except a nicely calculated refusal on the part of the winners can alter that fact.

Certainly, one can quarrel with the decisions. One might say, among other things, that the judges this year were reluctant to stray from the fields of conservatism. On the whole, however, virtue has earned its own reward. Practically the sole divisions of the Pulitzer selections which the average citizen is in any way capable of judging are those of the drama, the novel, and possibly that of the newspaper editorial. In "Abraham's Bosom" the jury has elected a thoughtful and sincere play; in "Early Autumn" a restrained and carefully finished piece of fiction; and in "The Herald Commends", an editorial which was not only worthy in itself but which took a brave and courageous stand on an important topic. If the Pulitzer prizes have established a precedent for discernment that precedent has not been violated.