THE PULITZER AWARDS.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 135, 9 June 1926, Page 10

THE PULITZER AWARDS.

FOR NEWSPAPER WORK.

PRIZES FROM LEGACY.

(Prom Our Own Correspondent.)

SAN FRANCISCO, May IS.

Every year prizes are awarded in America as a consequence of a legacy left to the nation by the late Mr. Pulitzer, a poor immigrant boy who rose from obscurity to be America's most talented and wealthiest newspaper owner, the awards being made in recognition of ability in newspaper and kindred work.

The nine Pulitzer prizes, having a cash value of 8000 dollars besides a 500 dollar gold medal, and four travelling scholarships worth 1500 dollars have just been awarded to newspaper writers and •students by the Pulitzer Prize Jury in New York, and they are of more than passing interest.

The "Enquirer Sun," of Columbus, Georgia, received the gold medal for "the most disinterested and meritorious service rendered by an American newspaper during the year." The Pulitzer prize advisory board cited the- newspaper's "brave and energetic fight against the Ku Klux Klan; against the enactment of a law barring the teaching of evolution; against dishonest and incompetent public officials, and for justice to the negro against lynching."

In the field of letters, Sinclair Lewis, the novelist, received 1000 dollars —or ,at least he was awarded that sum—for his novel "Arrowsmith," judged as the best presentment of the "wholesome atmosphere of American life and the highest standard of American manners and manhood."

"Craig's Wife," by George Kelly, produced at the Morosco Theatre, in New York, was credited as being the original play which best "represented the educational value and power of the etage in raising the standard of good morale, taste and manners." The author was given 1000 dollars. Newspapermen Rewarded. Edward M. Kingsbury, of the New York "Times," was awarded 500 dollars for his editorial, published in 1925, entitled "The House of a Hundred Sorrows." The editorial was an appeal for New York's "hundred neediest cases."

For the best example of a reporter's work during the year, William Burke Miller, of the Louisville, Kentucky, "Courier-Journal," received 1000 dollars for his work in connection with the story of the trapping in Sand Cave, Kentucky, of Floyd Collins. Dr. R. Fitzpatrick, of the St. Louis "Post-Dispatch," was given 500 dollars for the best cartoon in any American newspaper in 1925. His cartoon, "The Laws of Moses and the Laws of Today," was published on April 12,- 1925. The drawing pointed out the multiplicity of present-day laws in the United States, depicting several lofty mountains of tablets side by side with the diminutive tablets containing the original Ten Commandments.

For the best book of the year on the history of the United States, Edward Charming was awarded 2000 dollars. The sixth volume of his "History of the United States," which appeared in 1925, was entitled "The War for Southern Independence." Harvey Cushing*e "Life of Sir William Osier" was judged the best American biography, and the author received 1000 dollars.

A prize of 1000 dollars was awarded for "A Hat'a O'clock," by the late Amy Lowell, considered the best volume of verse. Travelling scholarships were given to three graduates of the Columbia School of Journalism. Miss Lucille Crews, of Redlands, California, was named winner of an annual achoLarihip worth 1500 dollars for a sonata for viola and piano and a symphonic eulogy for orchestra entitled, "To the Unknown Soldier." The prize-winning play was unanimously chosen by A. E. Thomas, Owen Davis and Walter Pritchard Eaton. Sinclair Lewis declined the 1925 Pulitzer prize of 1000 dollars awarded to him for his novel, "Arrowsmith," and he said it was his opinion that all prizes and honours tended to set up arbitrary literary standards, by which "compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, obedient and sterile." He would sound the death knell of anything and everything smacking of literary oligarchy. In a letter to the Pulitzer Prize Award Committee in New York, he named the Pulitzer prizes, the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Institute of Arts and Letters as agencies which are cramping unhampered literary style. He. said amateur boards of censorship are to be deplored, like the "inquisitions of earnest literary ladies."

Asserting that all prizes, like all titles, are dangerous, and that the Pulitzer prize is "peculiarly objectionable," he said that he considered by such awards "every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient and sterile."

He wrote that, although it was generally believed the prize was given to the novel of greatest literary merit, the term of the award actually called f otr selection of the book "best presenting the wholesome atmosphere of American life, and the highest standard of American manners and manhood."

"This phrase, if it means anything at all," he wrote, "would appear to mean that the appraisal of the novel* should be made, not according to their actual literary merit, but in obedience to whatever code of good form may chance to be popular at the moment."