WOMAN WRITER WINS NOBEL PRIZE,

Southland Times, Issue 23664, 12 November 1938, Page 7

WOMAN WRITER WINS NOBEL PRIZE,

MISSIONARY AUTHOR OF “THE GOOD EARTH”

STOCKHOLM, November 10. The Nobel Prize for Literature has been awarded to Mrs Pearl S. Buck. Mrs Pearl Buck, the best-known American missionary, is the daughter of missionaries serving in China and has lived from girlhood in that country. Knowing the Chinese language thoroughly and mixing with the people of all classes while assisting her parents in their ministrations, she probably knows more about Chinese customs, manner of thinking and outlook on life than any other Western woman of her period. She became a missionary under the American Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions. When she married Dr J. Lossing Buck, head of the Agricultural Department of the Presbyterian University at Nanking, she also became a member of the faculty of that institution.

Mrs Buck’s sympathy with the Chinese people is intense, and she has written many articles for American and British publications in an effort to create a better understanding of their sufferings and sound qualities. When in 1931 the Yangtze river flooded an enormous area, causing many hundreds of deaths and misery and starvation for hundreds of thousands of the people, she sent a succession of stirring appeals to America and Europe on behalf of the relief fund. Early In 1933 Mrs Buck published under the title of “The Good Earth” a work in which she set forth and supported the Chinese views on life and religion. In it she expressed plainly her Inability to believe that the heathen races were eternally damned unless they subscribed to Christian doctrines. That belief she described as "magic religion.” The book had a very large sale in the United States and created a great stir in religious circles. The Presbyterian Church condemned it, and at a meeting of the Board of Foreign Missions Mrs Buck was accused of having indicated that she did not consider a belief in the Deity of Christ to be essential to salvation and did not believe in the New Testament miracles or original sin. Mrs Buck refused to withdraw a word she had written or said, and in May 1933, when in New York, resigned and returned to China. Mrs Henry Gillmbre resigned from the board in sympathy with her.