In the estimation of the Committee the year 1919 was not one of pre-eminent short stories.  Why?  There are several half-satisfactory explanations.  Some of the acknowledged leaders, seasoned authors, have not been publishing their average annual number of tales.  Alice Brown, Donn Byrne, Irvin Cobb, Edna Ferber, Katharine Gerould, Fannie Hurst and Mary W. Freeman are represented by spare sheaves.  Again, a number of new and promising writers have not quite attained sureness of touch; although that they are acquiring it is manifest in the work of Ben Ames Williams, Edison Marshall, Frances Wood, Samuel Derieux, John Russell, Beatrice Ravenel and Myra Sawhill.  Too frequently, there is “no story”:  a series of episodes however charmingly strung out is not a story; a sketch, however clever or humorous, is not a story; an essay, however wisely expounding a truth, is not a story.  So patent are these facts, they are threadbare from repetition; yet of them succeeding aspirants seem to be as ignorant as were their predecessors—­who at length found knowledge.  For obvious reasons, names of authors who succeed in a certain literary form, but who produce no story are omitted.

Again, some stories just miss the highest mark.  A certain one, praised by a magazine editor as the best of the year, suffers in the opinion of the Committee, or part of the Committee, from an introduction too long and top-heavy.  It not only mars the symmetry of the whole, this introduction, but starts the reader in the wrong direction.  One thing the brief story must not do is to begin out of tone, to promise what it does not fulfil, or to lead out a subordinate character as though he were chief....  Another story suffers from plethora of phrasing, and even of mere diction.  Stevenson believed few of his words too precious to be cut; contemporary writers hold their utterances in greater esteem....  A third story shows by its obvious happy ending that the author has catered to magazine needs or what he conceives to be editorial policies.  Such an author requires a near “Smart Set” sparkle or a pseudo-Atlantic Monthly sobriety; he develops facility, but at the expense, ultimately, of conventionality, dullness and boredom.

According to the terms which omit foreign authors from possible participation in the prize, the work of Achmed Abdullah, Britten Austin, Elinor Mordaunt and others was in effect non-existent for the Committee.  “Reprisal,” by Mr. Austin, ranks high as a specimen of real short-story art, strong in structure, rich in suggestion.  “The Honourable Gentleman,” by the mage from Afghanistan, in reflecting Oriental life in the Occident, will take its place in literary history.  Elinor Mordaunt’s modernized biblical stories—­“The Strong Man,” for instance—­in showing that the cycles repeat themselves and that today is as one of five thousand years ago exemplify the universality of certain motifs, fables, characters.