Allen Upward, for instance, an Englishman unknown in Stockholm, invented and published a book four years ago, called the “New Word,” which was so idealistic and distinguished a book, and so full of new ideas and of new combinations of old ideas, that there was scarcely a publisher in England who did not instinctively recognize it, who did not see that it would not pay at once, and that therefore it was too strange and original and too important a book for him to publish, and after a long delay the book was finally printed in Geneva.

A copy was sent to the Nobel Prize Trustees.

One would have thought, looking at it theoretically, that here was precisely the sort of situation that Alfred Nobel, who had been the struggling inventor of a great invention that would not pay at once himself, would have been looking for.  A book so inventive, so far ahead, that publishers praised it and would not invest in it, one would have imagined to be the one book of all others for which Alfred Nobel stood ready and waiting to put down his forty thousand dollars.

But Mr. Nobel’s forty thousand dollars did not go to a comparatively obscure and uncapitalized inventor who had written a book to build a world with, or at least a great preliminary design, or sketch, toward a world.  The Nobel Prize Trustees, instead of giving the forty thousand dollars to Allen Upward, looked carefully about through all the nations until their eyes fell on a certain Mr. Rudyard Kipling.  And when they saw Mr. Rudyard Kipling, piled high with fame and five dollars a word, they came over quietly to where he was and put softly down on him forty thousand dollars more.

I do not know, but it is not inconceivable, that Kipling himself would rather have had Allen Upward have it.

I am not quarrelling with the Trustees, and am merely trying to think things out and understand.  But it certainly is a question that cannot but keep recurring to one’s mind—­the unfortunate, and perhaps rather unlooked-for, way in which Mr. Nobel’s Will works.  And I have been wondering what there is that might be done, the world being the kind of world it is, which would enable the Nobel Prize Trustees to so administer the Will that its practical weight on the side of Idealism, and especially upon the crisis of idealism in young authors, would be where Mr. Nobel meant to have it.

One must hasten to admit that Mr. Upward’s book is open to question; that, in fact, it is the main trait of Mr. Upward’s book that it raises a thousand questions; and that it would be a particularly hard book for most men to give a prize to, quietly go home, and sleep that night.  I must hasten to admit also that, judging from their own point of view, the Nobel Prize Trustees have so far done quite well.  They have attained a kind of triumph of doing safe things—­things that they could not be criticised for; and they could well reply to this present criticism that there was no other course