to the situation in France because the prize is an excellent method of temporary publicity, and it is possible that publishers in America will be tempted to use it freely. There are so many prizes in France, the considerations are so varied, and political and literary intrigue so constant, that among intelligent people a prize has already lost all significance. Even more. It was openly asserted in a recent case that the part-recipient of one of the newly established prizes was himself the donor of the money. Were that so, were it even a friend who "put up," the conclusions are obvious. Rich men are notoriously given to writing; and if one secretly supplies fifteen thousand dollars and is awarded five, the rest going to two shielding authors, one not only does a good deed for literature, but one gets back thirty-three and one-third per cent—and there have been financial investments in which that represents something more than cutting one's losses.
The amount of publicity which a publisher can gain in a prize of this sort would justify him annually in giving several thousand dollars to an author on his list. It would justify all publishers together in creating prizes, in furthering them when others are so kind as to supply the funds; it is suspected that the rewards are so great that subornation and intimidation have been used—as last resorts. Every publisher in France, at this moment, must have a prize-winner on his lists; and the awards fall so rapidly that one doesn't know whether a newspaper headline refers to literature or horse-racing. To be sure, the thing is killing itself; the wonder is how many things it will drag down with it.
The nuisance about prizes is that they imply a contest and that they are supposedly concerned with literary values. Publicity is another matter entirely. It weakly uses critical words; but the best publicity is sales. Advertise that a book is sold out and you will sell it out; advertise that the sales have reached half a million and unless the saturation point is reached, you will sell another half-million. All of this has nothing to do with literature. We suspect that the circulation of The Dial per month is twenty times as great as the circulation, if you can call it that, of Plato's Republic in all the years of its author's life. But fond as we are of The Dial we do not offer that fact as evidence of superiority to Plato. We are deliberately (and with some success) building up a circulation which will enable us to pay our way and to raise our rates
