"Spectator" Competitions

RULES AND CONDITIONS

Entries must be typed or very clearly 'written on one side of the paper only. The name and address, or pseudonym, of the competitor must be on each entry and not on a separate sheet. When a word limit is set words ,must be counted and the number given. No entries can be returned. Prizes may be divided at the j discretion of the judge, or withheld if no entry reaches the required standard. The judge reserves the right to print or quote from any entry. The judge's decision is final, and no correspondence can be entered into on the subject of the award. Entries must be addressed to :—The Editor, the Spectator, 99 Gower Street, London, W.C. 1, and be marked on the envelope Competition No. (—).

Competition No. 10 (Set by " SCADAVAY.") A PRIZE of £8 3s. is offered for the funniest " Synopsis of Previous Events " to precede the fifth instalment of an imaginary serial story in an imaginary daily newspaper. Entries must not exceed 850 words in length, exclusive of the title (which must be given) and the magic words " Now Read On !" with which each" must end. Readers who have allowed their acquaintance with this type of literature to lapse may refresh (if that is the word) their minds by reference to almost any illustrated daily paper.

Entries must be received not later than Monday, June 22nd, 1931. The result of this competition will appear in our issue of July 4th.

Competition No. II (Set by " SCADAVAX.") A PRIZE of £8 8s. is offered for the best list with the following title : " Six English Words The Use Of Which Should Be Discontinued : and Why." The words may be colloquialisms, but should be reputable. Entries must not exceed 300 words in length. The reasons for your aversions will be judged for their matter rather than their manner, and may be as tersely phrased as you please.

Entries must be received not later than Monday, June 29th, 1931. The result of this competition will be announced in our issue of July 11th.

The result of Competition No. 9 will appear in our next issue.

Report of Competition No. 8

(REPORT AND AWARD BY " SCA.DAVAY.") A PRIZE of £3 Bs. was offered for the best paragraph of not more than 350 words of pure nonsense made up of sentences and clauses taken from the Spectator of May 30th, 1931. A clause was defined as consisting of not less than four words enclosed by two stops of any sort.

"Nonsense," Mr. Desmond MacCarthy once wrote, " is a challenge to the whole of life." Perhaps he was right. It can, at any rate, annihilate a whole week-end. After reading the hundredweight or so of entries for this competition, I find myself, spiritually, in much the same condition as if I had lived for several days on Turkish Delight. The experience would have made a logician of Lear.

One of the important qualities of nonsense is spontaneity ; and this, as might have been foreseen, was too often absent from compositions which depended mainly on ingenuity and research. But the standard was in other respects disap- pointingly low. I think most people would have done better with shorter entries. Many donned the motley with some- thing of an effort, and several of the paragraphs sent in were not perceptibly different in tone—though vastly inferior, I hasten to add, in coherence—from the Spectator's " News of the Week."

The following competitors all sent in good paragraphs, and if they could league together and publish their entries in book form as a modern novel, I know several quarters where it would be almost certain of a favourable review.

Rev. A. H. Storm, John S. Tetley, Thomas Hepburn, Mrs. Hepburn, Edward G. C. Brown, Miss H. S. Martin, Theo. A. Mills, L. V. Upward, C. C. Fraser, Miss I. E. Hort, N. F. Newsome, T. E. °River, Rev. L. Thompson, Guy Innes, " Rebecca Mearns," Miss E. S. Ritchie, " Celtico," " Wonder- land," Miss Alice W. Knight, W. T. Wood, " Egrub," " Brawn." Mrs. G. E. Church must be especially commended for a daring essay in autobiography, which began with a quota,. tion from the Competition page : Mrs. G. E. Church nearly won a third share . . . . " and managed to repeat the personal note later on with a reference to " Mother Church."

The prize goes to Miss Alice W. Knight, for her "Lord Beaverbrook : an Authentic Biography," a provocative and outspoken analysis which throws valuable new light on the man's career. I am only sorry that I have not space to print more than one of the runners-up.

THE PRIZEWINNING ENTRY.

LORD BEAVERBROOK, AN AUTHENTIC BIOGRAPHY.

He was born in 1625 (and there is certainly in Scotland a strong tradition, not inherently impossible, that he was born at Fortingall in Glenlyon) when he gave the last of his three Rhodes lectures on his theory of Relativity to the editor of the Spectator. But he went further than that. For good reasons or bad he was on the House Committee of three most epicurean London clubs, pushing most of his competitors out. Having actively liked or been impressed by five out of every six novels presented to him while sheltering from a summer snowstorm on a Surrey golf course, he gives us an account of the prospects of Humanism. Within thirty-six pages he gives us a picture of Chaucer's England, glances at the haggis in its wild state and makes it throb like a lyre. The writer of this book which tortures but does not kill, attracted the attention of the discerning, including even the smaller fresh-water crayfish. He tells of life in Sing Sing prison, helping to solve the mystery of the weather, with his feet on a hot-water bottle. He mentions, too, more civilized things. First there are his spots (for all save one or two hard cases seem to have suffered from it) and several other useful by-products—little French girls in gingham frocks sitting plumply on the water in domestic twos and threes trapping wild animals for fur, away from the hotel so as not to disturb the grown-ups. This most useful little book contains practical experience and food for beasts and poultry, but there is no gold wherewith to buy it. Sir William Morris, the great industrialist, a charming but bibulous crony of his, employed in the Mint melting down base money, hit the nail on the head when he declared " He is driving a pickle sheep to the fank." Thus he would end, as he began, in Scotland for which mercy the Lord be praised.—ALICE W. KNIGHT, Kentdale, Skelton Road, York.

HONOURABLY MENTIONED.

The great mass of more highly educated men and women to-day have in reality little significance. They would already have ousted the cow in parts of Africa if they had been a little more prolific; while, quite apart from that possibility, they are, in fact, everything they ought not to be—ugly, useless, dirty and easily broken. But a beneficent change begins to be seen. At this moment an expedition is seated on the top of Greenland, absolutely isolated, in darkness and intense cold, some bathing, some sitting up on platforms in trees. The principle of the thing is sound, and the accommodation adequate without being luxurious. They are tied on with bows and ends of ribbon, green, pink and blue. Denied by this stratagem that secure purchase which is so essential to their habit of sleeping upside down, they have done a good deal, and although they had drawn large sums of accumulated pay, few attempted to purchase their freedom. This was due in great measure to the pertinacious idealism of Lord Meath. As late as March 1914 he defended his system in these remarkable terms Do not attack the bats with shot-guns. Remember that wherever you are staying there may be an excellent golf-course near by. If there is any ground for criticism, bob suddenly and disappear. He was ultimately dis- covered in a distant bunker, with his feet on a hot-water bottle. They are of enormous size and are covered with carving—a pheno- menon just as remarkable, when you come to think of it, as flying- fish. I have already seen from trains more than one having some- thing of the charm of a formal garden. It is a big field ; and even as we write the economic laws are acting surely and asking them- selves, everyone, the final riddle of progress : " Where do we go from here ? " If they can, by all means let them, and let us all exert every effort to help.—Miss E. S. Rrrcam, 1 Arboretum Road, Edinburgh.