At all times after the first announcement the Einstein Editor had a heavy correspondence; but the first real evidence that the contest was under way came with the arrival of the first essay, which wandered into our office in the middle of September. About a week later they began to filter in at the rate of one or two per day—mostly from foreign contestants who were taking no chances on the mails. Heavy returns did not commence until about ten days before the closing date. The great avalanche, however, was reserved for the morning of Monday, November 1st. Here we had the benefit of three days’ mail; there were about 120 essays. Among those which were thrown out on the ground of lateness the honors should no doubt go to the man who mailed his offering in The Hague on October 31st.
Essays were received in greater quantity from Germany than from any other foreign country, doubtless because of the staggering value of $5,000 when converted into marks at late 1920 rates. England stood next on the list; and one or more essays were received from Austria, Czechoslovakia, Jugoslavia, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, Chile, Cuba, Mexico, India, Jamaica, South Africa and the Fiji Islands. Canada, of course, contributed her fair share; and few of our own states were missing on the roll-call.
The general level of English composition among the essays from non-English-speaking sources was about what might have been expected. A man may have a thorough utilitarian knowledge of a foreign tongue, but when he attempts intensive literary competition with a man who was brought up in that tongue he is at a disadvantage. We read French and German with ease and Spanish and Italian without too much difficulty, ourselves; we should never undertake serious writing in any of these languages. Not many of the foreign contributions, of course, were as ludicrous as the one we quote to some extent in our concluding chapter, but most of them were distinctly below par as literary compositions. Drs. De Sitter and Schlick were the notable exceptions to this; both showed the ability to compete on a footing of absolute equality with the best of the native product.
We dare say it was a foregone conclusion that many essays should have been over the limit, and that a few should have been over it to the point of absurdity. The winning essay contains 2,919 words, plus or minus a reasonable allowance for error in counting; that it should come so far from being on the ragged edge should be sufficient answer to those who protested against the severity of the limitation. One inquirer, by the way, wanted to know if 3,000 words was not a misprint for 30,000. Another contestant suggested that instead of disqualifying any essay that was over the line, we amputate the superfluous words at the end. This was a plausible enough suggestion, since any essay able to compete after such amputation must necessarily have been one of extreme worth; but fortunately we did not have to decide whether we should follow the scheme. Perhaps twenty of the essays submitted were so seriously in excess of the limit that it was not even necessary to count their words in detail; most of these offenders ran to 3,500 words or thereabouts, and one—a good one, too, from which we use a good deal of material in this volume—actually had 4,700. On the other extreme were a few competitors who seemed to think that the shortest essay was necessarily the best, and who tried to dismiss the subject with 500 or 1,000 words.
By a curious trick of chance there were submitted in competition for the prize exactly 300 essays. Of course a few of these did not require serious consideration—this is inevitable in a contest of such magnitude. But after excluding all the essays that were admittedly not about the Einstein theories at all, and all those whose English was so execrable as to make them quite out of the question, and all those which took the subject so lightly as not to write reasonably close to the limit of 3,000 words, and all those which were given over to explanation of the manner in which Einstein’s theories verify those of the writer, and all those in which the writer attempted to substitute his own cosmic scheme for Einstein’s—after all this, there remained some 275 essays which were serious efforts to explain in simple terms the nature and content and consequences of Special and General Relativity.
Looking for the Winner
The Einstein Editor was in sufficiently close touch with the details of the adjudication of the essays to have every realization of the difficulty of this work. The caliber of the essays submitted was on the whole high. There were many which would have been well worthy of the prize in the absence of others that were distinctly better—many which it was not possible to eliminate on the ground of specific faults, and which could only be adjudged “not the best” by detailed comparison with specific other essays. It was this detailed comparison which took time, and which so delayed the award that we were not able to publish the winning essay any sooner than February 5th. Especially difficult was this process of elimination after the number of surviving essays had been reduced to twenty or less. The advantages of plan possessed by one essay had to be weighed against those of execution exhibited in another. A certain essay had to be critically compared with another so like it in plan that the two might have been written from a common outline, and at the same time with a third as unlike it in scope and content as day and night. And all the time there was present in the background the consciousness that a prize of $5,000 hung upon the decision to be reached. For anyone who regards this as an easy task we have no worse wish than that he may some day have to attack a similar one.
We had anticipated that the bulk of the superior essays would be among those received during the last day or two of the contest; for we felt that the men best equipped to attack the subject would be the most impressed with its seriousness. Here we were quite off the track. The seventeen essays which withstood most stubbornly the Judges’ efforts at elimination were, in order of receipt, numbers 8, 18, 28, 40, 41, 43, 92, 95, 97, 130, 181, 194, 198, 223, 267, 270, 275: a fairly even distribution. The winner was the 92nd essay received.
The Judges held their final meeting in the editorial office on January 18, 1921. The four essays which were before the committee at the start of the session were speedily cut to three, and then to two; and after an all-day session the Judges found themselves conscientiously able to agree on one of these as the best. This unanimity was especially gratifying, the more so since it by no means was to be confidently expected, on a priori grounds, that it would be possible of attainment. Even the Einstein Editor, who might have been called upon for a final decision but wasn’t, can hardly be classed as a dissenter; for with some slight mental reservations in favor of the essay by Mr. Francis which did not enter the Judges’ final discussion at all, and which he rather suspects appeals more to his personal taste than to his soundest judgment, he is entirely in accord with the verdict rendered.