order to draw out the torso and tail of a story through Procrustean
lengths of advertising pages, some editors place, or seem to place, a
premium upon length. The writer, with an eye to acceptance by these
editors, consciously or unconsciously pads his matter, giving a
semblance of substance where substance is not. Many stories fall below
first rank in the opinion of the Committee through failure to achieve
by artistic economy the desired end. The comment "Overwritten"
appeared again and again on the margins of such stories. The reverse
of this policy, as practised by other editors, is that of chopping the
tail or, worse, of cutting out sections from the body of the
narrative, then roughly piecing together the parts to fit a smaller
space determined by some expediency. Under the observation of the
Committee have fallen a number of stories patently cut for space
accommodation. Too free use of editorial blue pencil and scissors has
furnished occasion for protest among authors and for comment by the
press. For example, in _The Literary Review_ of _The New York Post_,
September 3, the leading article remarks, after granting it is a rare
script that cannot be improved by good editing, and after making
allowance for the physical law of limitation by space: "Surgery,
however, must not become decapitation or such a trimming of long ears
and projecting toes as savage tribes practise. It seems very probable
that by ruthless reshaping and hampering specifications in our
magazines, stories and articles have been seriously affected."
Further, "the passion for editorial cutting" is graphically
illustrated in The _Authors' League Bulletin_ for December (page 8) by
a mutilation of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.

Although, by the terms of the Memorial, the Committee were at liberty
to consider only stories by American authors, they could not but
observe the increasing number of races represented through authorship.