Forrest:
A number of them felt the par 5 may have tended to be a bit boring. I think one of them (I'll find it) said that specifically about par 5s but the others clearly implied it by the things they said about par 4s (as the ideal type hole and test of a golfer). Ross, Crump, Flynn made that implication pretty clearly.
But today it's interesting how some of those early architects looked at what we think of as par 5s.
Some, such as Tillinghast, who probably wrote as comprehensively about it as anyone didn't necessarily believe a par 5 hole should not always be unreachable if a par 5 but occasionally even he made the distinction that some should NEVER be reachable in two. Those par 5s were what they called the real "Three shotter"! Tillinghast even described the nature of the green design on that type hole to reinforce his point!
Flynn directly mentioned that a par 5 to him should not be reachable in two shots and clearly George Crump took that prescription to another more severe level by clearly stating that neither of his two PVGC par 5s should EVER be hit in two shots.
Matter of fact, Crump's clear concept for #15 went even further than that in that he conceived of a par 5 whose THIRD shot should be every bit as demanding as the second shot on a very long and difficult par 4!
Basically any error at all even from a good player and he was not supposed to reach #15 in three shots!!
Some might call a hole like that today "a slog" in strategic concept but that's clearly what he meant it to be--a real "Three shotter".
Today, I think we need to continually make some distinctions in the way they looked at things like this back then as opposed to the way we do today.
Architects such as Crump and maybe Flynn were more interested (on some courses) of what I'd call "shot testing" instead of what we think of today as "strategy".
We think of strategy today so much more of various ways and various options of accomplishing the same destination in the same amount of strokes. They didn't look at it so much that way. To them "strategy" involved "high demand shot testing", clearly more one dimensional than we think of today, and failing that the dropping of a shot (to par(?) or whatever) was the clear expectation for the golfer.