WILD OATS

Notwithstanding the fact that the Olympian Advocate, in its current credo, sets itself up as something immortal, eternal, and--to use its own words--"perhaps" now stronger than ever before, one is inclined to agree with its formulation of a policy and to disagree with the sentiments of Mr. Aiken, who reviews the latest number. To be sure, the Advocate is once again on its high horse--in the Pegasian idiom. It smiles benevolently and condescendingly on the Lampoon and the CRIMSON, saying that the former "is mostly interested in making undergraduates laugh, a thing not difficult, though at times beyond its power"; and dismissing the latter as the mundane vehicle "for immediate and unimportant news of University life"; and remarking that the meat of both is "of the stuff easily digested by that wayward quantity known as the undergraduate mind." Such is life as viewed from it stable entirely surrounded by dormitories.

The Advocate's statement of its own situation is less subject to ridicule, for, after all, perusal of the magazine leads one to believe that, right or wrong, the publication has a definite standard and it conforms to that standard in practise as well as in theory. Mr. Aiken's objection is that the result of the Advocate's policy is a "half-hearted compromise." The results are very possibly disappointing, but if so the fault lies more with the editors than with their idea of how a college magazine should be run: they may be bungling the job, but they have a concrete idea as to what constitutes that job. The magazine for which Mr. Aiken pleads has put in its appearance in Cambridge this fall in the shape of The Hound and Horn. It very capably handles work of "literary distinction" and, moreover, it does not "play safe." On the whole it is much more efficient as the exponent of the intelligentsia than the Advocate ever was: its anonymous editors, in the safe security of an eminent advisory board, publish a magazine which accomplishes perfectly what it sets out to do. Certainly some such sort of periodical is necessary to round out the literary activities of the University: Mr. Aiken is undeniably correct on that point. And if The Bound and Horn had not seen the light one might see more justification of his criticism of the Advocate.

As matters stand, however, there is ample room for both efforts. The Advocate in stepping forth as the prophet of the bourgeoisie is neither prostituting its art nor breaking faith with its public assuming, of course, that it has a public. Its chief peril would appear to lie in its own self-satisfaction. If it is content to bask in its golden mean, to assume the dim splendor of a "quality magazine" without the proper material, then it is obviously on the decline. The conclusion of its platform hints that while decline is possible, utter extinction is unthinkable; other things, it appears, shall pass away, but the Advocate shall not pass away.