Review of the March Monthly

The current number of the Monthly opens with a vigorous article by Alexander Forbes '04 on one aspect of the ever-present athletic question. The writer's main point is that, in abandoning the English attitude of "sport for sport's sake," American college athletes have not degraded but have elevated athletics, turning them to a moral discipline which study or mere play fails to afford. He is remarkably candid in admitting the moral evils in the present condition of football; but his argument fails to convince the reviewer mainly because it ignores the contrast between the widespread demoralization caused by the admitted evils and the narrow scope of the advantages, limited as they are to the handful of men who play in the great games. An editorial on the same theme supports Mr. Forbes's argument, quoting in defence President Roosevelt's somewhat illogical utterance in his recent speech in the Union, and attempting a reply to Professor Francke's criticism. But a discussion of the differences between German and American universities does not affect Professor Francke's main point, that President Roosevelt was not justified in assuming that the intercollegiate element in athletics is essential to the achieving of those results in manliness, courage, and physical fitness, the desirability which no one denies.

Of the two stories in the number, G. Emerson's "Fantoccini" succeeds in working the reader up to a pretty pitch of suspense, and comes near avoiding altogether the anti-climax which one has come to anticipate in tales of horror; while L. Grandgent's "The Everlasting Hills," after a highly conventional Class-Day opening, develops in a more original fashion; and only needed more space and a somewhat subtler analysis to be a psychological study of more than average interest. The critic of Alfred Noyes displays most of the vices of immature criticism: a lack of discernible method, a tendency merely to make phrases out of the well-worn vocabulary of current criticism, and a need to consider more curiously what, if anything, his words mean. Take these sentences: "An auster jealousy best defines the attitude towards his nurse. In proportion as this revelation grows upon him, Mr. Noyes will triumphantly breast the temptations of 'recherche' work and the weak offences that mar the early flights of budding poets." Ten minutes of hard meditation on these words will help their writer to avoid "the weak offences that mar the early flights of budding" critics, if one may adapt some of his superabundant metaphor. Moreover, let him forswear for a year the word "muse."

In "Through the Portals of Mohammed," "Arminius" sustains astonishingly the level of those interpretations but entertaining "Travel Papers," which have been a feature of the Monthly this winter; and J. L. Price collects some quaint passages from the College Records of the period of the Revolution.

There are five poems: a "Villanelle," by C. E. Whitmore, which has the usual characteristics of a villanelle; "Illusion" by J. H. Wheelock, which gives one the impression of having appeared in the Monthly at intervals for years; "I Craved for that Lost Twilght by the Sea," by W. H. Wright, the unreality of which keeps it from being as mysterious and improper as one fears it was meant to be; "A Lover to his Too Docile Lady," three neatly turned stanzas on a conventional theme; and, finally, the somewhat ambitious "Sea Lovers" of H. Hagedorn, Jr. This last piece has passages, which, in spite of some tantalizing obscurity, show a quite remarkable control of blank verse and a simulation of emotion so successful as almost to make one believe in it.

Additional editorials play a graceful tribute to Professor James, and tease the Sophomores over the question of class butoons. A review of Stephen Phillips's "Nero" will certainly make the poet wish he hadn't written it.