THE ADVOCATE REVIEWED

The current number of the Harvard Advocate is avowedly athletic rather than literary. It has a sporting cover.

"whose hue, angry and brave

Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye"; and, except advertisements and new subjects for Advocate Prize Essays, it serves up nothing without an infusion of football--as if it would restore temperance by surfeiting, like a Keeley cure. It might well spare us "Statistics of Harvard Players." When a man plays football through one Freshman season and three Varsity seasons, we read his condensed biography seven times in the CRIMSON and become so accustomed to it that we do not need it in the Advocate. If the Advocate's example is followed by the Monthly, the Illustrated Magazine, the Lampoon, and the Musical Review, we may read the life-record of some future Captain Wendell twenty-two times and may become quite unable to exercise it.

Our present Captain Wendell, of whom a speaking likeness may be found on the cover, contributes "Harvard's 1912 Record", the most successful prose in the number. Making no pretensions to style, this brief history of the team is clear, businesslike, and, except for the self-effacement of the great player who wrote it, impartial. The anonymous "Review of the Yale Season" appears to be the carefully consecutive story of a team which the author does not overrate. The fiction, "Formation Z" and "Fussing the Game" presents in new combinations the never-failing elements of gridiron and girl. The short editorial article, though not nutritious, is harmless and pleasantly flavored.

One contribution, and only one, shows literary skill: Mr. T. S. Ross's "Tomlinson Junior, with apologies to all Kiplings" is a clever football parody in refreshingly good verse.

The number as a whole we may honestly like if we concede that, at this season, the pigskin is mightier than the pen.