CURRENT ISSUE OF ADVOCATE

The present board of editors of the Advocate continues to show uncommon enterprise and no small amount of journalistic instinct. The current issue may not represent a type which we should like to see become permanent, but is what the ready-made clothing advertisements mean by "different", when they write the word in quotation marks. It has two articles which especially show that the editors are wide-awake. One is an allegory on Harvard College by Benjamin Franklin, which is as far from flattering as it is near the truth as to the conditions of our own day. The other is a plea for the study of Spanish in the United States by Professor Altamira of Oviedo, concise and to the point.

Editorials Discussed.

But this reviewer confesses to a greater interest in the work of undergraduate writers in College journals than in such entirely justifiable feats of editorial sagacity as these. This number, however, has little to satisfy his taste except a vigorous editorial on the need of greater individualism among undergraduates. Time was, and not so long ago, when we considered Harvard individualistic to a fault: It is to be hoped that the writer of this article overestimates the necessity for his plea. We echo heartily the arguments for the establishment of an open Forum in the Union, and await its initiation with impatience. The suggestion for a change in the plans for the Widener library might have value if it were expressed intelligibly.

More Adequate Reporting of Lectures.

The bulk of the number consists of book reviews, and no one wants to read a review of reviews. These notices are on the whole very well done, and the selection of the books to be criticized is good. One thing of some importance they prove: that there are in College numbers of students capable of giving an admirable summary of a book or an argument. This being so, why can we not have more adequate reporting of the special lectures given so frequently in the University? Writing in the CRIMSON, I ask the question with some sense of delicacy; but a comparison of the report of Professor Palmer's Ingersoll lecture the day after it was delivered with the account of it in the present issue will show why it is asked. Our various papers taken together might be expected to form a fairly comprehensive record of our activities and interests; but on the evidence they furnish how can posterity ever guess that there are those among us who regard that brilliant and exalted interpretation of "Intimations of Immortality in the Sonnets of Shakspere" as comparable in importance with the winning of the Yale game?