UNDERGRADUATE REVIEWS BEST?

In the last number of the Advocate, "there is nothing," as we might have said in the eighteenth century, "that could be construed by the nicest reader into a trespass upon the rules of decorum." There is nothing--story, verses, or editorial article--that would not deserve, at least a satisfactory grade if offered in an English course in Harvard University. In these respects the number is superior to many of the magazines with brilliant covers that you may buy for fifteen cents in the stations of the Cambridge Subway. To the present reviewer, also, this Advocate is quite as interesting as such many-colored magazines as he has occasionally happened to buy.

The initial article sets forth the aims of the new editorial board, and they are sensible aims. Without being reactionary, the editors mean to be sanely conservative. They most wisely believe that the readers of the Advocate wish above all else to be interested. They advise writers, in order to interest, to seek material in that "field of experience which stands at the back and call of the average undergraduate." This, by the way, is the least "conservative" use of figurative language in the present Advocate which the reviewer has noted.

There follows bits of verse of varying merit by Messrs. Willcox, Sanger, Barlow, Whistler, and Murdock; an article on "Harvard and the Public Eye," by Mr. K. B. Murdock; and pieces of fiction by Messrs. J. W. Walcott, O. D. Douglas, and H. Jackson, Jr. In "Harvard and the Public Eye," Mr. Murdock, who seems to stand in great awe of the "Century"--he calls it the 'majestic' "Century"--points out the futility of trying to arrive at general conclusions about Harvard, unless one knows Harvard life thoroughly. In "The Treasure of Carvaernon" (the name in the story itself is spelled Carvaeron), Mr. Walcott gives us a good old-fashioned "Gothic" tale, with secret door, mysterious staircase, damp, dark passage, etc., etc., even to the coincidence which brings the final disaster just at the right moment to catch the characters in the story. Mr. Jackson's "Point of View" is a short, vivid, and fairly amusing sketch of Western life. "Paraffine Percy," by Mr. Douglas, is the one piece of real distinction in the number. Even this would be better--nonsense though it is--if the ending were stronger. The laws of climax apply just as much to nonsense as to any other kind of writing.

If all this seems damning with faint praise, the trouble is not so much with the Advocate as with the reviewer. For such work he, like all his colleagues, is too old. College papers are written by undergraduates to be read by undergraduates. Are not undergraduates the best people to review them? Any officer of the College, even "the young assistant," must have a point of view so different from that of undergraduates that to him the most conspicuous trait of undergraduate publications is likely to be youth. Now we may all, like the middle-aged teller of Mr. Conrad's glorious story of "Youth," wish the enthusiasms of that rosy age back again; but we are aware that in artistic performance, extreme youth is seldom capable of the highest achievement. For such weaknesses as appear in the present Advocate, youth is chiefly responsible.

But this is not to say that it is a weak number. From beginning to end it is distinctly the work of gentlemen who show a commendable, even if somewhat immaturely executed, endeavor to write English worthy of our best traditions. All of us at Harvard may feel justifiable pride in the fact that in these days of so much debased printed English, the young men who edit our college papers keep to standards of literary dignity.