Serious Tone Pervades Monthly

Thoughtful seriousness pervades the current issue of The Harvard Monthly. The editors mean very well, although commendation of this sort may seem to such earnest young men wholly frivolous; yet the earnestness of their expression testifies to the activity of their minds, and the fruit of their labors deserves a blessing.

Mr. Wright provides a surprise when on the first page we find him presenting us with "A Note on Pagan Morals." We half expect an uncompromising attack or even an apology for the ancient and mythical man of straw, who is supposed to reign in Harvard square, with zones of influence extending far up Brattle street and as far down as the dens of Boylston Hall,--the demon of irreligion. But what Mr. Wright gives us is a colorful web of reminiscence and meditation. He pleads for a creed of spiritual temperance, of purity and discipline, for the sake of the aesthetic satisfaction to be derived from such a view. This he calls the pagan morality, and such it is if Francis Thompson is the authentic model of Catholicism and Cotton Mather of non-Catholic Christianity. But may it not here be the signs of a growth in wisdom, the accumulation of maturing years? Besides, poets are notoriously poor philosophers; even Dante has been suspected of heresy for placing Siger de Brabant in Paradise. And so Mr. Wright would beatify his "fair Pagan." "For he who going through life, embraces virtue like a friend--he it is who attains to the Perfect City and the Happy Islands."

Mr. Cummings monopolizes pages eight and nine with a ballad and a sonnet. Literary self-consciousness is too apparent here. In the sonnet, especially, the Brunswick Lion, as we see him in front of the Germanic Museum, is not an extremely happy image with which to conclude verse.

Pacifism seems to loom large in the Monthly Sanctum. Mr. McComb first tells us what it means. He dares valiantly in the short space he consumes, but he is certainly talking at cross-purposes with such agitators as Mr. Roosevelt when he can admit no alternatives between the "noble and exalted spirit of China," and what Mr. Mitchell in an editorial calls "the neurotic visions of a discredited Bernhardi." Historians might be inclined to doubt, also, if reason were the sole efficient cause by which the present harmonious arrangements were achieved "in the spheres of trade, religious beliefs and domestic politics."

Mr. Dos Passos has an interesting impression of a meeting of the Salvation Army on a street corner. Even with the glorious liberty which his verse allows, must he resort to such rhymes as "tune" and "importune"? A short, vivid tale by Mr. H. S. Rogers, however, tells an old story and tells it well. Anonymity shields the author of "The Young Faun," who depicts not merely an afternoon, but several of the last mornings and evenings of the wild creature's life. "Shoes of Unity" is the name Mr. Littell gives his composition which, in spite of some harsh transpositions and prose lines that mar his attempt at simplicity, is a good work.

When we reach the editorials at the end of the magazine, we again hear echoes of the intellectual battles fought in the Monthly Sanctum over peace of no peace. Mr. F. D. Perkins first complains, however, of the inhumanity of instructing man to undergraduate man, and challenges, "Is this impersonal and terrifying attitude necessary? Would not a little sympathy and human feeling show more clearly a student's ability?" A. K. McC. reviews "The World Decision" by Robert Herrick, but the secretary prefaces the review with a note of warning. What Mr. Dos Passos says constitutes a sound reply to his fellow-editor, Mr. McComb, on a preceding page. A. K. McC., whom we suspect to be this very Mr. McComb, even says, combatting the work of Mr. Herrick, "We know that trade is continuing between Italy and Germany. Let it continue by all means. Every little thing which still binds an agonized Europe should be preserved." But it may be that the little things that Germany receives from Italy are contributing more to agony than to bonds.

The last editorial is, with the contribution of Mr. Wright, the most interesting reading in this issue. The editor-in-chief says: "If the Monthly could do anything, no matter how apparently insignificant, toward inducing only the men here at college to pay some attention to the really worth while thought that present conditions are occasioning, it would think the time--and the space--well spent. Of course, behind all exhortation and chatter lurks the doubt if young men--and especially young men in college--are really interested in what the world is doing."

Yes, Mr. Mitchell's doubt, hampered by the defects of an editor's point of view, weighed down with the responsibilities of circulation and making up his issues, is probably justified. He concludes by asking, "To put things plainly: don't we like a boxing match better than Lowes-Dickinson?" This question is as bad as the uneasy choice which Mr. McCombs offered us between militarism and pacifism. Some of us like good boxing matches and find it not inconsistent with a fondness for stimulating lectures or reading. Compared with most professional boxing-matches, the meet at the Union a short time ago deserved the interest of Harvard men just as surely as this issue of The Harvard Monthly deserves our attention in competition with Hearst's Magazine.