Advocate Lean But Interesting

Do the Advocate grinders cease because they are few, or is there some cogent reason why the current issue is so destitute of contents? Besides the editorials and book review but five small contributions in verse and one in prose make up the number, which is meagre indeed when one recalls past Advocates of five and six pieces and thirteen or fourteen contributions in verse. However, it is not of quantity that we ought to judge, or are to judge, but of quality,--quantum meruit.

The editor's plea: a college education through the channels of wisdom, can reveal to the Born Criminal that he was made for better things--is well written and well worked out, but perhaps a trifle inconsistently. "New Opportunity in Old Lands," urging Harvard men to reap the harvests in Europe after the war, is deserving of praise, though the matter is bromidic. Mr. Cowley's comments on McFee's "Casuals of the Sea" are keen and to the point; he seems to have a grasp of the essentials of a good review.

The one and only story in the number is "A Literary Love Affair," by Mr. Rollins, who has dashed off eight full pages of love and adventure--or rather, a lapse of love and misadventure--absorbing all but three pages of the number. The plot is good and moves along well, but the style is not workmanlike. The piece is too long for its substance; it impresses one as being "padded," as though the writer had incorporated unimportant incidents merely to please his fancy or give his descriptive powers a fling. The ending is a trifle unintelligible, being either so obvious as to utterly shake the foundation of the plot and the action, or so enigmatical as to totally mystify. However, to the question: does the story hold the interest throughout? The answer must be in the affirmative, and that, after all, is what we want.

Of the poems Mr. Norris contributes two: "At the Window" and "Tryst." The latter, a musical, romantic, little piece, is quite excellent; the former is not so good; Mr. Norris lets his penchant for the pictorial run away with him. It is true he speaks no more of the sea as "an enchanted moan," but allows the moon to shine brightly on a snowy hill above which is a black sky. Nevertheless, a pretty movement runs throughout, the idea is splendid, and the verses are well finished.

Mr. MacVeagh's "In Time of Hesitation" is well formed but vague in substance. It is apparently an accusation of America standing by while Europe fights, thereby refusing the "burden of the years." It is a little difficult to ascertain just what is meant by that. America is also pictured as "battening on corpses," which scarcely seems to justify the allegation that she is thereby inclining to disgusting obesity.

"To Venice Unseen" is an offering by Mr. Kloeber, imaginative and exaggerated, as "the silver night"; why not perhaps (when the moon is not shining) a qualification, as in Milton's "Comus": "Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud Turn forth her silver lining on the night."

Mr. Hillyer's "Out of Lucretius" is very good; simple, rhythmical and well finished.

It is too bad that there is not more of this Advocate; the contributions are good, very good, but frankly they are not of that extremely high order (seldom reached in an undergraduate publication) which they must needs be if they are to recompense for deficiencies in quantity.

Bacon said, "Reading maketh a full man"--the Advocate should beware how it may increase its bulk, for, in an issue like the present, "padding" with "ads" would be like offering a supply of tooth-picks to a starving nation.