Editorials of Current Advocate Timely, Sane, and Well Expressed

One thing is unusual, and faintly hopeful, about the latest Advocate: the editorials are the best part of it. They are brief, timely, pointed, sane, and well expressed. There is a letter from the former president, now at Yaphank, which is frank and entertaining. There is a short poem by Mr. Cowley, whose work always shows intelligence and distinction. There is some incontrovertible wisdom on the war by Mr. C. MacVeagh. And that is about all that one can find to praise.

Mr. Bacon, who contributes two sketches, is lively, direct, at times imaginative, but he has not yet developed a sense of form, and he seems to waver between realism and "reelism," unable to decide whether to take himself seriously or to parody his own style.

He, at least, has become aware that there is a war going on; some of his colleagues are still in the '90's. Mr. Davis signs a story which looks as if it had been written for a Christmas number some 25 years ago, found lacking in seasonable cheer, and consigned to the bottom drawer, whence it had suddenly and mysteriously risen. It describes the struggles of a brave little woman, and ends, "Then quietly, she walked out into the night." One is consoled by the knowledge that she couldn't possibly walk out anywhere into the night without running into bevies of distressed females shown the same dark door by earlier Advocate editors in their concluding paragraphs.

There is an echo of a still remoter past in one of the contributions of Mr. Jayne, who really ought to stick to verse if he can't write decent prose. Here is a specimen that the late A. S. Hill should have lived to study: "It is not so much a respect for obtaining these rhymes that we feel, but rather that he is able to work them into a poem so facilely." This gem adorns an essay on "The Inimitable Ingoldsby Legends." Eventually, we foresee, Mr. Jayne will get round to the works of W. S. Gilbert.

The boys have been reading, which is a good sign; one of them has been reading a real, modern, Russian novel, and enthusiastically reviews "The Bracelet of Garnets." A mere review is not enough for Mr. La Farge, who, under cover of Lowes Dickinson's heavy artillery, dauntlessly assaults the Catholic Church in America and all the other churches in America. Unfortunately he has not reconnoitered the enemy's position; he knows very little about Protestant theology, and less, if anything, about Catholic theology, discipline, education, or policy. Nor has he waited for ammunition; he has not even facts enough to fill one small hand-grenade, so all he can hurl at the ecclesiastical trenches is denunciation. He dies bravely, well outside the unbreached entanglements.

There must still be undergraduates who not only read but think, and express their thoughts in simple, clear and forceful language. It cannot be that all the men who think have gone to the war, or, going, are treasuring their thoughts for slim posthumous volumes of the now familiar type. If things worth printing are still written in Cambridge, the Advocate editors still fail, after all the scolding they have been given of late, to lay eager hands upon the desirable manuscripts. With the Monthly eliminated, the Advocate ought to be able to get all of the best that Harvard produces. Something drastic must be done: why not begin by raiding the pigeon-holes in No. 15 Hollis Hall?