Cheerfulness Dominant Strain of Current Graduates' Magazine

Cheerfulness is a virtue ordinarily so difficult of achievement in these days that the editor of the Graduates' Magazine must be congratulated on the optimistic tone of the March number. The note is struck in Mr. Wister's sketch of the late Evert Jansen Wendell, in which the great-hearted "perpetual undergraduate" is depicted wart and all. The secret of Wendell's personality was an abiding youthfulness or, to use Mr. Wister's phrase, an innocence that "never shrank from its full original stature." Like all youths he was swept ahead by enthusiasms, sometimes to the detriment of social conventions. Athletics, work with the boys of New York, club life, enlarging his theatre collection, amateur dramatics, music, his final trip to France last summer, represent but a few of the many outlets for his superabundant energy. Behind everything towered his love for Harvard and all its concerns. It will be strange not to see him henceforward in the Stadium on Class Day, leading the cheers for the College, the class, and the ladies.

Two other graduates who preserved in later life the vigorous enthusiasm of youth are noticed at some length in the Book Reviews,--John Fiske and Edward Everett Hale. As figures in our national literature, they are fairly well known to the public at large; these reviews will perform a useful function in enticing readers to the bulky biographies recently issued. Yesterday seems so far away that one is grateful for these accounts of latter-day giants.

Graduates interested in the College as an institution will probably attach greatest importance to the articles by our French visitors,--"Harvard Revisited," by Professor Cestre, and "Impressions d'un Instructeur Militaire Francais," by Lieutenant Morize. The former discovers that in spite of the physical changes to be expected during his 20 years' absence, Harvard has preserved its most characteristic features, both in its appearance and in its social life. But he also finds at work a new spirit, leading away from the mechanical German methods of literary study towards the French academic standard which inculcates respect for the human in man. His fellow-countryman, confining his attention to the undergraduate, finds our young men animated by a great loyalty of spirit, an absolute confidence in a favorite instructor, which argues well for the morale of our new army. He finds, more-over, an almost exaggerated eagerness for exactness and precision in details, which he traces to four causes: an extraordinary and admirable thirst for knowledge, the predominance of early specialization over general culture, an absence of the critical spirit, and a love for the tangible and concrete, for what can be immediately utilized.

The Hon. Nathan Matthews discusses the legal aspects and the educational results of the Harvard-Technology decision, and on a later page the legal document itself is reproduced. The feeling that, after all, the University is in even more healthful a condition than could be expected is borne out by Professor Munro's report of the winter term, especially by his paragraph on "College standards in war-time."

Two aspects of the war are discussed, the one by Professor Whipple in "What of Russia After the War?" and the other by Mr. Grant on "England, America, and College Men." Mr. Whipple prudently dates his article January, 1918; at that time, at least, he was convinced of the permanence of the Republic and hopeful for its development. Mr. Grant's long residence in England makes him a trust worthy interpreter of the English point of view; his advice ought to go far to-wards establishing instant cordiality between English and American officers.