PRESENT ADVOCATE EXTENDS SCOPE TO NATIONAL AFFAIRS

Below is a special review of the present Advocate, written for the CRIMSON by Chandler R. Post, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Greek and Fine Arts at the University:

The most significant characteristic of the present number of the Advocate is the close relation of a large part of its contents to the world outside the University and to the questions that confront our own country. This attitude is part of a general salutary tendency that has recently manifested itself at Harvard to bring the academic existence into more vital touch with public interests. The tendency is to be discerned in many phases of the University's life, in the activities of the many different societies of students as well as in the nature of the instruction given in the courses. The 47 Workshop (recent productions of which are criticized in the Advocate with more display of the reviewer's cleverness than with any advantage to the seeker after information) has become a real factor in American drama. The editorials and letters in the CRIMSON no longer concern themselves merely with such topics as the sad condition of the shower baths in the Gymnasium or the propriety of a Senior greeting every other member of the class; they have broadened their scope to include useful contributions to matters of more general import. Whether one approves or not, it is symptomatic that even the Lampoon has lately turned its humor into the channels of propaganda against radicalism.

Wider Range Than the College Yard.

Examples might be multiplied, and one of them would be this number of the Advocate. Its editorials also have a wider range than the College Yard. The best of them on Labor in Politics is a good piece of sane and careful thought; the paragraphs on political ferment at Harvard and on prohibition are more in the manner of the Transcript's frequent badinage. The conservatives may read with misgivings the plea for liberalizing our curriculum still further through introducing a course on Hamlet by Forbes Robertson, with histrionic demonstrations of the lectures; but it must be remembered that Columbia has long since stolen a march upon us by establishing a course on the "movies." The articles on the "Reconstruction of a Cripple" views one of the problems of the present day, the re-education of the disabled soldier, from the new and important angle of the treatment of his morale. The author is less felicitous in the rather vague and inadequate solution that he suggests than in describing the various stages of psychological depression, where he writes with more conviction and vividness, evidently from personal experience. The unacademic note is distinctly and pleasantly struck again in the well managed dialect and lingering atmosphere of the trenches in the story entitled "Aiming at Auntie," another of the "Billet Ballads." It is not only the tantalizing moment at which this first part of the tale ends that makes the reader look eagerly forward to the continuation in a subsequent number. Curiously enough, one of the books reviewed, "Peter Kindred,' by Robert Nathan, takes up the very theme of the application, after graduation, of principles learned at Harvard. In the other review, Mr. Damon discusses with admirable critical acumen and clarity Amy Lowell's "Pictures of the Floating World."

The most promising bit of work is Mr. Low's story, "Coudreaux." It has obvious faults of immaturity, such as the attempt to treat in so few pages a profound and powerful motive in which much depends upon thorough characterization; but its author reveals an embryonic skill in tense narrative and a frequent combination of force with stylistic sobriety which imply that he has studied the best French raconteurs, especially De Maupassant. The greater part of the verse is vitiated by the common modern misconception that poetry is more a matter of highly colored language or of vapory obscurities than of imaginative exaltation or sincerity of feeling. An agreeable exception is embodied in Mr. Windsor's stanzas "To Arabella," which have a simplicity and a movement that are almost Elizabethan.