NEW ADVOCATE SHOWS "GAIN IN VITALITY"

Not many months ago, being asked to review the Advocate, I took the occasion to inquire why it is that so many college literary periodicals are pale and bloodless things, and expressed the opinion that the Advocate suffered from not being edited and written for the sake of its readers. My contention was that the magazine was too often a collection of themes written for the composition courses and later embalmed in print.

Since then, the present editors of the Advocate have already shown that they combine journalistic enterprise with literary craftsmanship by bringing out their burlesque Atlantic Monthly. It was to be expected, therefore, that the current number would show a clear gain in vitality and readability over the Advocates of last winter. This it does.

In the current number, obviously with the undergraduate reader in mind, the editors have inserted three articles on the spring major sports. Mr. Buttrick writes a discriminating little piece on the prospects of the baseball team. Mr. Weeks regales us with genially grotesque tales of rowing at Harvard, past and present. O. L. F. submits a comparatively commonplace review of the track season. The articles, to be sure, are not extraordinary; there is little in them that you can get your teeth into; little that would be likely to start a discussion at a club table. Nevertheless the touch of journalism in the Advocate is to be welcomed; not because it is better to write about athletics than about books,--for it isn't,--but because the inclusion of articles on athletics saves the magazine from suggesting a sort of album in which themes of distinction are placed on display for the edification of specialists in English composition.

Not that the rest of the number is mediocre. The book reviews are among the keenest that have been seen in any undergraduate publication for a long time. If O. F. L. is Mr. La Farge, it must be said that his story called "Tehan" is about five times as lively as his disquisition on track athletics. "Tehan" is romantic without being sappy, and Mr. La Farge has a style of his own without being mannered. Mr. Brady's Union prize essay reads, to be sure, rather like a prize essay, but it is an excellent one at that.

Of the poems, my own taste prefers Mr. Sedgwick's sonnet, which is far superior to the average run of Advocate poetry--of the recent past at any rate; and if Mr. Dobson's maintained for its will fourteen lines the swing and dash of its second quatrain, it too would deserve a place in the same high class.

One final word: what was the idea of running that brisk little descriptive piece called "A Sunday Afternoon" at the head of the editorial page