"TO BE OR NOT TO BE--"

The announcement that the Register will not be ready for distribution until after the Christmas holidays, comes as a great disappointment to those who have subscribed to it this year many of them on the verbal understanding that it would be delivered before the Yale game. Naturally enough the Register is of greatest value during the early months of the college year and mere business policy, if nothing else, would seem to dictate its publication as early as possible during that period. But the fact remains that this year, as more than once in the past, it has appeared at an unreasonably late date. Probably, as is the case with so many collegiate publications which become tardy in their date of publication, there are perfectly valid reasons for the delay; unfortunately that does not help the subscriber--nor, it may be added, the publisher.

If this were the first time that the Register had strayed from the straight and narrow path of promptness and efficiency, it would be cause for regret and nothing more. But it is not, for, in the past, the Register, for which the Student Council is generally and financially responsible, has often either lost money or appeared at a date which made it practically valueless. In the spring of 1922 its debt, after the receipts of the year, remained at $1100. In the college year of 1920-21, it did not appear until late in March.

To declare that the Register fulfills no useful purpose whatsoever, would be ridiculous. Undoubtedly it supplements the University Catalogue and Directory, the Senior Album and the Red Book: undoubtedly it is particularly valuable to the CRIMSON and to Boston hostesses. But to say this in its defense, is practically admission of the charge of uselessness. It is not a necessity but merely an added convenience.

Such, then, are the facts to be weighed on the profit and loss side of the ledger. The result is not favorable and it will be well for the Student Council, on whose shoulders the responsibility for the present situation lies, to ponder the advisability of continuing a publication for which it must be accountable but of which it cannot always be entirely proud, and which requires a great deal of labor but is of little intrinsic value.