PRAISES COMPLETENESS OF FRESHMAN RED BOOK

The first impression given by the fourteenth Freshman Red Book is one of monumental completeness. The book includes an admirably thorough record of every phase of the life of the class of 1926, all the more thorough because of the speed with which it has been put through the press. It contains accounts of a baseball game and track meet held as late as May 5, and was printed, bound, and ready for distribution less than a month later.

In general, the tradition of past years has been well maintained. Like other Red Books, this one is chiefly a picture gallery, including photographs of individual members of the class, group photographs of teams, committees, and other organizations, and characteristic views of men, events, and places connected with Freshman life. The accounts of sports and activities are in the main, thoughtfully planned and ably written: the closing section on "The Freshman Year" is a particularly graphic piece of composition.

Two Chief Criticisms

Two criticisms seem to be called for. The first is general. Although many of the line cuts, such as the unsigned comic heading for the contents on page 4, are cleverly executed, on the whole the drawings are amateurish, and some are conspicuously inadequate. The reviewer is plunged into gloom by the dismal title page which introduces him to the subject of scholarships (page 237), and the headings for pages 194 and 198 are clumsily drawn. Not that artistic talent is unusually lacking in the class of 1926, for on the whole the cuts in this book are at least as effective as those of earlier years. The question would seem to be whether any class is likely to be able to muster enough competent artists to make line drawings a successful feature of the Red Book. Why not dodge the difficulty and save space and expense by omitting drawings from future Red Books or at least reducing their number?

The "Prep School" Tinge

The other criticism is specific. The pictures of class leaders on page 236, with their nicknames surrounded by quotes ("Dolph", "Soapy", etc.) look as if they were intended for a high-school annual. In every other respect the Red Book fully lives up to the Harvard tradition of dignity and maturity. That tradition is founded on the assumption that college undergraduates are men, not schoolboys, and it is worth maintaining on every page of such a publication.

On the whole, however, Mr. Billings and his associates of the Red Book Board are to be congratulated. Their exhaustive record of the year, skillfully written and attractively made up and printed, should prove useful to the members of the class of 1926 throughout their college course and thereafter.