GIVE ME YESTERDAY

Last Saturday at the Phi Beta Kappa meeting Mr. Paul Shorey tried modern culture and found it dull. Americans are sexually inept, poets are crude, intellectually the country is dead. As a solace from this tedious period Mr. Shorey looked not to a refreshing dawn in the future, but preferred to gaze longingly at the roseate sunset of a halycon past. Lowell, Longfellow, Holmes, and Emerson are the foundations of American culture the men to whom their countrymen must point with pride.

This is a tenable thesis which doubt less affords some comfort to the holder, but it hardly fosters the germs of a cultural or intellectual advance. To bask in the glory of Emerson, it in not necessary to negate the value of Sand-burg. A poet in a cultural index; he is emblematic of the age in which he lives. As such he should not be removed to make way for those who have gone before; rather he should be studied to explain those who come after. The genius of the moderns may be questioned, but it is impossible to neglect them as a cultural force.

It is unfortunate that a speech which regrets the present should suggest an analysis of the past as a palliative. Mr. Shorey was speaking to a society which popular opinion represents as the finest intellectual group at Harvard. The hope of American letters, therefore should rest with them more than with any other body. If they are to be advised to dwell within the security of the past, the aims of a Harvard education are disavowed.

The importance of college lies not so much in what a student has learned, but in how he is equipped to utilize the knowledge he has acquired. A detailed study of the American past avails nothing, if it is not put to some constructive use in the future. All this Mr. Shorey neglected while betraying his quite natural affection for the good old days. Granting the speaker that modern culture is a barren wasteland, Phi Beta Kappa men should not be advised to eschew it for the more pleasant task of literary research. They should be urged only to insert their keys in the doors that will open more pleasant avenues of thought and culture.