HOLCOMBE FINDS CRITIC DAMNS UNDERGRADUATE

The following review of the second issue of the Harvard Critic, which appears today, was written especially for the Crimson by A. N. Holcombe '06, professor of Government.

It is with some trepidation that the Faculty reviewer picks up an undergraduate publication called "The Harvard Critic." But this is different. It is not the Faculty that is the target of these critics. No a single member of the Faculty is held up to public contumely and two of the professors even receive honorable mention. Professor Whitehead's latest volume of philosophy is the subject of high praise by one of the editors, and Professor Henderson's course in the history of science is moderately praised by Mr. John Des Passes, which is very high praise indeed.

The chief object of criticism, however, is the undergraduate himself. The leading editorial heaps scorn upon the "indifferent," the "deb-chasers," and the "grade-grubbers," while special articles expose the short-comings of the "final" club men and the Phi Beta Kappa. The case of the "final" club men seems even more hopeless. The critic of final club mentality is uncertain whether their low scholastic standing, for which statistical proof is offered, is the consequence of congenital mental inferiority or absorption in social activities or general "indifference." In other articles a tribute is paid to the commercial tutors for their services in keeping the sons of prominent families in college and the plight of the puritanical "sub-deb" is lamented from the stand-point of Manhattan paganism. An interesting review of a recent novel about pre-Harkness Harvard by George A. Weller '29, describes the book as the "swan song of the old houseless Harvard already strange to this succeeding college generation." Strange indeed it does seem already! A full-length article on the houses by one of the house head-tutors takes the house plan for granted and devotes itself mainly to recommending its extension to the Graduate School.

It is evident that these latest Harvard critics are not so much interested in criticizing the University as the world outside. This is a good sign. These particular critics are very critical of the present management. Their special antipathy seems to be the "middle class." The leading editorial dubs the middle class "over-stuffed" and also "vast, characterless, and self-satisfied." Another of the editors denounces Walter Lippmann as "no more nor less than the Brisbane of the intelligentsia," intimating that he too has become excessively middle-class. The author of an article entitled, "Hell and Farewell: The End of Social Democracy," pays his respects to contemporary Fascism, which he excoriates, having first branded it as "a middle-class movement." Despite the animadversions against the middle class, it would not be strictly accurate to classify this issue of "The Harvard Critic" as proletarian polemical literature, since a Hindu Communist who pens a diatribe against Gandhi, described as a bourgeois demagogue, is matched by an English Liberal who enters a plea for enlightened, that is to say, non-revolutionary socialism. On the whole, this is a very moderately subversive publication. It should not cause great agitation among the conscript fathers. Yet it has accomplished the objects of its editors, namely, to provide a channel through which students could express themselves and to prove that some Harvard men could be "aroused" from their "intellectual lethargy and negativity." It is well that from time to time these things should be done