Seventy-Year Old Mother Advocate Offers Stimulating Opportunities

This is one of a series of articles on extra-curricular activities in the College. These articles are designed to supplement the information received by the Class of 1940 at the Phillips Brooks House reception.

The rumors have been verified. Harvard has just celebrated its three hund to go if she is equal to the record, she reth anniversary. Although Mother Advocate still has two hundred and thirty is not unproud of being Harvard's oldest undergraduate publication and, incidentally, a very youthful lady of seventy.

It was in 1866 that the Advocate was founded, as George Peckham put it, "to encourage and publish the best of undergraduate writing". This has been the chief purpose through seven unchanging decades, decades in which the Advocate saw President Hill reign in 1869, basked under the liberalism of Eliot, outlived the Lowell changes, and stood ready to welcome President Conant. Mother Advocate has twice sent her sons off to war, and has herself endured the aftermath's of three. For her, life has not been easy going. It has been a difficult battle to survive the blows of depressions and censorship, predudice and intolerance. During her lifetime lesser publications have sprung up, lived for a brief period and fallen by the wayside. But the rather remarkable vitality of old Mother Advocate is not a quirk of pure fortune. That today she may look back upon an enviable record goes deeper than that. The tradition of "Duice est Periculm" and "Veritas nihil veretur" have been the essential strength of her life, for here at Harvard there has always been a real need for independent thinking. The Advocate has offered the undergraduate a medium for self expression, and has been able to encourage some of the most prominent thinkers and writers of today.

And so it may be said that this tradition is in a large part a tradition of men suc has Kittredge, Theodore Roosevelt, Copeland, T. S. Eliot, Lippman, who as undergraduates at Harvard have helped to form the Advocate into what it is today. Very often indeed the format and design have changed but this spirit of independence has stood throughout.

For the undergraduate with literary ambitions. Mother Advocate holds several competitions a year, one of which is going on at the present time. These competitions last about six weeks, and, although the work is not easy, unfair demands are not made upon the time of the candidate. According to the consensus of opinion practically all college competitions are well worth while from the point of view of the candidate, even if he doesn't make the grade, Especially true is this of the "Advocate", for the opportunity of writing for a particular publication is excellent training for adapting one's interests to the confines of space and public approval. The range of interests is limited only by the sensitivity of Boston's famed and narrow censor.

For the man who is interested in the all-important managerial and executive side of journalism, the "Advocate" business board offers experience which will stand him in good stead when he finally becomes that business tycoon. Selling subscriptions, getting advertising, and in general running the financial angle of the magazine is an interesting and worth-while pursuit.

This year, the beginning of a fourth century for Harvard and an eighth decade for the "Advocate," looks rather bright from the weather work quarters on Bow Street, Advocate House. Subscriptions, articles, series, and some rather weak verse are filling up, and it would seem that haughty Mother Advocate has definitely recovered from her tussle with the Cambridge vice squad over some certain salacity last fall.