Review of the Football Advocate

The current Advocate is fairly saturated with football, from the editorials and the leading article down to the inevitable "he and she" version of the great game. The leading article, by Mr. W. D. Sullivan '83 of the Boston Globe, has the great merit, rare in prophetic literature that it can be read after the event quite as well as before. It explains, simply and clearly, the situations which had to be met this fall by the coaches at New Haven and at Cambridge, and the methods followed in building up the two teams. Worth reading before the game, by reason of the light it throws on the present position of the elevens, it should be equally valuable after the outcome is decided, as a clear statement of the two methods of preparation. Of the two editorials, both dealing with football, the first says nothing; the second commends the suggestion of the New York Globe that a medical man should be one of the regular officials at every game. The point is weakened by the further suggestion that each team should have such an official; for in that case the medical men would cease to be officials in any non-partisan sense, and the situation would be exactly what it is at present. A detailed table of statistics of the Harvard and Yale players completes the materials dealing directly with football.

But here the poets and story-writers take up the theme. The two stories are no better, and not much worse, than the run of college football tales. Mr. Moore's "A Pack of Cards" lumbers heavily over a comedy situation, with inadequate characterization and conventional dialogue. "Me and Her" goes to the other extreme, being rather cleverly written about little or nothing. The reader, however, becomes weary of the coquettish parentheses addressed to him. "The Spectators" is weak description wherein exaggeration does duty as humor.

The verse is very much better. The first stanza of Mr. Tinckom-Fernandez's "The Game" is as good as any undergraduate verse one is likely to see in a long time, and the entire poem, though it does not keep up to this high level, is notable in its sincerity and vigor. Mr. Pulsifer's "The Riderless Horse" presents a striking idea with effective brevity, the difficult verse-form is fairly well handled, and the phrasing is at times admirable. The same writer's "Third Down," however, suffers from its close resemblance to four lines of Browning's "Meeting at Night."

As a whole, the number is praise worthy as a presentation of material clearly representative of undergraduate thought on a subject of immediate interest. The weakness of the stories is offset by the vigor of the verse; and Mr. Tinckom-Fernandez's poem alone is enough to give the number distinction