Current Illustrated Review

The Illustrated continues its policy of serving as a sort of University Guide Book on the installment plan. In this issue there are two articles. One by Forest Cooke '10, reveals a rather unctious enthusiasm about the Brooks House, where undergraduates "catch" "religious experience." The other, by H. Y. Masten '10, narrates the adventures of Cambridge astronomers in "photographing the heavens" and supplies information, such as it is, about the astronomical instruments, their cost and equipment. The exploration and exploitation of Darkest Harvard for the benefit of readers of the Illustrated is without a doubt a worthy mission for a college periodical. But the mission must fail if the explorers, unlike Mr. Andrew Lang, who wrote about Oxford, persist in dullness of substance.

The University shares the space of the Illustrated with the newspaper. There are two articles. One, the leader, by W. M. E. Perkins '07, purports to be an excerpt from "the real diary of a real newspaper man." It tells about a "Dull Week" which isn't. Whence one may gather that reporters' souls are calloused, that they sacrifice truth to sensation and that the business of seeing things is not compatible with understanding them. Also, that the reporter leads a dog's life. The other article, by C. S. Collier '11, is called "The Free Newspaper." Mr. Collier does not mean by "free" independent; he means "given away for nothing. The article is a well-written, fanciful application of economic "law" to the newspaper business.

P. J. White '13 asks in his title "Should Harvard Learn to Fight?" The alarmed reader then learns gladly that the paper is a kind of argument for compulsory military drill in College.

Finally, there are the story and the poem. The story is by J. B. Kelley '12. It is called, one cannot guess why. "The Golden West." Its great point is a night-ride with a corpse which does not begin until the middle and stops long before the end. Otherwise it is up to the usual standard. The poem called "The Grain Elevators at Duluth" by H. B. Sheahan '09 is distinguished mainly by the inaptitude of the last stanza and the vision of wheatmills that both "loom" and are "outlined."