CURRENT ADVOCATE REVIEW

Undergraduates in need of cash--and what undergraduate is not?--will read with interest the terms of the second prize contest announced in the current number of the Advocate. As was not the case last year, the prizes are restricted to undergraduates, and the subjects of the essays are assigned. Six questions are submitted for discussion: they all deal with matters which concern "the weal of Harvard";--two are claimed by athletics; two by matters more strictly academic (not to say pedagogic); and the remaining two deal with what might be called the "social" questions of our College life, using the word in its broader sense. They are all "live topics", and should stimulate the mind--if they do not swell the purse--of every student who enters the competition. Last year's contest produced much food for thought, and there is no reason why this year's should not be equally fruitful.

Arnold Bennett and Harvard.

Of the editorials, that entitled "Those Iron Things in the Yard" contains a practical suggestion that many a sufferer would be glad to see adopted. If a box-hedge is less beautiful, it is at least less painful. The paragraph on "Arnold Bennett and Harvard" is very entertaining; we all share the marvel of our visitors "at the fearful intricacies of a library on route.

In a sketch entitled "Hour Exams", H. C. Greene tells the story of two roommates' rivalry with gentle humor--almost too gentle at times. "Trusts--A Point of View" is a comic bit of narrative by H. S. Ross, whose feeling for detail is almost Wordsworthian. Jabez Bronson is undoubtedly the best thing in the number. "Applied Economics" is another story in which a discourse on trusts sends its auditor to sleep. It is rather a descriptive sketch than a narrative; and it is not without its good points. An unsigned allegory, called Viae Vitae", might be called a poem; it is well-written, but mournfully pessimistic.

There are two selections of verse in his issue, both of them rather above the standard. "Dawn", by C. G. H., is musical and imaginative, though the idea is far from now: Schofield Thayer's sonnets takes us up into the clouds--and if we are dropped with a mundane thump at the end, we must admit it is designed.

On the whole, the current Advocate is one of which the editors may be proud, and in which the reader may find profit as well as pleasure.