Good Verse Fills Current Advocate

Nearly four pages of the first number of the Advocate are given over to verse. If, as the leading editorial, with ability, points out, the function of this independent periodical is to be not only a depository for spontaneous undergraduate authorship, but also for spirited undergraduate opinion, this amount of verse and the lack in this issue of much spirited undergraduate opinion, raises the question whether poetry has not elbowed out somewhat current interest and timeliness. Perhaps the quality of much of this poetry is justification; there is true quality in Clark's "Nocturnes" and a suggestion of the much mentioned "School of Young Englishmen" in "Star of the West" by Sanger.

Professor Albert Bushnell Hart contributes an analysis of the race influences in the European War; there are two amusing pieces of fiction blessed by the absence of affectation; one short essay entitled "Fussing" treats lightly of a present day, collegiate--and perpetual and world wide--harmless hypocrisy.

This is a good dish served in the conventional manner of the Advocate and the other college periodicals. But what lack of imagination leaves untouched continually two great opportunities! The first is for a departure from a conventionalized form; the second is for the development of a free, pungent, animated flow of comment, criticism and chuckle. Let this flow be turned on, as well as college men could do it if they were eager to try, and the issues of the fortunate periodical which caught it would be exhausted in advance orders for copies.

Just now, however, the Advocate is to be congratulated chiefly because no hand of a graduate or advisory board or Faculty member is placed benignly upon its head, or at its throat; the undergraduate title remains without a high-brow cloud upon it.