Graduates' Magazine Abounds With Articles of Interest

Teeming with good literature on live subjects, the current Harvard Graduates' Magazine's accounts of the splendid work done by alumni in the organization of military training camps must bring the blush of shame to the cheeks of University undergraduates who have winked at opportunities to enlist in the service of their nation. Discourses by General Wood and "1898" are the leading features of the December issue.

"It is a source of legitimate satisfaction to Harvard men," concludes the writer whose nom de plume is 1898, "that its graduates should have taken so prompt and prominent a part in this patriotic movement." It would be well for students now in college to scan the record of those New York graduates who were the pioneers of Plattsburg.

Leaving the problems of today's military problems, we turn over a page, and back to a hero of a generation gone--to a short memoir of the lamented Governor John Davis Long '57, whose happy connection with this college is treated warmly in some delightful biographical bits from the pen of Mr. W. R. Thayer '81.

"As President of the Board of Overseers," to quote from Mr. Thayer, "it fell to Governor Long to induct Abbott Lawrence Lowell into the office of President of Harvard College, a duty which he performed with memorable impressiveness." Among other honors held by Governor Long was the presidency of the Phi Beta Kappa.

It is interesting to look for a moment into the life of Governor Long as an undergraduate.--before he dreamed of the rewards which were to crown his later efforts. An earnest student whose ability was recognized while still in college, Governor Long in his reminiscences tells of his dreary days in Cambridge. In this essay so gracefully done by Mr. Thayer is an excerpt from Governor Long's writings which is especially intimate and interesting.

"The result of my few terms at Hebron Academy was that I entered Harvard College in 1853, at fourteen years of age. . . . I look back upon my college education with less satisfaction than any other part of my life. I was not thoroughly fitted. I was too young. The mistake was made, with a well-meant but mistaken view of saving me from the 'dangers of college life,' of boarding me for the first two or three years a mile away from the college--as if there were any dangers or, if there were, as if the best part of a college education was not to get the rub of them. Hence it happened that I then formed no personal association with my classmates, and always felt remote and as if I presented the picture of a forlorn little fellow who ought to have been at home. To this day I have never got over an awe of them that I have never had of anybody else. . . . I recollect no instruction which was not of the most perfunctory and indifferent sort, unless possibly it was that of Professor Cooke in chemistry and Professor Child in English. The only impression made on me by one professor was that of a pair of staring spectacles and an immovable upper lip, and by another of a throaty growl in his Sophoclean larynx There was an entire lack, to me, of all moral or personal influences. I look back with a certain pathetic commiseration on myself, unwarmed for the whole four years by a single act or word expressive of interest on the part of those to whom my education was intrusted. And this is literally true. The element of personal influence was entirely lacking. No instructor or officer ever gave me a pat on the shoulder physically, morally, or intellectually."

Hon. Theodore Roosevelt '80 contributes a highly favorable criticism of the "Life of John Hay," by W. R. Thayer. This work has attracted much commendation of late, and Mr. Roosevelt joins the admirers of Mr. Thayer's biographical ability. "Again let it be said," writes Mr. Roosevelt, "that there was a real need of a biography of John Hay, and that no other living man could have met this need as Mr. Thayer has met it."

In an article on problems confronting the Department of Economics Professor Taussig writes that "the most striking change that has taken place during the last fifty years in the content of the college curriculum has been the dominance acquired by the political and economic subjects."

"Harvard Rowing" is the subject of a treatise by Francis Peabody '80, who seems to dive to the very bottom of the turbulent sea of crew-coaching troubles. He comes up smiling with this pearl: "We may reasonably expect that Harvard will, under these new coaches, win her fair share of the races with Yale, a much larger portion than heretofore of the races with Cornell, and also win from such other colleges as she may row against in the future." Bon voyage to the crews of Coach Herrick!

The current Harvard Graduates' Magazine, in short, is brimful of good things. Its scope is so broad that it will prove as entertaining for undergraduates as it is to the graduates for whom it is primarily intended. For Harvard men--and for most other people--not a page in this publication is without fascination, inviting not only perusal, but also scrutiny.