RECENT ADVOCATE CRITICIZED

In these days, when so many gifted young men, who would normally be adding to the interest of our Cambridge life, are giving their time elsewhere to immediately practical matters of war, college papers as good as those of two or three years ago are not to be expected. But need the falling-off be so great as it is in the last Advocate? It seems to me the weakest Advocate that I have been teaching here at Harvard. Not only has it an unusual number of technical errors and of lapses in artistic taste, but its substance is thin. Of the 15 pieces in this number--an editorial article, a literary criticism, a narrative of the French front, five pieces of prose fiction and seven "poems"--only one poem, "Ode to the East Wind," by Mr. C. La Farge, shows at once sincerity and artistic feeling; and even this is marred by several bad lines. Perhaps there is another exception, but I am not going to name it for fear of revealing my own obtuseness. One of the pieces of prose fiction seems to me a parody--and in places a good one--but if it is intended as such, it is not obviously enough so. One doubts it the more because several other pages of this Advocate, written in undoubted seriousness unfortunately suggest parody.

Contributions Below Standard.

I believe that so much difference between this number and various Advocates which I read in 1915 and 1916 is unnecessary. The remedy is in getting out the good literary material in the College. Every year I see some themes which are better than the majority of contributions to the College papers; but through either poor judgment of editors or indifference of writers, they never appear in the papers. Already this year in my war-shrunken class in "Composition" I have read three or four stories which seem to me better than any narrative in the present Advocate. If the fault has been with the editors in not utilizing such material, they should offer more encouragement to new contributors, though at the same time, if we may judge from the current number, they should be stricter in revision of manuscript. If the trouble has been either the bashfulness or indifference of writers, they should remember that it is good for themselves to be known to the public in any worthy way, and that a good contribution to a college periodical is a contribution to the general interest of our College life. And it is in the College papers that their work is most likely to do good. While some of our undergraduates may properly think their articles worthy of a place in the best magazines of the country, they must remember that because of the competition of known authors, it is difficult for those unknown to win their way to these periodicals. So let all here who can write well give their energy and ability to helping our undergraduate papers. It is a matter of College loyalty in these days of war not only to keep alive a paper so deservedly well known to Harvard men as the Advocate, but also, in spite of the manifest difficulties, to keep it is as nearly as possible up to its best standards.