COMMENDS HARVARD MAGAZINE

[The following review of the Harvard Magazine was written for the CRIMSON by Mr. Lehman. It refers, needless to state, to Harvard Magazine No. 2, (all rights reserved) and not to Harvard Magazine No. 1. (Copyrighted)].

The Editors of the Harvard Magazine launch their monthly paper with a new policy. The policy is commendable, and has the promise of life in it; it is, too, within inescapable limits of editorial selection, a policy as democratic as the times. The magazine is to be "everyone's magazine." There is to be no announced editorial board except the business staff; publication in it is to be an end in itself; the men who from time to time serve as editorial committee are bound not to publish their own work, provided unbiased judges think any other contribution at least as good. The magazine is, one notes further, of the University, not of Harvard College alone, and is properly open to the students in Radcliffe College. The first number opens with a story by a Radcliffe student. All of this should bring, if there is more than a vestige of democratic ambition in Cambridge, abundant life to the Harvard Magazine, and it should mean that young writers are to have life even more abundantly.

The contents of this number are in any event plenty, and excellent. The diversity is striking. We glimpse the ancient Maine of sailing-vessel days and the still more removed Russia of 1915; faculty salaries and freshman short-comings do not crowd out plays and "the other man's wife" and a charming song. The cartoonist has done his best--and worst--with the ineffable stipend of the poor harmless drudge. And a clever actress gets her picture in the paper.

Mr. Raffalovich has happily preserved his artistic innocence against the brittle formula of the American short-story. Power he has, and fine detachment, and skill. There the story is, layer within layer,--all distinct and complete. The peasants, the bureaucracy, the poet, the dullard, the maniac, the woman are almost ocularly visible, lightened a bit specially by the irony of title and touch, but real as they must be in their local habitation. "Patriots' All" is the best story I have read in any magazine in months.

In "Kensington's Yesterday," Miss Barbey has written a story, charming because of its air of starched lawns and embroidered silks, mahogany treads, and flower borders. The style echoes the tone quite beautifully--in all but the last sentence. The last sentence should be brocaded; instead it is backed with buckram.

For deft and tender handling of a difficult unusual situation, read "The New Romance." Mr. Kister has taken elemental facts, arrayed them cleverly, brooded over them with mature intent Sometimes his style is incredibly young,--or is he dramatizing the youth of this gay if serious adventure?

Mr. O'Conor's "Song for Two Sisters" is what one expects from his accomplished pen. He sings musingly, refreshing as he sings a hackneyed metre, enchanting a passing moment. Mr. Ryan, on the contrary, strives to reveal the dramatic clash of will on will, of thought on thought. His verse is wrought carefully, studiously. If he were a violinist I should say of him that he doesn't pull a good long bow; he doesn't lift you on the line -- end -- stopped or run-on "The Other Man's Wife" is simpler than "The City of Dim Faces," and gains by its simplicity. The latter is, in form and substance, as hard to take up as mercury.

"The College Bestiary" should be a vade mecum for every underclassman. It is an accumulation of wisdom, sorted, labelled, illuminated, and, best of all, tucked away in an idiom that by its vigor and raciness will disarm even those who would like to shoot a preacher at sight. Wherever there is a saving grace of ambition in a student; these "characters" of college types and their glosses will be useful.

The open letter to the Harvard Board of Overseers--with its entertaining cartoon--deals with an engrossing topic. Everywhere increases in salaries for teachers are being talked of. Now come undergraduates to the rescue. Among the conclusions that no wise man will fail to draw are that students are after all somewhat interested in the training they get, and that the cruel undergraduate, though he may ride an instructor to death in the classroom, is human enough not to want the poor fellow's children to die in a garret. The last paragraph is perhaps out of place. "At Oxford," said the immortal master of Balliol, "not even the youngest of us is infallible.