Crimson, Advocate, Lampoon, Safe Again as Harvard Magazine Dies

The swan song of the Harvard Magazine strangely calls to mind the many colored and spectacular publications which heralded its birth. Indeed, a less credulous reviewer might be forgiven for believing that once again the Magazine is receiving free advertisement at the hands of its foes.

If Harvard's one representative publication is dead, if the self confessed inaugurator of the Endowment Fund has gone to its reward, if the banner bearer of our literary legions has fallen in the attack, surely we who have tears may prepare to shed them. Unfortunately there have been things in the life of the Magazine which became it more than the leaving of it, for the last number, however significant it may be as death-bed jesting, is not one we shall remember pleasantly or long. Two brief and jocular messages of farewell, the conventional allusions to the Advocate, Lampoon, and CRIMSON, the publication of the hitherto jealously guarded list of editors, and "the Harvard Magazine Prize Novel"--these are all of slighter quality than the best the Magazine has offered, in the past. Two great merits the number has. Its editorial on the Lampoon achieves the rare distinction of having something to say and saying it with emphasis and point, and better still, the sudden realization of the humorous side of its own career, marks a triumphant accomplishment in the life of the Magazine. It is almost worth while dying to be able to discover in death how amusing have been our own exploits once so solemnly regarded.

Cherish Earlier Snatches of Genius

By way of memories we shall keep bits of prose and poetry of quality given us in the pages of the earlier numbers of the Magazine. We shall leave to oblivion occasional lapses into the sensational, and ventures toward the goal of publicity for publicity's sake. We shall try to forget the dying periodical's monstrously serious efforts to clamber up on a platform of representation of the University and reformation of all its faults. We shall regret that humorous appreciation of its own foibles did not come sooner to the Magazine--though we may imagine that even a faint consciousness of the ridiculous in itself might have hastened what is even now an early death. By way of achievement, even though we venture to disagree with the editors in preferring to think that the Magazine did not start the Endowment Fund, we may be frankly grateful to the youngest of our publications for its success in spurring on its older neighbors. If, now the rivalry is removed, the surviving publications can remember that the need for progress and improvement still persists, if the best of the Magazine's contributors can be persuaded to turn their work into tamer but no less hopeful pages, if the Advocate and Lampoon can learn from the virtues as well as the errors of their short-lived competitor, surely its death will not have been in vain.