COLLEGE MUST DEVELOP MEN EAGER TO WRITE

The first issue of the Advocate is a competent and well-balanced performance, maintaining a creditable level both of entrtainment and of literary merit, but nowhere rising conspicuously above that level. The verse so liberally sprinkled through the magazine seems to me on the whole better than the fiction, and the book-reviews and sketches more effective than the articles and editorials.

The two stories are by Robert H. Chambers and Arthur K. Train, both fiction-writers of the second generation. Mr. Chambers' "A Long Time Between Ports" is the more expertly written of the two, but it has certain fundamental absurdities which seem to result from the failure of the author to think out his situation clearly. It is one of those tropical-island stories in which an untutored girl, brought up among the cocoanut palms, falls madly in love with the first young man she has ever seen, a gob landing from an American destroyer. How, one cannot help asking, did she attain her perfect mastery of correct English if her only companion had been a drunken beachcomber of a father, and where did she get the print dress that one discovers her to be wearing, after naturally supposing for the first page or two that she wore the sort of costume commonly attributed to the inhabitants of lonely tropical islands? Mr. Chambers does not explain, and his story accordingly leaves the reader skeptical. Mr. Train writes with less distinction, but his tale has an ingenious plot and a pleasant down-East atmosphere.

Glee Club Article Worth Reading

Mr. MacFadden's article on the Glee Club's European trip is worth reading as the story of one of the most remarkable enterprises ever engaged in by a group of Harvard men, although Mr. MacFadden, being himself one of the singers, is handicapped by modesty from making the most of the musical success of the trip.

Opinions about verse vary; but to me for one, Mr. Lincoln's "Tryst" is the most satisfactory poem in the magazine. I don't know precisely what it means, but I like its swing, its vigor, its easy rhymes, and in fact everything about it except the use of the word "unshaven", which lends an uncouth effect to an otherwise pisturesque description. "The Stockbridge Elms" by Mr. Rogers is charming, and I take it that the strange punctuation in the reviewer's copy is not Mr. Rogers' but the printer's. (One of the rewards of the reviewer, by the way, is that the Advocate comes to him in uncorrected proof, so that he can enjoy the full shock of reading in Mr. McLane's poem.

"So still is it that I can almost hear.

The printless football of the Afternoon.")

Mr. Auslander's poem contains some brilliant lines, although to borrow the language of golf he is inclined to press. The rest of the poems are ably done. The editorials are uneven; Mr. Whitman's essay on snobs is pleasant and ingenious; the sketches are amusing.

Is College Doing Its Part?

One of the book reviews speaks without enthusiasm of Harvard's contribution to current literature, and as one lays down the Advocate one wonders about the Harvard undergraduate's share in that contribution. Is the College playing the part that it should as a training-ground for writers? There has been nothing in the field of undergraduate literary production in recent years to compare with what the Glee Club has done in the field of musical expression. So far as I am aware, only in buriesque--in various feature numbers of the Lampoon and in the "Atlantic Monthly" number of the Advocate--has undergraduate writing been brilliantly successful. American literature today is full of new life; why is Harvard not playing a larger part in it?

Possibly the reason is that there is no literary talent at Harvard to be brought out; but that is hard to believe. Possibly Harvard teachers have been so occupied in teaching the average man to write moderately well and in drilling men in the facts of literary history that few of them have had time or energy to stimulate the unusual man man to do his utmost. Certain it is, in any case, that Harvard writing today needs a general intellectual atmosphere more favorable to literary production. Yale has had such an atmosphere for many years, whether because of its Yale Review, its Yale University Press, or some other influence it is hard to say; somebody has said that at New Haven men of discrimination like to buy books of poetry and belles-lettres, while at Harvard they buy mainly books on political and economic affairs. If the College is to be anything but a literary backwater, it must develop a nucleus of men eager to explore the literature of the day, to write for the fun of writing, to encourage each other by mutual interest and criticism.

Advocate Has Opportunity to Do So

The Advocate has an opportunity to make itself such a nucleus of literary activity. Its first number is a good average number, but later issues ought to be better. They could hardly fail to be better if the Advocate attracted to itself all the literary originality that must be lying around loose in Cambridge looking for a chance to express itself. I hope the advocate's call for candidates will be answered by every able undergraduate who is genuinely interested in writing. If it is, we may possibly see the development of a group of college writers who will make New York editors do what now they seldom dream of doing--sit up and watch Cambridge for new talent.