Improved 'Progressive' Shows New Method and Development

The latest issue of the Harvard Progressive has contributed no small part to the steady improvement of the magazine in the past two years. Remembering the single mimeographed sheets that once passed as the organ of progressive thought at Harvard, readers will hardly recognize the February 1940 issue as the same magazine. Twenty-three pages long, attractively illustrated, and cleanly printed, it will give the Progressive a secure place in the family of Harvard undergraduate publications.

The most striking feature of this issue is the illustration work of John Holabrid '42. No less than eight woodcuts, stark and simple in their satire, yet wholly decorative, and scattered through the pages. The deep blue inking of the front cover illustration is especially eye-catching.

A wry, well-written appraisal of the recently exposed "Yankee American Action" by Joseph P. Lyford '41 makes a fine lead-off article, while G. Robert Stange's Convention Commentary provides a too-long delayed analysis of the atmosphere that prevailed at the ASU Madison convention. Both are thoroughly interesting treatments of significant trends in American thought.

Of the next two articles, The War in Finland: A Controversy, and Professor Sorokin's "credo," Conservative Christian Anarchy, less can be said on the score of readability. The article on Finland adds nothing new to an already well-defined clash of opinion, while Mr. Sorokin's confessions will graze only the upper lobes of the undergraduate brain.

The most exciting contribution in hidden away on a back page: War comes to North America--A Communication from Canada. This harrowing, yet dispassionate outline of the impact of war on the universities of Canada paints an ugly picture. No Harvard student could read it without a chill of horror, for it shows all too clearly the intellectual regimentation of wartime.

Book and record reviews round out this issue, as usual. In general, there is an unfortunate lack of creative writing in this Progressive. A two-paragraph short-short-short story by George May berry only makes an awkward bow in the direction of leftist belles-letters, a field, that the Progressive is well fitted to invade.