A CHOICE OF IDEALS

For several years the University has supported more or less cordially three undergraduate magazines. The Advocate, the Illustrated, and the Monthly differ in details of aims and methods, but they have in common the one main purpose of publishing the best writing of undergraduates.

One who reads regularly or occasionally these three periodicals, must sometimes feel that here is much wasted effort. One who glances over the reviews of those periodicals which this paper publishes may often read into the words of conscientious reviewers a feeling that here is a deal of wasted criticism.

Two contrary ideals may be followed in the publication of such magazines. That which the three Harvard magazines follow is that the practice which is given to young writers warrants the existence of as many papers as can support themselves. The other ideal, a worthier one in our opinion, is that any article of any kind is not worth publishing simply for the sake of giving practice and encouragement to writers. The production of one undergraduate magazine which should represent the combined efforts of all students ambitious to write, which should aim at something beyond the goal of bare self-support, and, most of all, whose various departments should offer something worth reading to every man in the University, is the highest aim possible for undergraduate literary enterprise.

Our three magazines have followed their standards with admirable consistency. They have published volume after volume, and have given no end of practice to numerous writers. Much work of merit, much that bears the marks of genius, has appeared in this mass. But the good is lost, irretrievably buried in the accumulation of the bad or merely indifferent. But there is in the three magazines enough good material to fill one magazine that would fulfill the second ideal of which we spoke,--the ideal which would best perpetuate the literary traditions of this place.