Someone has said that a first-year student at Harvard is a mariner ship-wrecked on an island of shyness and ignorance, in a sea of indifference and unfamiliar conditions. Whether or not the metaphor be true, if we accept it we can, for once, answer the question as to what single book would best save a solitary castaway, and say boldly, in this case, the latest edition of the Harvard University Register.

A Freshman with a copy of the Register is in the position of a Robinson Crusoe who has discovered a volume containing instructions not only for the conduct of his life on his island, but also easily followed directions for regaining the outside world. There would be no more excuse for such a favored victim of shipwreck to remain alone on his island, than there is for a Freshman or an Unclassified student with access to the Register to fall to discover the manifold opportunity. Harvard holds not only for others but for him. To quote the book itself, "There is a whip in Harvard for every man's hobby", and in its pages it is made astonishingly clear that he who falls to win recognition in the interest or activity he pursues, can have only himself to blame. The lists of others who have done and are doing things worth while for themselves and for the College, can hardly fall to interest the newcomer eager in his turn to do his share.

Of Interest to All

It is not only those whom this teat has brought to us who will find the new Register absorbing as reading matter, and indispensable as a reference book. Those of us who have known Harvard in former years, and, perchance, have read earlier Registers, must be struck by the fact, so clearly revealed in the new edition, that things progress fast about us. New clubs have sprung up, or have been revived since the war, and the new photograph of the Union and the article on its activities, mark appropriately how in the last two years it has come nearer than ever before in its history to filling the place in the University for which it was designed. We may read the first complete statement of the undergraduate campaign for the Endowment Fund, and remember that this is only one of the many pages in the book bearing witness to the forward steps which we have been taken in the name of Harvard.

Fills its Purpose Well

A methodical reviewer will notice with satisfaction the improved quality of the paper used in the 1920-21 Register, he may comment with satisfaction on the excellence of the University Calendar, and he will not, of course, fall to congratulate the undergraduate editors on their accomplishment. In sterner mood, he will, mayhap, point out that misprints are not wholly absent, forgetting how great must have been the task of proof-reading the book. Certainly, when all else is said, he will agree that the Register is something to be owned by everyone who hopes to be an intelligent part of the College community, and will declare that the present edition fills its purpose admirably.

Moreover, the book has one distinction unusual in catalogues, registers, directories, and other books of reference. It is statistical, to be sure, it deals with lists, names and addresses, relieved only occasionally by illustrations and editorial comment, but, unlike most books of its class it is one most of us will want not only to consult but also to read. The man who read the dictionary learned much, but was annoyed because his book changed the subject so often. We who read the Register learn quite as much so far as our little college world is concerned, and we find that nowhere does the subject change, for every page deals with the one absorbing theme of Harvard's opportunities and those who meet them her achievement and those who make it.