Bernard DeVoto began last month as editor of one of America's least read magazines, the Saturday Review of Literature. The Saturday Review of Literature is the kind of magazine you find on public library tables and under the green-shaded gas lamps of the aged but literate spinsters of Beacon Hill. It is ever so slightly intellectual, and ever so slightly classy.

Bernard DeVoto should do things with it. He is a man who loves an upset. When he edited the Harvard Graduates' Magazine he offended so many old grads so indiscriminately that they demanded his resignation. But when he quit the number of cancelled subscriptions spelled death for the Magazine. He has been treating the readers of the S. R. L. for two or three years now, to excellent although infrequent reviews of headline books. As editor there are possibilities before him which may make the Saturday Review a critical organ without parallel in this country.

In the first place he can get rid of whimsical Christopher Morley's column "The Bowling Green," which no doubt attracts as many readers as all the other features of the Saturday Review (with the exception of the famed Personals) put together. Morley's column has to be read to be believed, and so long as it stays in it will continue to frighten away any serious and intelligent audience. In the second place he can get competent reviewers (not criticasters like the Benet boys and Bill Phelps and former editor H. S. Canby) to say what they think about books. There is nowhere among American publications today that you can go to find out the real truth and the whole truth about current publications. The New York Times and the New York Herald-Tribune book sections are totally valueless so far as setting up any standards of merit is concerned. For plot-summaries and name, age, and habits of authors they have some worth. But it is notable that precisely never does either of them come out and annihilate a book that has been given a fat advertising appropriation by its publishers. The discrimination and intellectual honesty of these weekly "literary" magazines are totally incommensurable with their tremendous influence.

What the writing fraternity and intelligent readers of this country need, is a literary paper of the courage and taste of the Literary Supplemen of the London "Times." The T.L.S. carries advertising too, but it never makes a difference to the reviewers.

The Vagabond's best wishes then, to Mr. DeVoto and the Saturday Review. They have a chance for fame and influence, a chance that should be seized upon avidly for the sake of culture in America.

But the Vagabond is weary with worry about culture in America and on Tuesday morning at nine travels to Harvard 6 to hear Professor Brinton begin his lectures in History 34a--"The Intellectual History of Europe, 1750-1850".