The publication of the April number of the Advocate may be taken as the occasion for saying one or two things about the position of the undergraduate literary magazine in the college. Certainly the magazine has a duty to the college, but the college also has its duty to the magazine, the duty to support it not only by buying it, but, what is more important, by reading it. And while the editors take their part of the contract seriously, turning out a paper that is attractive and readable, the college does not begin to do its part, which consists in providing the Advocate writers with an interested and critical audience. For a college literary magazine does not exist merely to provide a kind of last-day-of-school, prize-day exhibition platform on which the students can show off their talents. It exists for the purpose of making communication possible, on a literary plane, between the literate part of the college and those students who are concerned to interpret their own experience in the form of creative writing. In other words, it should serve the college in exactly the way that any other body of literature serves the society which supports it. But no one is going to read the Advocate because it is his duty to do so; the undergraduate, and even the faculty member who is occupied with student writing, will only read it if it rewards him for his time by being interesting and valuable to him. He might, however, be expected to look at the paper now and again to see if it does interest him.

The current number should almost certainly prove interesting. Without mentioning each item separately, it might be said that some of the short stories are extremely good, and that neither the article on nineteenth-century architecture by John Wheelwright, nor the professional and faculty book-reviews, has at all the air of being given away free with the issue. It should be possible to read the number for pleasure, and not simply from a sense of duty.