To the Editor of the Crimson:

I am taking advantage of that laudable function of the CRIMSON which provides publication space for all Harvard men with chips on their shoulders. My grievance is a long-standing complaint against Harvard's one and only literary magazine, the Advocate.

I accuse the Advocate of being unrepresentative of the College, and I bring this charge to you and not the Advocate editors partly because I do not think they would publish my complaint and partly because, even if they did, their circulation would limit severely the range of my appeal. For who other than Advocate editors, and candidates of which I was one ever reads the magazine?

I call the Advocate unrepresentative because its fiction and poetry is completely dissociated from Harvard undergraduate life and almost completely so from life in general. I have no quarrel with its book reviews.

There have been, I am happy to admit occasional "representative" articles published in the Advocate, but on the whole there has been much too much Freud and frou-frou. It may be argued in rebuttal that the Advocate would print writing of more immediate truth and importance if such writing were forthcoming. But it is for the Advocate to encourage openly such material. This it has not done.

Today especially there is a real need for expression of educated minds, and young minds in particular, for today's great crisis is first and foremost the problem of the younger generation, our generation. At this date the Young Communists' League and its ilk have been far more active and stimulating than the editors of the Advocate, who apparently prefer the way of the Irresponsible. Melvin H. Freedman '41.