The rejuvenated Advocate has learned a lot of things. Starting with a pretty good issue a month ago, it has in its second edition fulfilled its promise, remembering all the time that writing is written in order to be read. That was one rule the prewar Advocate editors were inclined to forget. The current issue, having effectively cleaned up most of the mistakes it made last month, meets what has long been Harvard's crying need, a literary magazine of interest not only to the self-styled aesthete, but to anyone around who likes to read. Experimentation has not been dispensed with, neither in the poetry nor the prose, but it isn't used merely for its own sake. The material runs from psychological fiction to light fantasy to an article on the AVC, and altogether it's pretty good.

"The Invaders," by Peter Gray, is reminiscent of the lead story in the last issue. Both are tales of neurotic young men hounded by fear. While the first attempt was confused and shadowy, the new story, dealing with three murky characters who hound a Greenwich Village habitue back to his Albany home for a practical joke, has a basis in realistic motives and comprehensible feelings. The mounting tension is skilfully underwritten, and the success of the work is dependent on the right refusal of the author to employ any of the tricks of emotional writing.

A sympathetic narrative about a boy from the Azores who likes to watch the Atlantic planes come in, and dreams of going to America, "Technical Landing," by Ivan Morris, may convey shades of Kafka to some, but as a character study the story stands well by itself. Perhaps the fact that the planes only come in when they're in trouble and the suggestion that the boy hasn't the ghost of a chance of going to America have divine implications, but it doesn't affect the quality of the work either way. "Girl in a Blue Mood," by Arthur E. Cooper, is a light narrative that certainly has no implications. Its tone, though a trifle forced, is sustained right through this delightful little piece of writing. "The Javelin-Thrower," by H. Lawrence Osgood, is below the standards of the rest of the magazine. Its "meaning" is abstruse and not worth troubling about, and the story was hardly worth printing either for the sake of quality or variety.

The trouble with the poetry is that there isn't enough of it. The two poems come up to the high mark left in the last issue, and Richard Wilbur has again made a vivid, powerful contribution. There is only one criticism of the Advocate's poetry: T. S. Eliot always seems to be lurking somewhere between the lines. The two non-fictional articles are examples of just what the magazine should keep doing. They are unique, not available to the national magazines. The long account of Kangaroo Island, by Stanley Geist, describes this Pacific Lichfield calmly and contemplatively. Luckily, he avoided merely giving the reader a sadistic thrill, and instead analyzes the sociological reasons for the brutality, though sometimes as the price of being dull.

One of any magazine's most necessary assets is an attractive appearance, and the Advocate has come through on that, too. David Self's fresh Spring-issue cover will probably attract more buyers at the Mass. Ave. news-stands than any other feature. Stuart Welch's drawings, especially one of an old vintage car, make the inside of the book interesting as well as attractive, while the absence of formal lines on the title page and the use of a little more white space throughout help the make-up a great deal. The postwar Advocate is on the right track. If it can stay up to its present standards, it will more than resume the place in Harvard students' minds that it has had since its founding in 1866.