For balance and for technical smoothness the October Advocate rings true: the University's oldest surviving journal now hits the stands with a professional post-war product that appears to have beaten the first gimmicks of revival. In a topical range from chronicled Harvard of the '70s to a sleeper sex startler there is sufficient interest to carry the reader quite through the thirty-five attractive pages.

Stripped, however, of its editorial and production merits Mater Advocate stands perhaps a trifle embarrassedly exposed to the quibbler's truth about its literary worth. It is in the quality of featured creative writing that the publication's distinctive claim to excellence must lie. This time the copy looks good; and it is well above the average in published collegiate work. But "Burnt Mountain Revival," by William Austin Emerson, nearly overshadows its lively picture of hell's-fire-and-brimstone religion with contrived hillbilly dialogue ("Hit's a rite purty night, ant it,' Homer said, laying the paddle across the boat. 'God, he don't like a lot of rumpus, else why's it so quite out here.") Similarly, Robert K. Bingham's "Faux Pas" proceeds from an ingenious episode idea to pretty dubious execution of it. The infiltrating touches of amateurism would not jar if the top-level did not loom so very near, and yet so far.

"When Harvard Came of Age" steals the issue. Norman S. Poser has spun the several threads of Cambridge life during President Eliot's early reign into a completely readable yarn. The perfect compound of serious aspects, such as Eliot's introduction of the professor's name into the course booklet, with light strokes from the local color of the day makes it tops for its kind. If the description of the hazers' "Bloody Monday" doesn't amuse, the tales of erstwhile room decor surely will.

Of the poetry, "My Heart Is a City," by H. Lawrence Osgood, ranks foremost for its gently tripping pace and for its neat imagery. "Point of Departure," by John Ashbery, and "Anatomy of Degradation," by John Simon, both lack the polished impact of Osgood's brief offering. The poetry necessarily should provide the magazine's continuity-breaks in the utter absence of anything resembling commentary on contemporary issues. One wouldn't even want William Becker's excellent discussion of John Millington Synge to reach a more sensational conclusion than that the Irish playwright led the modern field in "unselfconscious realism."