The various interests of Harvard's publications at this point are best summarized by an Advocate poem of 1902:

Let Lampy fling an antique jest And the Monthly gas on Ibsen

Our stories move serenely on With Summer Girls from Gibson.

Monthly Goes Bankrupt

The Monthly, with all its serious intent, seemed a permanent fixture at Harvard, and such writers as George Santayana and John Dos Passos were attracted to its ranks. Suddenly, however, in 1917, the Monthly was forced to declare bankruptcy, and its career was ended after over forty years of publication. Ironically, years later it was discovered that the magazine had a thousand dollars to its credit, but the last Monthly editor had long since graduated and no attempt was made to resurrect it.

Throughout the twenties the Advocate held its sway in undergraduate literature, with such men as T.S. Eliot and Conrad Aiken figuring notably in its ranks. In the thirties, however, as the Advocate's concerns became increasingly political, there was another burst of dissension, and Lincoln Kirstein formed Hound and Horn, a short-lived critical review. Another magazine, The Critic, succumbed in 1934, when it voted to merge with the Advocate.

The latest in this series of rebellious offshoot, "i.e., the Cambridge Review," was started last year by Leo Raditsa, who had become irritated by the apathy toward new ideas which prevailed in the Advocate. Raditsa feels that none of its members will assume any intellectual "responsibility," that is, the board will commit itself to no opinion nor does it attempt to find what is really new in intellectual and literary currents. Thus, by sticking exclusively to its present aim--to develop undergraduate craftsmen--the Advocate has shirked its responsibility as a publication.

No Undergraduate Opinion?

Raditsa, however, in his own search for new ideas has had to go far afield. In the first issue of "i.e.," Raditsa stated that its purpose was to express "undergraduate opinion," but apparently there is no undergraduate opinion, because undergraduate opinion, because undergraduate articles have not appeared since, with the exception of Raditsa's editorials.

Despite this intellectual vacuum, the Advocate has carried on, in its own meek way performing a valuable service. By solely publishing students' poetry and prose, the magazine causes very little excitement, but it does stimulate young writers, giving them the necessary illusion that they are getting somewhere. Aside from the pure stimulus to vanity, however, publishing in the Advocate has other, more concrete, advantages--many publishers subscribe to the magazine, and for a number of undergraduate writers it has served as a stepping stone to more lucrative satisfaction. Another aid to undergraduate writing is the board's criticism of pieces submitted, a thing of no small value to the young writer, who is always anxious, although often timid, about hearing reactions to his work.

Although through the years by fits and starts the Advocate has become increasingly literary in its bent, for a long while it still did not entirely abandon its motto. After the political period of the '80's, its editors merely seemed to prefer to find their danger in defending the freedom of the press--by testing the public censors with sensational (i.e., candid) stories and pornographic parodies. The first allegedly indecent story appeared in 1884, but 1894 was the year of the first major crisis, when "Kid," a story about a Harvardman and his mistress appeared.

People of this era found that lines like "I got so tired; I never was so tired in all my life, not even after a month on Charley Brigham's yacht," were really objectionable. An old Advocate editor wrote an irate letter to the CRIMSON, and the CRIMSON itself accused the Advocate of trying to boost its circulation through sensationalism. But the Advocate's defense was a telling one--"Modern art where it treats life demands realism and we contend that realism only ceases to be real art when the emotions it excites are such as we afterwards regret as having relaxed our moral fibre."

In one of its few parodies, the "Dial" parody of 1925, the problem of pornography arose again, but this time on the format, which contained two embracing nude figures and was entitled "Neo-Platonic Love." The Cambridge Police Inspector banned the magazine from newsstands, and the Boston Postmaster banned this issue from the mails, but national authorities later vindicated the magazine. Meanwhile, the issue had already sold out.

Pornography reared its ugly head for the last time in 1935, but this time the Attorney General of Massachusetts and Cambridge mothers, who feared the ruin of their children, combined to overpower a discomfited board of editors, six of whom resigned in order to escape prosecution.

Throughout its history, the Advocate has always considered its articles avant-garde. An example of this spirit is H.M. Wade's piece in 1934, "The Phoenix in the Babbit Warren," which ridiculed the "Balderdash and as the Saturday Review by superanhogwash poured out in such papers nuated professors whose knowledge of literature stops with Hardy." In the same issue, Charles R. Cherington said, "The poetry of Ezra Pound will LIVE."