An important election in a large American city was under discussion one day among a group of fellows; it was an election, too, which had attracted widespread notice all over the country and was considered a political event of more than usual significance. A native of the city was asked his opinion of the candidates and the outcome of the campaign. He confessed, with charming naïveté, that "really, you know, I never heard of the candidates; they are such a common lot, anyway. No one bothers about them." The same fellow had just been enlarging upon the possibilities of S-- being the manager of the same city's baseball team during the following year.

What do we talk of at meals, between lectures, over our tea in the Union and on our walks together? We show an astonishing profundity in athletic details; if your friend is not literary, he is sure to turn with great energy to this never-failing athletic reliance and to regale you for hours with stories of games played and races won. He never heard of a Ship Subsidy Bill or a Philippine Tariff. Then we talk with great knowledge and greater confidence on Pinero and Jones and Shaw; we all seem able to meet on common ground here, and certainly derive much profit from our give and take of ideas. But there is no denying that one seldom hears of any real discussion of current questions, about which senators worry and constituents write angry letters. The great world of business, of economic and political life seems to sweep by and around our college here, leaving our precincts undefiled by contact with its commonplace flood. Only now and then are we stirred to interest, perhaps only at the time of some election, and then it is usually the size of the vote and a pop-night at the Union which arouse our dilettante interest.

The cause of this attitude seems to lie in two sources. In the first place, those of us who are inclined toward literature seem to feel, as I said before, that, in all honesty, politics is beneath us. Literature is perennial in its interest-compelling power; it is hitched to a star and can allow no other interest to hook on behind. And so we draw our skirts aside and come to feel, in our few years of irresponsible college life, that there is something supremely unsatisfactory in poli

tics and business. They are not always satisfactory to the man who is a born creative artist or the scholar in a special and diverse field, though even these, if they wish to be catholic citizens of their community, should cultivate their field of life extensively as well as intensively. By all means, let these keep to their last, for the most part, for they are fortunate beyond others; but what shall we say of the hangers-on, the never-will-be's of the literary world, men who will probably degenerate into hacks or disappointed critics of other writers? There was once a son of a Chicago pork packer, a captain of industry, and noted for his genius in packing hogs. His son was brought up more in the purple, went to college, graduated in due course, and came out destined for an everyday literary career. wrote a book of verse,-good, everyday verse, was taken up by the society of his city as another lion, and then it was suddenly announced that he had given up his career and had entered his father's establishment, with the ambition of climbing, if he were worthy, to his father's place. The friends of the young man were sorely grieved. "Would you," said they to the father, "make a hog-sticker of an author?" The father replied, and his words might be repeated oftener: "There are thousands of people who can write as good a book as my son did; there are very few who can pack hogs as well as I."

He

And then, what shall we say of men with sound literary sense and a love of reading who refuse to widen their interests, and at the same time have no ambition toward a literary career? An instructor in an English composition course noted the other day the tendency of men in his classes to prefer narrative to essays, exposition and argument, and wisely warned them that in life afterwards very few of them would do narrative work. Indeed they themselves have no idea of doing it. Such men might as well prepare here for what they know they must do later on. The world is surfeited with mediocre performers in the arts; it vitally needs men in the sciences.

And these sciences are interesting. Rightly studied-not crammed for, as so many of us do, for our miserable A or B or C, but for the joy of the learning-history and government and economics are a con

stant source of pleasure. Such study reveals to us in bulk the working of the human forces studied in detail by our poets and novelists. To be sure, it seems that we are always reined in, that we never allow our fancy to let us swing out of the reach of the commonplace world; we are forever arguing, you say, forever reasoning, and youth craves the mountain tops. Let youth have its mountain tops, but high altitudes are not always desirable, even for an habitual Alpine enthusiast. Lowell was able to enjoy his flights and still have time to attend political conventions. Indeed he became so enamored of the life, that he declared politics, while the worst of trades, to be the noblest of professions.

The events of the moment, moreover, have none of the unreality which envelops even the most stirring ones of the past. They overflow with the passions of live red-blooded men; they smell of conflict and faction; they are pages out of the lives of the human beings composing our village, city, state or nation. Do our literary men love the individual of another class, but shrink from such individuals in mass?

The other objection, offered by those who do not care for current events, offered usually by those students who go through their college life with absolutely no vital interest,-an unfortunately large class of college vagrants,―is: "Oh, what's the use of politics in college? It's all my father talks at home; it's all I'll probably talk afterwards, outside of business; why not enjoy college while I may?"

This is all very well and amusing in the individual, but, as a general tendency, it becomes decidedly discouraging. In the first place, such a speaker seems to assume that college is essentially different from the outside world; this is, in brief, a cloistered four years we are spending here, a breathing spell before life really begins. But college is regarded nowadays by the majority of students, as well as by parents and professors, not as a preparation for life, but as life itself. Why else our elective system, why our keen interest in those outside activities which are usually of the nature of what our lifework will be later on? Why not loaf and dream altogether through college? A man might, with greater justice, declare that he would not try for

a business managership in college, because he expected to be in business all his life; but business managerships are not unpopular at Harvard. Surely there should be no need of pumping interest into a lot of healthy-minded young fellows, many of whom are already voters. It should be as much the interest of voters to follow the course of public affairs as for members of a class to take an intelligent part class elections.

I do not wish to imply that this lack of interest in politics is in any sense peculiar to Harvard; though naturally one meets it so often here, that one is apt to identify the condition with the place. It is in many ways an American failing, especially a failing of the educated classes. In England we are told that in every drawing-room the day's debate in parliament is discussed, and Lord L-'s speech, delivered the day before, is considered in great detail by both men and women. The same spirit exists in the English colleges; over his tea and in his unions the English college man talks intelligently of the affairs of the empire, while the American Rhodes scholar finds himself at a loss for something to say. After all, he typifies his country. Who reads a congressman's speech? Who knows Spooner's argument on the Brownsville affair, or Beveridge's on "Child Labor"? Let us wake up and become aware of the movements of a world of which, after all, we are only a very small part.

Edward Rieman Lewis.

BATTLE HYMN

(To the Russian Autocracy on the Mutinies)

Your arrows long were drunk with blood,

Your swords had fleshed themselves with slain, And long ye chewed the brutish cud

Of brother-hate, ye brood of Cain! Now judgment's come, the Lord is nigh, Whose people ye did crucify.

Our fairest sons through midnight snow

Dragged ball-and-chain, cursed you, and died;
Our daughters, hollow-voiced, cried, "Woe,"
Beneath the Cossack knout they cried.
Revenge has come, now bare your back,
The stripes will hiss; the torture, rack.

In Petroplevska's dungeon-keep

Lie bits of damp and rotting bone, And thousand lonely mothers weep The savagery of Russia's throne. Prepare to meet Gomorrah's rod, Your adversary now is God!

We crouch like lions for your fall,

Our hosts array themselves for war, The writing is upon the wall:

"The God of hosts against the Czar." For they that walk in darkness see The clear great light of Liberty.

Allan Davis.