ANOTHER INVESTIGATION?

It now becomes a painful duty to speak of something which has been apparent ever since the rumpus over the Princeton number: What the Lampoon needs is a new set of editors, and especially a new staff poet. It is doubtful whether light poetry has ever been published which was as bad as this. The metre is slew-footed, the ideas are ignobly feeble, the rhymes set your teeth on edge. The humor, if it can be called humor, is the humor of a comic valentine; that is to say, it is born of nothing more springly than oafish malice. And the ineptitude of this doggerel has marked all the Lampoon's effort this year.

How does this bear on the general question of the Lampoon's activities? It bears hard indeed. The things which the Lampoon tries to do are not in themselves offensive; but they must be done well or they cannot be done at all. It is a platitude that clumsy humor is perhaps the most painful thing to behold this side of eternal damnation. You blush for the fellow who tries it, and feel that he has done something equivalent to appearing in public without his breeches. The Lampoon has no official connection with the university; it is published by students as a private enterprise. Just the same, it bears the Harvard name and reflects on Harvard; and the student body might be justified in insisting that it shine up its poetry or else turn to more sober activities. --The World.