THE NEW HUMOR

The Spokane Spokesman-Review comes out of the west long enough to remark that college funny magazines are pathetic objects; their humor, if it may be called such, is execrable in its stupidity--and this in spite of the face that the best professional humorists in America are college men who received their training while on scholastic publications. But when one realizes that collegiate humor is not confined to undergraduates but is typical of many classes of America, the Spokesman-Review's condemnation loses validity. Mr. Pickwick differs from Corey Ford and Crunkshank from John Held; each is admirable in his way because each represents a definite spirit. Intrinsically there is no reason why College Humor is not as funny as Punch, and the popularity of each in their respective countries only demonstrates the variances of national tastes.

To ape one's betters is edifying but to express one's own personality is more amusing. Ring Lardner can convulse It is readers with a tense drama, the scene of which is laid on a bath mat. Very few Englishmen, however, and very few Victorians would see any humor in Mr. Lardner. And similarly with Donald Ogden Stewart, Robert Benchley--although he is more universal than the rest--and Milt Gross. The fact that there are at least five magazines who make a business of culling their material from the files of university and college publications all over the nation would appear to prove that college with is also American win. The scope of Humor is sufficiently broad to include more than one type. If the younger generation is guiding the older through the maze of comedy it is doing it in a finished if unconventional manner.