THE BIRDS, THE BEES, AND . . .

Beautiful quadrangles, even Harvard's are no recompense for God's country, and every spring the Cambridge-cooped undergraduate has growing pains. He feels within him the stirring of a certain urge. He longs for one thing--to strike out onto the open road, of course. A privileged bourgeois Few mount bicycles, but the average Many have naught but a narrow strip of river bank, a muddy line of turf, to satisfy their longing. Unorganized as the meekest sweated dressmakers, they grope blindly and independently, without help and mutual encouragement.

Almost every other institution of fair New England preens itself on its Outing Club. Better spring safety-valves than stuffy libraries, enrollment lists are long. Dartmouth has lovingly adopted an entire mountain. Trails have been blazed, and a hut reared on the summit, whence pilgrimages are made all year around. Radcliffe, rending urban shackles asunder, has set up a thriving Outing Club, which, the misguided Harvard man seeking entertainment elsewhere, is forced to go picnicking with Yale, Williams, and other remote colleges.

But this is not to say that here no interest in the great outdoors glimmers through the clear Cambridge air. No wallflowers for undergraduate attentions are the Youth Hostels; church groups and clubs lure students with promises of hikes. Mountaineers and skiers, although addicted to sports requiring more than the usual skill and agility, have sold themselves with great success. Clearly potentialities are great.

The difficulties of finding good places to walk and cycle is only added reason for pooling, and if possible publishing, the information there is. The Dartmouth O. C. Handbook has endeared itself to nature-lovers who know nothing else about the college. Mountaineers, skiers, and any other interested organizations might be amalgamated, while retaining their own identity, into a Harvard Outing Club. It is time individual walkers and cyclists get together, open their eyes to a new weltanschauung, and kick against the tyranny of city streets.