Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/666

 artist the publication of a book about Harvard, "Reed to write it and the artist to illustrate it."

"The artist doubted the feasibility of the plan. "What do we know about Harvard?" he exclaimed.

With a world-embracing gesture, Reed swept his partner's misgivings aside, saying, "Hell, we'll find out in doing the thing!""

After his graduation in 1910 he took a trip abroad and in 1911 joined the staff of the American Magazine. Whatever he contributed to that periodical's glorification of capitalistic careers, he must have done increasingly with his tongue in his cheek, for in 1913 he switched over to a magazine with an exactly opposite policy—the Masses, and the following year, while trying to speak for the strikers at Patterson, he experienced his first arrest, which was to become a frequent incident. In that year also he secured his first assignment as a foreign correspondent, going to Mexico for the Metropolitan Magazine and spending some months with the army of Pancho Villa. When the War broke out, the same magazine sent him to Europe. Russia was not on his formal itinerary but he slipped across the border, and he who was afterward to be deified in that country had many hazardous adventures in it and was under suspicion as a spy. He returned to America in 1916. A surgical removal of a kidney, saved him from the inconvenience of his stand as a conscientious objector when America entered the War and established conscription for men of his age.

Meanwhile, an attractive young woman of Portland, Louise Bryant, who had been graduated from the University of Oregon in 1908 and who had been