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204 THIS DIFFICULT INDIVIDUAL
ment's passport file No. F-130 contained instructions that "Mr.
Pound should never again be granted passport facilities by this
government."
This was a clear violation of Pound's constitutional rights. He
had never been charged with any wrongdoing; he was a citizen in
good standing, and the State Department officials had absolutely
no grounds for refusing him permission to travel. This was one of
the more important reasons why the Department of Justice officials
did not wish to prosecute Pound on a charge of treason. The
charge could have been dismissed on the grounds that Pound had
been denied a fundamental right of an American citizen, that
he should be allowed to travel abroad and return without let or
hindrance. The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld this right.
William Rose Benét, in The Saturday Review of Literature,
March 6, 1943, quoted Malcolm Cowley as follows: "He [Pound]
tried to leave Italy a year ago on the train that carried our diplomats
and newspaper correspondents, but by that time his record
was so black that our government refused to give him a visa. . . .
I now find it hard to believe that he is a fascist at heart, an
apostle of racism or an enemy of his own country. It seems to me
rather that a succession of literary attitudes and the habit of trying
to amaze his readers have involved him in an utterly false and
evil situation from which there is no retreat."
Just what was so black about Pound's record, Cowley does not
say. Presumably he is referring to the pre-Pearl Harbor broadcasts
from Radio Rome, which accurately reflected the prevailing
American sentiment at this time. Even if Pound had been suspected
of being an agent of Fascism, he could have been allowed to
return to his country, and he could have been kept under surveillance,
as many Americans are under surveillance twenty-four
hours a day, even in the present era of relative peace. Pound was
not then and has never been in the business of espionage, and such
surveillance could have satisfied his detractors on that point.
The Radio Rome broadcasts contain much interesting biographical
and philosophical material of Pound's which is not presently
available elsewhere. Perhaps a volume of these broadcasts, which
are of as great interest as his published letters, will be issued in
the future. When I read some of the texts of these broadcasts, after