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EZRA POUND 245
lini and the Fascist system during the 1920s. It was not Pound,
but Churchill, who termed Hitler the "George Washington of
Europe", and who heaped praise on Mussolini. In a press conference
in Rome, as reported in the London Times, January 21,
1927, Churchill said,
"I could not help being charmed, like so many other people
have been, by Signor Mussolini's gentle and simple bearing and
by his calm and detached poise in spite of so many burdens and
dangers. Anyone could see that he thought of nothing but the
lasting good, as he understood it, of the Italian people, and that
no lesser interest was of the slightest consequence to him . . . If
I had been an Italian I am sure that I should have been wholeheartedly
with you from start to finish in your triumphant struggle
against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism."
One of the leading British journalists, Lord Rothermere, publisher
of the Daily Mail, expressed this sentiment about Mussolini
in March, 1928: "He is the greatest figure of our age. Mussolini
will probably dominate the history of the twentieth century
as Napoleon dominated that of the early nineteenth century. I
am proud of the fact that the 'Daily Mail' was the first newspaper
in England, and in the world outside Italy, to give the
public a right estimate of the soundness and durability of his
work."
Pound never had any such extravagant ideas about Mussolini's
prowess. He envisioned Mussolini as the leader of an Italia irredenta,
but in his eyes the Fascist never achieved this goal.
Pound was not interested in Mussolini merely as one who could
make the trains run on time, and meet the interest payments on
Italian bonds held in London and New York vaults.
Far from being the advisor to the Italian government, as
charged in Count 3b of the indictment, Pound had little contact
with the regime. Anyone high in the councils of the party
could hardly have suffered such want during the war as Pound
endured. Ezra wrote to me in 1959 that he certainly would have
advised Mussolini if he had been able to reach him, and during the
second decennio of the regime, he had protested against Il Duce's
break with the Risorgimento, that is, the hoped-for Renaissance of