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EZRA POUND 255
to verify his statement that he had come to the United States in
1939 on a mission "to keep hell from breaking loose in the world."
The Times reported that "Striving to assure victory in this crucial
case, Department experts believe they have the necessary proofs,
and by their tactics can jump the legal barriers created by precedents,
such as that laid down by the Supreme Court in the treason
trial of Anthony Cramer. . . . Much work has been done on the
case here and abroad. . . . Incriminating statements have been
obtained from Pound."
There are some odd phrases in this news story, such as "crucial
case". What was so crucial about it, except that the Department of
Justice might at last be able to obtain a "Guilty" verdict against one
of Roosevelt's critics, after having failed in thirty-two previous
cases? The experts planned to "jump the legal barriers created by
precedents." Why not shoot him outright? And finally, "incriminating
statements have been obtained from Pound."
Here we come to the crux of the matter, and the position Pound
took that landed him in St. Elizabeths for thirteen years. He has
told me on a number of occasions during the past decade that the
government lawyers refused to try him for a very simple reason—
namely, that he insisted he would stand by every statement he had
ever made over Radio Rome. He would repeat his statements about
Roosevelt before a packed courtroom and newspaper reporters.
Obviously, the government lawyers did not want this to happen.
On November 26, 1945, the New York Times announced that
seven Italians who said they had seen Pound make anti-Allied
broadcasts from Rome and from Milan had flown to the United
States "voluntarily" two weeks earlier. On the following day, Pound
was arraigned, and his attorney, Julian Cornell, entered a plea of
"Not Guilty".
Newsweek noted Pound's reappearance in the issue of December
3, 1945: "Behind him in Italy, Pound left a wife, a mistress, two
sons and an eighty-six-year-old mother." Pound had only one son,
who was serving in the U.S. Army.
In its issue of December 10, 1945, Time spoke of him as "the
ragbaggy old darling of the U.S. expatriate intelligentsia," and
made a very interesting comment: "Jurists, who anticipated the