4pQonT

EZRA POUND 317
between the American and the Soviet Military Governments in
Germany was about.
As Henry Hazlitt, economist for Newsweek, has often pointed
out, White also committed the United States to postwar monetary
agreements that have cost us many billions of dollars. It would
have been much cheaper for us to have given him a pension of a
million dollars a year and sent him back to Lithuania, the country
in which this shadowy figure is reputed to have originated.
In the September, 1955 issue of Strike, Pound wrote, "TRAVEL
NOTE. Two zones have been located INSIDE Gunther. (1) the
torcellian vacuum. (2) the vacuum absolute."
During the years that I knew him, Ezra's sole lapse into bad
taste was an occasional interest in American politicians. Selfrespecting
persons pretend that these characters do not exist. He
contributed this note to the October, 1955 Strike, "EDITORIAL
—If a few Republicans were ready to repudiate Roosevelt, they
might even win the election next year."
This issue of Strike also contained his review of a novel: "There
has been no adequate advertisement of a novel called 'Liberty
Street.' It is badly written but it does deal with a useful topic, to
wit, the grease in burocracy. The type of well-dressed illiterate who
has never done anything but annoy the ill-starred members of the
public who fall under his detailed control. This is not a local problem,
all countries produce this type of vermin, which should provide
material for whole flocks of aspiring historians."
In another passage, he dealt with our propaganda machine,
which, like our intelligence network, was made up principally of
malcontents who wished that they could live in Moscow: "CHINA
AND 'VOICE OF AMERICA'—'A square li covers nine squares
of land, which 9 squares contain 900 mau. The central square is
the public field, and eight families, each having its private hundred
mau, cultivate in common the public field. And not until the public
work is finished, may they presume to attend to their private affairs.
This is the way the country-men are distinguished.'—Mencius,
Book III, Part I, Chapter 3.
"We ask 'Voice of America' if they are making full use of this
idea in the fight against Communism in China. Bolshevism started
off as an attack against loan-capital and quickly shifted into an