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XIV
IN 1955, Ezra Pound had already suffered ten years of imprisonment,
under conditions that would have crushed most men,
both physically and mentally. Rex Lampman says of St. Elizabeths,
"If you're not crazy when they bring you in here, you will
be nuts within three days."
I was frequently told that Pound did not deserve to be housed
in such comfort as he enjoyed at St. Elizabeths. The persons who
said this were those who had never gone out to see him, and who
had heard this observation from other people who had never gone
out to see him. The propaganda that Ezra occupied luxurious
quarters, where he could entertain guests and carry on his work,
made it difficult to interest influential people in his release.
Robert Hillyer wrote in The Saturday Review that Pound's comfort
"may with just indignation be contrasted to the crowded
wards in which are herded the soldiers who lost their minds defending
America, which Pound hated and betrayed." 1
Mr. Hillyer
is so accustomed to flinging about his fallacies—most of which,
I am sure, he himself believes—that he is probably impervious to
debate.
St. Elizabeths was begun as a veterans' hospital, and the majority
of its patients are veterans of our two world wars. Pound
was offered no comfort at the hospital that was not given to these
veterans, and during his incarceration in Howard Hall, he suffered
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