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EZRA POUND 335
development could ever come about. Four years later, the government
met Pound's demands.
The following year, while in Chicago, I tried to interest Ellen
Borden Stevenson in the Pound case. She had lurked on the fringes
of what few intellectual circles were active there, and she did go
so far as to refer me to her lawyer. He promptly informed her that
Pound was "anti-Semitic", and refused to have anything to do with
the case.
It was now obvious to Pound and his friends that the government
would never try him. During his imprisonment, one of the
most persistent voices calling for his release was that of Dr.
Frederic Wertham, a psychiatrist who was also a self-taught expert
on comic books. Wertham stated that Pound was not insane (although
he had never talked to him), and demanded that he should
be removed from St. Elizabeths and tried for treason.
This could have been done at any time. The fact is that the
government officials never dared to try him.
The case against Pound, open and shut though it seemed to the
lawyers on the poetry magazines, would never have stood up in
court. In an article entitled "Ezra Pound, Traitor and Poet",
appearing in the Kansas Magazine, 1951, Earle Davis commented
upon the transcripts of Pound's "treasonable" broadcasts. "One
can hardly blame the authorities for dodging a trial in which this
material would have to be presented to a jury as proving treason.
In fact, as broadcasts, these transcripts are generally unbelievable."
This critic, who was hardly friendly to Pound, as witness the
libelous title of the article, took it for granted that it was the
government, rather than Pound, that was avoiding an open trial.
I was always puzzled as to how anyone could believe, and repeat
this belief, that the government was doing Ezra Pound a
favor by keeping him imprisoned at St. Elizabeths without trial.
I certainly hope that no government ever does me the favor of
throwing me into a brutal concentration camp for six months and
then shutting me up in a sordid Bedlam for an additional twelve
and one half years!
Ezra served such a long imprisonment, and under such terrible
conditions, because most Americans had either never heard of
him, knew little of the case, or supposed that he was really insane.