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EZRA POUND 343
do not send back any more Italian boys whom you have trained to
be vicious gangsters."
Disregarding the element of chauvinism in the Italian press,
there was some basis to these complaints. It is a fact that there
are more Italian gangsters in the city of Chicago than in all of
Italy, and Italy does have the lowest "juvenile delinquency" rate
in the world. Perhaps there is something in the atmosphere of
America that creates a more volatile population, and exuberant
mass that must be ruled by the machine guns of the mob, in the
absence of a more effective government.
In September, 1955, I published the strange story of Mrs. Luce
and the Papini Committee, including the answer that had never
been made to a question that had never been asked. In February
6, 1956, Mrs. Luce's husband published an editorial in Life Magazine
that pulled out all the stops in demanding the release of Ezra
Pound and commented, "He is one of the best translators of verse
who ever lived." Despite the fact that the Luce publications were
supposedly quite influential with the Eisenhower administration,
and had been more than generous in their appraisal of his leadership,
Pound spent more than two years in prison after this demand
for his release.
Meanwhile, another voice was heard among the half-dozen
people in the United States who were asking freedom for Ezra
Pound. This was Westbrook Pegler, who had long been interested
in the Pound case, but had done nothing about it. He was moved
to write a few columns in his defense by an odd chain of events.
Pegler was trying to find a novel by Colonel Edward M. House,
called Philip Dru: Administrator (New York, B. W. Huebsch,
1912), a strange work that outlined the entire New Deal program
two decades before Roosevelt came to power. All copies of the
book mysteriously had disappeared, but Pegler remembered that
George Sylvester Viereck had ghostwritten a series of articles for
Colonel House, which appeared in Liberty Magazine. Viereck had
a copy of the book, which he lent to Pegler.
Viereck then suggested that I meet Pegler, since he enjoyed a
good connection with him. I replied that Pegler couldn't do anything
for me, but I did wish he would write something in defense
of Ezra Pound. He responded with several sizzling columns about