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344 THIS DIFFICULT INDIVIDUAL
Pound's long imprisonment without trial, which was an important
step toward his eventual liberation. In one of these columns,
Pegler said:
"There is afoot among us a movement which may amount to a
conspiracy to permit the commitment as lunatics of individuals
who express political views which are offensive to the left.
"The case of Ezra Pound, the poet, is a dramatic instance. Pound
lived in Italy during Mussolini's reign and heartily endorsed
Fascism. For that matter, so did many prominent Americans, including
politicians who later affected to loathe Fascism as the
enemy of an undefined ism called democracy.
"Winston Churchill thought well of Fascism for Italians and admired
Mussolini as the genius of this stimulating and efficient experiment.
"It is alleged that during the war Ezra Pound broadcast opinions
hostile to democracy which has no legal or constitutional sanctity
in our country. It is alleged that he also criticized F. D. Roosevelt
as many of us did here on the home front.
"After our Army had mopped up Italy, Pound was brought back
to Washington under charges. However, he was never brought to
trial but, by consent of counsel appointed by the court, was examined
and adjudged to be more or less crazy.
". . . Pound was committed to St. Elizabeths hospital, a typical,
old-style bughouse on the outskirts of the Capital. He has been
there all these years so if he was not nuts when he went in, he easily
could be now." 2
"Tyler Kent is another case in the same category", Mr. Pegler
wrote in the New York Journal American on October 19, 1960,
"except that he was not adjudged insane. I will tell you about that
one later in developing a theme. The theme is this: That the cult
of the left is restoring to the occult phony science of psychiatry to
either put its opponents under glass or discredit them as poor,
overwrought fools."
After the Pegler onslaught, feelers were sent out from the White
House, and we wondered if Eisenhower would "do something
for Pound." Ezra, willing to grasp at any straw after more than
ten years of imprisonment, told me that he had been informed
that Milton Eisenhower was urging his brother to release Pound.