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EZRA POUND 347
The report was a damning revelation of the inadequacy of the
government's case against Pound. With this information available
in a paper that had legal status as a Congressional document, it
was obvious that he could not be kept in jail much longer.
Meanwhile, H. R. Meacham, of Richmond, president of the
Poetry Society of Virginia, had been waging an effective letter
campaign on behalf of Pound. He had first visited Pound early
in 1957, and had resolved to end his imprisonment. He enlisted
other Virginians in this cause, and he persuaded James J. Kilpatrick,
editor of the Richmond News Leader, to print several
fiery editorials demanding that Pound be released. On February
7, 1958, a News Leader editorial stated, "to all intents and
purposes, he (Pound) remains a political prisoner—in a nation
that prides itself upon political freedom."
The Richmond News Leader was the only important metropolitan
daily in the United States to publicly advocate Pound's
release, although many leading European newspapers had been
doing so for years. It is true that European editors saw in the
Pound case a welcome opportunity to reiterate the usual remarks
about "the only nation which has gone from barbarism to decadence
without an intervening period of civilization," but generally
their attitude was conditioned by the fact that a writer or an
artist in Europe enjoys a certain status that he is denied in
America.
It may be true that America has no need of poets, which
would explain why there is no need to pay them for their work,
but the isolation of the Coventry into which she drives her
intellectuals may in the long run be preferable to the role of
government propagandists that the Soviets assign to their writers.
Some bitter satisfaction may be derived from the fact that only
third-rate poets and writers have ever found favor with the liberal
regime in Washington, or been given government subsidies or
assignments.
On January 27, 1958, after an advance look at the Sieber
report, Congressman Burdick was amazed to find that the Pound
case was an even more flagrant case of injustice than Rex had led
him to believe. He demanded that the treason indictment against
Pound be dropped, so that he could be released from St. Elizabeths.