> Pound's immediate concern was the war in
> Europe--"this war on youth--on a generation" (8)
> which he described as the natural result of the "age
> of the chief war pimps."(9) He hated the very idea
> that Americans were being primed for war, and on the
> very day of Pearl Harbor he denounced the idea that
> American boys should soon be marching off to war: "I
> do not want my compatriots from the ages of 20 to 40
> to go get slaughtered to keep up the Sassoon and
> other British Jew rackets in Singapore and in
> Shanghai. That is not my idea of American
> patriotism," he added.(10)
iow, the jews had Ezra Pound thrown in an insane assylum because he didn't want White
Christian Israelites to annihilate each other by the tens of millions--which is all that
WWII accomplished.
--- Roland Weber <messianist@snowcrest.net>
wrote:
> From: "Roland Weber" <messianist@snowcrest.net>
> To: "scott michaels" <scott_24002@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Fw: Ezra Pound - The Neglected Aryan Hero.
> Date: Tue, 3 Sep 2002 21:35:41 -0700
>
>
>
> Subject: Ezra Pound - The Neglected Aryan Hero.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Ezra Pound
> Dec. 1997 Barnes Review
>
>
>
> WHAT DID EZRA POUND REALLY SAY?
>
> From 1945 through 1958 America's iconoclastic
> poet--the flamboyant Ezra Pound, one of the most
> influential individuals of his generation--was held
> in a Washington, D.C. mental institution, accused of
> treason. Pound had merely done what he had always
> done--spoken his mind. Unfortunately for Pound,
> however, he had made the error of criticizing the
> American government in a series of broadcasts from
> Italy during World War II. For that he was made to
> pay the price. The July 1995 issue of The Barnes
> Review told the story of Pound's travails. Here,
> however, TBR presents a fascinating in-depth
> overview of precisely what Pound had to say in those
> now-infamous broadcasts. Was Pound a traitor--or a
> prophet? Read his words and judge for yourself.
>
> By Michael Collins Piper
> American students have been taught by
> scandalized educators that famed American poet and
> philosopher Ezra Pound delivered "treasonous"
> English-language radio broadcasts from Italy
> (directed to both Americans and to the British)
> during World War II. However, as noted by Robert H.
> Walker, an editor for the Greenwood Press:
> "Thousands of people have heard about them, scores
> have been affected by them, yet but a handful has
> ever heard or read them."(1)
>
> This ignorance of Pound's most controversial
> political rhetoric is ironic, inasmuch as: "No other
> American--and only a few individuals throughout the
> world--has left such a strong mark on so many
> aspects of the 20th century: from poetry to
> economics, from theater to philosophy, from politics
> to pedagogy, from Provencal to Chinese. If Pound was
> not always totally accepted, at least he was
> unavoidably there."(2)
>
> One critic called Pound's broadcasts a
> "confused mixture of fascist apologetics, economic
> theory, anti-Semitism, literary judgment and
> memory"(3) Another described them as "an unholy
> mixture of ambiguity, obscurity, inappropriate
> subject matters [and] vituperation,"(4) adding
> (grudgingly) there were "a few pearls of unexpected
> wisdom."(5)
>
> Despite all the furor over Pound's
> broadcasts--which were heard between January of 1941
> through July of 1943--it was not until 1978 that a
> full-length 465-page compendium of transcriptions of
> the broadcasts was assembled by Prof. Leonard Doob
> of Yale University in association with
> aforementioned Greenwood Press. Published under the
> title "Ezra Pound Speaking"--Radio Speeches of World
> War II, the volume provides the reader a
> comprehensive look at Pound's philosophy as it was
> presented by the poet himself in what Robert Walker,
> who wrote the foreword to the compendium, describes
> as "that flair for dramatic hyperbole."(6)
>
> What follows is an attempt to synthesize
> Pound's extensive verbal parries. Most of what is
> appears here has never been printed anywhere except
> in the compendium of Pound's wartime broadcasts.
> Thus, for the first time ever--for a popular
> audience--here is what Pound really had to say, not
> what his critics claim he said.
>
> When he was broadcasting from Italy during
> wartime, Pound evidently pondered the possibility of
> one day compiling transcriptions of his broadcasts
> (or at least expected--quite correctly--that one day
> the transcripts would be compiled by someone else).
> He hoped the broadcasts would show a consistent
> thread once they were committed to print.
>
> Pound recognized relaying such a massive
> amount of information about so many seemingly
> unrelated subjects might be confusing listeners less
> widely read than he. However, the poet also had very
> firm ideas about the need of his listeners to be
> able to synthesize the broad range of material that
> appeared in his colorful lectures.
>
> Pound was sure his remarks on radio were not
> seditious, but were strictly informational and
> dedicated to traditional principles of
> Americanism--including the Constitution, in
> particular. In response to media claims that he was
> a fascist propagandist, Pound had this to say:
>
> If anyone takes the trouble to record and
> examine the series of talks I have made over this
> radio it will be found I have used three sorts of
> material: historical facts; convictions of
> experienced men, based on fact; and the fruits of my
> own experience. The facts . . . mostly antedate the
> fascist era and cannot be considered as
> improvisations trumped up to meet present
> requirements. Neither can the beliefs of Washington,
> John Adams, Jefferson, Jackson, Van Buren, and
> Lincoln be laughed off as mere fascist propaganda.
> And even my own observations date largely before the
> opening of the present hostilities.
>
> I defend the particularly American, North
> American, United States heritage. If anybody can
> find anything hostile to the Constitution of the
> U.S.A. in these speeches, it would greatly interest
> me to know what. It may be bizarre, eccentric,
> quaint, old-fashioned of me to refer to that
> document, but I wish more Americans would at least
> read it. It is not light and easy reading but it
> contains several points of interest, whereby some of
> our present officials could, if they but would,
> profit greatly.(7)
>
> Pound's immediate concern was the war in
> Europe--"this war on youth--on a generation" (8)
> which he described as the natural result of the "age
> of the chief war pimps."(9) He hated the very idea
> that Americans were being primed for war, and on the
> very day of Pearl Harbor he denounced the idea that
> American boys should soon be marching off to war: "I
> do not want my compatriots from the ages of 20 to 40
> to go get slaughtered to keep up the Sassoon and
> other British Jew rackets in Singapore and in
> Shanghai. That is not my idea of American
> patriotism," he added.(10)
>
> In Pound's view, the American government
> alliance with British finance capitalism and Soviet
> Bolshevism was contrary to America's tradition and
> heritage: "Why did you take up with those gangs?" he
> rhetorically asked his listeners. "Two gangs. [The]
> Jews' gang in London, and [the] Jew murderous gang
> over in Moscow? Do you like Mr. Litvinov? [Soviet
> ambassador to Britain Meyer Wallach, alias Litvinov,
> born 1876.--Ed.]
>
> "Do the people from Delaware and Virginia
and
> Connecticut and Massachusetts . . . who live in
> painted, neat, white houses . . . do these folks
> really approve [of] Mr. Litvinov and his gang, and
> all he stands for?"(11)
>
> There was no reason for U.S. intervention
> abroad, he said: "The place to defend the American
> heritage is on the American continent. And no man
> who had any part in helping [Franklin] Delano
> Roosevelt get the United States into [the war] has
> enough sense to win anything . . . (12) The men
> who wintered at Valley Forge did not suffer those
> months of intense cold and hunger . . . in the hope
> that . . . the union of the colonies would one day
> be able to stir up wars between other countries in
> order to sell them munitions."(13)
>
> What was the American tradition? According to
> Pound: "The determination of our forbears to set up
> and maintain in the North American continent a
> government better than any other. The determination
> to govern ourselves internally, better than any
> other nation on earth. The idea of Washington,
> Jefferson, Monroe, to keep out of foreign
> shindies."(14)
>
> Of FDR's interventionism, he declared: "To
> send boys from Omaha to Singapore to die for British
> monopoly and brutality is not the act of an American
> patriot."(15) However, Pound said: "Don't shoot the
> President. I dare say he deserves worse, but . . .
> [a]ssassination only makes more mess."(16)
>
> Pound saw the American national tradition
> being buried by the aggressive new internationalism.
> According to Pound's harsh judgment: "The American
> gangster did not spend his time shooting women and
> children. he may have been misguided, but in general
> he spent his time fighting superior forces at
> considerable risk to himself . . . not in dropping
> booby traps for unwary infants. I therefore object
> to the modus in which the American troops obey their
> high commander. This modus is not in the spirit of
> Washington or of Stephen Decatur."(17)
>
> Pound hated war and detected a particular
> undercurrent in the previous wars of history. Wars,
> he said, were destructive to nation-states, but
> profitable for the special interests. Pound said
> international bankers--Jewish bankers, in
> particular--were those who were the primary
> beneficiaries of the profits of from war. He pulled
> no punches when he declared:
>
> Sometime the Anglo-Saxon may awaken to the
> fact that . . . nations are shoved into wars in
> order to destroy themselves, to break up their
> structure, to destroy their social order, to destroy
> their populations. And no more flaming and flagrant
> case appears in history than our own American Civil
> War, said to be an occidental record for size of
> armies employed and only surpassed by the more
> recent triumphs of [the Warburg banking family:] the
> wars of 1914 and the present one.(18)
>
> Although World War II itself was much on
> Pound's mind, the poet's primary concern, referenced
> repeatedly throughout his broadcasts, was the issue
> of usury and the control of money and economy by
> private special interests. "There is no freedom
> without economic freedom," he said. "Freedom that
> does not include freedom from debt is plain bunkum.
> It is fetid and foul logomachy to call such
> servitude freedom . . . Yes, freedom from all sorts
> of debt, including debt at usurious interest."(19)
>
> Usury, he said, was a cause of war throughout
> history. In Pound's view understanding the issue of
> usury was central to understanding history: "Until
> you know who has lent what to whom, you know nothing
> whatever of politics, you know nothing whatever of
> history, you know nothing of international
> wrangles.(20)
>
> "The usury system does no nation . . . any
> good whatsoever. It is an internal peril to him who
> hath, and it can make no use of nations in the play
> of international diplomacy save to breed strife
> between them and use the worst as flails against the
> best. It is the usurer's game to hurl the savage
> against the civilized opponent. The game is not
> pretty, it is not a very safe game. It does no one
> any credit."(21) Pound thus traced the history of
> the current war:
>
> This war did not begin in 1939. It is not a
> unique result of the infamous Versailles Treaty. It
> is impossible to understand it without knowing at
> least a few precedent historic events, which mark
> the cycle of combat. No man can understand it
> without knowing at least a few facts and their
> chronological sequence.
>
> This war is part of the age-old struggle
> between the usurer and the rest of mankind: between
> the usurer and peasant, the usurer and producer, and
> finally between the usurer and the merchant, between
> usurocracy and the mercantilist system . . .
>
> The present war dates at least from the
> founding of the Bank of England at the end of the
> 17th century, 1694-8. Half a century later, the
> London usurocracy shut down on the issue of paper
> money by the Pennsylvania colony, A.D. 1750. This is
> not usually given prominence in the U.S. school
> histories. The 13 colonies rebelled, quite
> successfully, 26 years later, A.D. 1776.(22)
>
> According to Pound, it was the money issue
> (above all) that united the Allies during the second
> 20th-century war against Germany: "Gold. Nothing
> else uniting the three governments, England, Russia,
> United States of America. That is the
> interest--gold, usury, debt, monopoly, class
> interest, and possibly gross indifference and
> contempt for humanity."(23) Although "gold" was
> central to the world's struggle, Pound still felt
> gold "is a coward. Gold is not the backbone of
> nations. It is their ruin. A coward, at the first
> breath of danger gold flows away, gold flows out of
> the country."(24)
>
> Pound perceived Germany under Hitler as a
> nation that stood against the international money
> lenders and communist Russia under Stalin as a
> system that stood against humanity itself. He told
> his listeners:
>
> Now if you know anything whatsoever of modern
> Europe and Asia, you know Hitler stands for putting
> men over machines. If you don't know that, you know
> nothing. And beyond that you either know or do not
> know that Stalin's regime considers humanity as
> nothing save raw material. Deliver so many carloads
> of human material at the consumption point. That is
> the logical result of materialism. If you assert
> that men are dirty, that humanity is merely
> material, that is where you come out. And the old
> Georgian train robber [Josef Stalin--ed.] is
> perfectly logical. If all things are merely
> material, man is material--and the system of
> anti-man treats man as matter.(25)
>
> The real enemy, said Pound, was international
> capitalism. All people everywhere were victims:
> "They're working day and night, picking your
> pockets," he said. "Every day and all day and all
> night picking your pockets and picking the Russian
> working man's pockets."(26) Capital, however, he
> said, was "not international, it is not
> hypernational. It is subnational. A quicksand under
> the nations, destroying all nations, destroying all
> law and government, destroying the nations, one at a
> time, Russian empire and Austria, 20 years past,
> France yesterday, England today."(27)
>
> According to Pound, Americans had no idea why
> they were being expected to fight in Britain's war
> with Germany: "Even Mr. Churchill hasn't had the
> grass to tell the American people why he wants them
> to die, to save what. He is fighting for the gold
> standard and monopoly. Namely the power to starve
> the whole of mankind, and make it pay through the
> nose before it can eat the fruit of its own labor."
> (28)
>
> As far as the English were concerned, in
> Pound's broadcasts aimed at the British Isles he
> warned his listeners that although Russian-style
> communist totalitarianism was a threat to British
> freedom, it was not the biggest threat Britain
> faced:
>
> You are threatened. You are threatened by the
> Russian methods of administration. Those methods
> [are not] your sole danger. It is, in fact, so far
> from being your sole danger that I have, in over two
> years of talk over this radio, possibly never
> referred to it before. Usury has gnawed into England
> since the days of Elizabeth. First it was mortgages,
> mortgages on earls' estates; usury against the
> feudal nobility. Then there were attacks on the
> common land, filchings of village common pasture.
> Then there developed a usury system, an
> international usury system, from Cromwell's time,
> ever increasing."(29)
>
> In the end, Pound suggested, it would be the
> big money interests who would really win the
> war--not any particular nation-state--and the
> foundation for future wars would be set in place:
> "The nomadic parasites will shift out of London and
> into Manhattan. And this will be presented under a
> camouflage of national slogans. It will be
> represented as an American victory. It will not be
> an American victory. The moment is serious. The
> moment is also confusing. It is confusing because
> there are two sets of concurrent phenomena, namely,
> those connected with fighting this war, and those
> which sow seeds for the next one."(30)
>
> Pound believed one of the major problems of
> the day--which itself had contributed to war
> fever--was the manipulation of the press,
> particularly in the United States: "I naturally
> mistrust newspaper news from America," he declared.
> "I grope in the mass of lies, knowing most of the
> sources are wholly untrustworthy."(31)
>
> According to Pound: "The United States has
> been misinformed. The United States has been led
> down the garden path, and may be down under the
> daisies. All through shutting out news. There is no
> end to the amount of shutting out news that the sons
> of blood who started this war, and wanted this war,
> and monkeyed around to get a war started and
> monkeyed around to keep the war going, and
> spreading. There is no end to the shutting out and
> perversions of news that these blighters ain't up
> to, and that they haven't, and aren't still trying
> to compass."(32) Pound believed press manipulation
> was a historic phenomenon:
>
> I ask my compatriots of my own age to note
> that the very high percentage of articles printed in
> American magazines contains a joker, that is a
> silent point, a basically false assumption. I don't
> mean they all contain the same false assumption. I
> point out that there is no public medium in the
> United States for serious discussion. Every [one] of
> these publications has subjects which its policy
> forbids it to mention or to mention without
> falsification. And I ask the men in my generation to
> consider the effects, the cumulative effect of this
> state of things which does not date from September
> 1941, but has been going on ever since we can
> remember.(33)
>
> Pound believed it was vital for the American
> people to circumvent the controlled press and to
> investigate current events--and history--for
> themselves.
>
> Long before anyone ever conceived of C-SPAN's
> daily broadcasts of congressional activity Pound
> suggested one way for the American people to have a
> better view of what was happening in official
> Washington: "You could put Congress on the air. Then
> you would know more of what your representatives are
> putting on you."(34)
>
> The poet noted that the press was so
> controlled it was virtually impossible to express
> opinions contrary to those of the controllers of the
> media of the day: "You can't talk it over with me;
> because none of you can get to a radio. You can't
> print stuff like this in your papers, because the
> newspapers are not there to inform the people."(35)
> Pound harkened back to the old Committees of
> Correspondence that existed in the American colonies
> prior to the American Revolution when he suggested:
> "You have got talk to each other, you have got to
> write letters one to another"(36) in order to be
> able to discuss the real issues of the day.
>
> Pound also noted another press phenomenon: the
> fact that the American press had failed to tell its
> readers that in Europe the Masonic order was a
> widely discussed issue. Pound told his listeners it
> ought to be news in America, but it wasn't: "Nothing
> will come as a greater shock to America in general,"
> he said, "but in particular to honest men who
> compose the greater part, numerically, of American
> Masonry, than the view held concerning that order in
> Europe."(37) Regarding the Masonic order, Pound had
> his own questions: "What are the Masons? Where do
> they get their money? And who controls them?(38)
>
> As far as the all-important question of money
> creation was concerned, Pound also saw the
> controlled press--and the academic
> establishment--covering up the truth. He was
> intrigued by the fact that there was precedent, in
> history, for the governments of nation-states to
> create money rather than relying upon private,
> special interests to do so:
>
> For years economics professors have been
> lying, even going so far as to deprecate loans by
> the state, when the fleet that won the battle of
> Salamis was built with money lent by the Athenian
> state to the ship builders, instead of mortgaging
> the whole nation to . . . swine and enemies of the
> people as has been done in damn near every nation
> ever since the Stank [Bank] of England was founded.
> Well, states have lent money, and the Pennsylvania
> Colony lent it. And the French . . . are lending it.
> So the British fire on their late allies. And every
> damn possible thing is done to prevent the American
> in Utah or Montana from learning economics or
> history. And our Constitution does give Congress the
> right to determine prices, though it is worded,
> "right to determine the value of money," which is
> the same thing.(39)
>
> In Pound's judgment, the American people had
> fallen down on the job and relied upon the greatest
> protection they had against the moneyed
> interests--the U.S. Constitution. "You have not kept
> the Constitution in force," he said. "You have not
> developed it according to its own internal laws . .
> . The main protection of the whole people is in the
> clause about Congress issuing money . . . but you
> have not wanted to maintain the Constitution. You
> have not wanted, that is, you have not had a will,
> to maintain the Constitution or to maintain honest,
> just government.(40)
>
> The U.S. Constitution, Pound said, was "for
> more than a century, in fact for 130 years, far and
> away the best on earth. I had always thought we
> could get all the social justice we need, by a few
> sane reforms of money, such as Adams and Lincoln
> would have thought honest and Constitutional. The
> grafters would rather throw you into a ten years war
> and kill off five or ten million young men than even
> let the discussion of monetary reform flower on the
> front pages of the American papers.(41)
>
> All of these warnings by Pound about the money
> system have been suppressed or ignored or forgotten.
>
>
> Despite his international travel, his choice
> to live abroad, his fluency in foreign tongues, his
> cosmopolitan associations, Pound was very much an
> American nationalist and a patriot in the truest
> sense. American culture and history were the
> foundation of his thinking, and he was the first to
> proclaim it. At the same time, Pound felt the
> American people were badly misinformed about the
> realities of European history:
>
> "The Americans are unqualified for
> intervention," he said. "They are disqualified by
> reason for their intense, abysmal, unfathomable
> ignorance of the state and past facts of Europe.
> Even my colleagues in the Academy of Social and
> Political Science have no competent perception of
> the difference, the basic difference between the
> American problem and that of Europe. And most of
> them have not made any adequate use of even such
> fragmentary fragments of knowledge as they
> possess."(42)
>
> As far as the Jewish question was concerned,
> Pound was never an advocate of mass extermination or
> of any program of discrimination against the
> Jews--contrary to what modern day "historians" might
> contend. Pound did perceive communism as an
> outgrowth of ancient Judaic teachings. He called
> communism "the left hand of Judah"(43) (the right
> hand, presumably, being international finance
> capitalism) and declared that "The Bolshevik
> anti-morale comes out of the Talmud, which is the
> dirtiest teaching any race ever codified. The Talmud
> is the one and only begetter of the Bolshevik
> system."(44)
>
> Pound sometimes resorted to the use of ethnic
> slurs, but earthy expressions and salty language
> were integral to the poet's style. Pound's real
> target was the international banking
> establishment--many of whose leaders were, in fact,
> Jews. But he was not an enemy of the Jewish people:
> "Don't start a pogrom," he said. "That is, not an
> old-style killing of small Jews. That system is no
> good whatsoever. Of course if some man had a stroke
> of genius and could start a pogrom up at the top,
> there might be something to say for it. But on the
> whole legal measures are preferable. (45)
>
> Pound traced many historical problems to the
> direct involvement of Jewish financiers. For
> example, he pointed out: "Nobody with any historical
> knowledge says that the French revolution occurred
> without Jewish assistance. Nor that since that
> somewhat bloody upset and series of subsequent
> upsets the Jew weren't cock-a-hoop in the French
> capital. A knowledge of the French commune would
> have helped us to understand the Russian November
> revolution If we had had it. But handy and useful
> knowledge has an easy way of getting mislaid. Now
> what causes that?(46)
>
> Of the much-discussed Protocols of the Learned
> Elders of Zion, Pound had the following intriguing
> comment:
>
> If or when one mentions the protocols alleged
> to be of the Elders of Zion, one is frequently met
> with the reply: Oh, but they are a forgery.
> Certainly they are a forgery, and that is the one
> proof we have of their authenticity. The Jews have
> worked with forged documents for the past 24 hundred
> years, namely ever since they have had any documents
> whatsoever.
>
> And no one can qualify as a historian of this
> half century without having examined the Protocols.
> Alleged, if you like, to have been translated from
> the Russian, from a manuscript to be consulted in
> the British Museum, where some such document may or
> may not exist . . .
>
> Their interest lies in the type of mind, or
> the state of mind of their author. That was their
> interest for the psychologist the day they first
> appeared. And for the historian two decades later,
> when the program contained in them has so crushingly
> gone into effect up to a point, or down to a
> squalor.(47)
>
> Pound saw the ongoing war as an enemy of
> culture and he acknowledged his goal was stopping
> the war, if he could: "Oh yes, I want it to stop. I
> didn't start it. I should like to conserve a few art
> works, a few mosaics, a few printed volumes, I
> should like to shore, or bring to beach what is left
> of the world's cultural heritage, including
> libraries and architectural monuments. To serve as
> models for new construction."(48)
>
> Contrary to his modern reputation for
> "racism," Pound resented racist attacks on the
> Japanese by the Allies. Shortly after Pearl Harbor
> he remarked that: "A BBC commentator somewhere about
> January 8 was telling his presumably music hall
> audience the Japs were jackals, and that they had
> just recently, I think he said within living men's
> lifetime, emerged from barbarism. I don't know what
> patriotic end you think, or he thinks, or the
> British authorities think is served by such fetid
> ignorance."(49) Pound told his audience the United
> States had, "with unspeakable vulgarity . . .
> insulted the most finely tempered people on earth,
> threatening them with starvation, threatening them
> with encirclement and telling them they were too low
> down to fight."(50) The result, he said, was Pearl
> Harbor and American intervention in the war.
>
> Pound also recognized Japan's Chinese enemies
> were as much victims of the international money
> lenders and intriguers as were the Japanese. In
> colorful language evoking lively imagery that only
> Pound could conjure up, he declared:
>
> "There are millions of Chinamen, many of
them
> living on very short rations in the interior and
> about as much interested in Chiang Kai-shek as they
> are in the White Socks and the Phillies, if there
> still are any Phillies. You could get more
> enthusiasm out of those Chinks for a Hot Dog
> Championship on the Northside than you could for
> Chiang's foreign party in China. A lot of China is
> not pro-Kai-shek. A lot of China is not for that
> gang of foreign investors."(51)
>
> Pound was very much attuned to the nationalist
> instincts of other peoples. He was himself an
> American nationalist who knew there were
> nationalistic strivings all across the globe--that
> nationalists everywhere wanted their peoples to be
> free of the big money interests:
>
> Parts of the world prefer local control, of
> their own money power and credit. It may be
> deplorable (in the eyes of Wall Street and
> Washington) that such aspirations toward personal
> and national liberty still persist, but so is it.
> Some people, some nations, prefer their own
> administration, to that of Baruch and . . . the
> Sassoons, and the problem is: how many more millions
> of British, Russians, and Americans of both the
> northern and southern American continents, plus
> Zulus, Basutos, Hottentots, etc. and the lower,
> so-called lower races, phantom governments,
> Maccabees and their sequelae, are expected to die in
> the attempt to crush out European and Japanese
> independence?(52)
>
> Pound also had a profound respect for the
> European contribution to civilization. He told his
> listeners: "Europe is an organic body, its life
> continues, its life has components and nearly every
> damn thing that has made your lives worth living up
> to this moment, has had its origins right here in
> Europe.(53) In Pound's view, the rise of fascism in
> Italy and Germany was an exclusively European
> phenomenon and one that should be of no concern to
> America:
>
> Europe with systems of government less modern
> than ours, Germany and Italy with the leftovers of
> earlier centuries, especially Germany, saw
> revolutions. Worked out a new system suited to
> Europe. It is not our American affair. We could with
> honor advocate freedom of the seas. For Europe as
> well as for a few Jew controlled shipping firms. We
> could, with honor advocate natural commerce; that
> is, a commerce wherein each nation would exchange
> what it has, what it has in superfluity or
> abundance, with what other nations can or will
> spare. We could stand for that sort of commerce
> instead of trying to throttle it. Why do we not? Why
> should all men under 40 be expected to die or be
> maimed in support of flagrant injustice, monopoly
> and a dirty attempt to strangle and starve out 30
> nations?(54)
>
> Pound felt there was much to be said for the
> social and economic achievements of Italy and
> Germany and that they could prove a model for the
> rest of the Western World: "Every social reform that
> has gone into effect in Germany and Italy should be
> defended," he said. "And the best men in England
> know that as well as I do. The time of calumny is
> past, and its passing should be seen very
> clearly.(55)
>
> Conscious of the reforms effected in Italy and
> Germany, Pound saw similar possibilities for the
> American system. Pound believed the U.S.
> Constitution itself provided Americans the mechanism
> for change. However, he said, "You have not made use
> of the machinery provided in the Constitution
> itself, to keep the American government modern."(56)
> Pound suggested:
>
> You could keep the Constitution, and under
> that Constitution every state in the Union could
> reorganize its system of representation. Any or
> every state could elect its Congressmen on trade
> basis . . . Any or every state could organize its
> congressional representation on a corporate basis.
> Carpenters, artisans, mechanics, could have one
> representative; writers, doctors, and lawyers could
> have one representative.
>
> You could perfectly legally and
> constitutionally divide up the representatives of
> any or every state on the basis of trades and
> professions and the life of that state, every man in
> it, would gain representation in Congress; and
> Congress would take on an honesty and reality no
> American in our time has dreamed of.
>
> Present Congressmen are mostly so ignorant
> that some people have thought it might be useful to
> have a bit of congressional education. Insist on
> Congressmen being able to pass an exam in at least
> some of the subject matters they are expected to
> vote on . . . I think the representation by trades
> and profession would be a better way out, with, if
> you like, different exams for the different trades
> and professions.
>
> That could do no harm whatsoever. Man to
> represent steel workers, to be able to show he knows
> the working of steel; miner to know the workings of
> mines; professional to represent his profession,
> really to represent his profession, the best
> qualities, most acute knowledge of his profession.
> That would certainly lead to efficiency. Health
> regulations would be decided by someone who knew
> something about sanitation. Rules for mining coal,
> rates per day, decided by someone who knows coal
> don't just crawl out of a mine, while somebody sits
> round playing pinochle . . .
>
> "I am telling you how to oil up the
machine,"
> he said, "and change a few gadgets so that it would
> work as the founders intended.(57)
>
> Quick and certain to draw distinctions between
> U.S. and European traditions, however, Pound
> declared: "Class war is not an American product, not
> from the roots of the nation. Not in our historic
> process. And the racial solution, which is Europe's
> solution, which is IN Europe's process, rooted deep
> down, un-uprootable."(58) He told his listeners it
> was vital they study the evolution of the American
> system, and why the American Revolution took place
> to begin with--yes, it had to do with money:
>
> Colonies, pretty much racially homogeneous,
> evolved. They found a solution for the problem of
> money, not of fields against money, not of
> colonists, farmers fighting money, but of fields and
> money working together, and they found it in
> Pennsylvania, and the world said, "How marvelous."
> And an unjust, usurious, monopolist government shut
> down on the money--money handed out to the colonists
> to facilitate their field production, the repayment
> not going to a set of leeches and exploiters. And
> the unjust monopolist government, namely the
> British, was hoofed out [of] the colonies 30 years
> later.(59)
>
> Full of contempt for those whom a real
> historian--his friend, Dr. Harry Elmer
> Barnes--called the "Court Historians" of the day,
> Pound recognized people could not make correct
> decisions about the course of their future if they
> were being lied to about their past: "You have a
> half-dozen historians but not all of them, by any
> means, are able to take out the facts and show how
> they hitch together."(60) He wondered, however, why
> people could not look at recent events that took
> place within their own time frame and see why things
> were happening as they were. To the people of
> war-torn England he addressed this poignant inquiry:
>
> Have you no . . . eyes, no knowledge or . . .
> memory of events that have happened before you? Do
> you know only watery pools where were the cellars of
> London, only the material ruins, having no knowledge
> of . . . deeper causes, of why these things have
> come on you, or what you have done, or in most cases
> omitted, and which have caused these things to come
> on you, and have you no wish to know why this has
> happened?(61)
>
> Pound suggested some good reading for his
> American listeners who might have a desire to bring
> back American tradition: "Two great friendships, at
> the base of American history. John Adams and
> Jefferson, Van Buren and Andy Jackson. You can pass
> the time reading that history. It will make the boys
> better citizens. Make any young man more American if
> he sticks to seeing American history first before
> swallowing exotic perversions."(62)
>
> Knowledge--basic historical knowledge--was
> vital, according to Pound. That theme--that
> knowledge was critical--was central to all of his
> wartime broadcasts. He urged his listeners to know
> who they were and why the world was in crisis. To
> his listeners, Pound urged this much: "Don't die
> like a beast. If you are dead set to be sunk in the
> mid-Atlantic or Pacific or scorched in the desert,
> at least know why it is done to you. To die not
> knowing why is to die like an animal . . . To die
> like a human being you have at least got to know why
> it is done to you."(63)
>
> Pound's graphic words could well be a warning
> to modern-day Americans in this age when American
> soldiers are being asked to fight and die in endless
> brush-fire wars around the globe--wars that enrich
> their real enemies--the very plutocrats Pound so
> fiercely condemned.
>
> Pound's defense attorney, who found the
> transcripts of the broadcasts "dreary," later
> summarized them as follows:
>
> There was no criticism of the allied war
> effort in the broadcasts; nothing was said to
> discourage or disturb American soldiers or their
> families. Pound's main concern was with usury and
> other economic sins which he conceived were being
> committed by an international conspiracy of Jewish
> bankers who were the powers behind the throne of
> England and had succeeded in duping the government
> of the United States. The broadcasts were in essence
> lectures in history and political and economic
> theory, highly critical of the course of American
> government beginning with Alexander Hamilton . . .
> The American people were told they did not
> understand what was going on in Europe and if they
> did, the war would not have been necessary."(64)
>
>
>
