EZRA POUND

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24814, 2 March 1946, Page 5

EZRA POUND

Sir, —I have read neither the broadcasts for which Ezra Pound was to have been tried for treason nor any reasons he may have given for the broadcasts; but I was sorry to see the article on Pound, reprinted from the "Saturday Review of Literature, which appeared in these columns last Saturday. • I was sorry because the article was a judgment without the evidence or the defence, and specially sorry because it was a judgment by an influential figure in the world of letters, appearing in one of America s most influential literary publications. Whatever Pound did or did not do during the war, whether by the best standards he was right or wrong in his attitude to the issues of the war, it is, I suggest, greatly to be regretted that the voice of a fellow writer should be raised, arid particularly in a Pl a 9 e where it carries such great weight, in pontifical condemnation. An®’, 11 artists are indeed to be regarded as the conscience of the race, it is to be wondered at that one who had associated himself with the cause that inflicted the atom bomb and obliteration bombing generally on the world should cast stones to the accompaniment of fine phrases about humanity and civilisation. I suggest that in matters of this sort artists might do worse than adopt the attitude which Tchekhov adopted at the time of the Dreyfus case: Suppose Dreyfus to be guilty—Zola is still right, since the duty of a writer is not to accuse nor to persecute, but to intercede on behalf even of the guilty when once they are convicted and punished. You may say: “But what about politics? What about the interests of the State?” But great writers and artists engage in politics only in so far as it is necessary to defend people against politics. Accusers and Crown prosecutors and gendarmes—there are sufficient of these, and at any rate the role of Paul is more fitting to a writer than of Saul. —Yours, etc., F. JONES. February 27, 1946.