They may possibly prove the DEFECTS of the
American
electoral system and the power of bribery and corruption.
Ezra-Pound-Speaking
very first sentence he sez "the maintainance of war sentiment in Italy becomes an increasingly hard problem.
"
Oh, is THAT so ? sez the aristocrat, wrinklin' up his nose with amusement.
So I continue readin' the tidbits:
"A SINISTER image HAUNTS the rulers of Italy. It portrays (I'spose in some kind of language an image can portray, but I ain't yet seen an IMAGE portrayin'; if the word portray means to paint a portrait. But let us pass the Times writer choice of words. ) It PORTRAYS Britain emerging from the present struggle impoverished but still sound and strong. It portrays America turning her mighty industry . . . and SO forth.
Waaal, now really. If some of the Sassoon's last opium cargoes got toted up from what is now Shonanko, into the Printing House Square or Holland Park West, or wherever, there may be an IMAGE portrayin'. But the only reaction to America having an industry I have read was one about the multiplication of bed bugs; that was considered beneath the dignity of Rome radio, but might in time be found to be the only adequate reply to such nonsense.
As to Britain's FUTURE might, you git "420," quattro cento venti; the Italian penny comic and you will find what Italy is FEELING and thinking; during the 1914 unpleasantness "420" used to bring weekly pleasure to thousands with its "IMAGES" of Franz Josef. That is now what Italy THINKS about Roosevelt and England. And as for being strong but impoverished, there are still tender hearts, NO longer anglophile in general; but having traces of friendship for personal friends IN England and they have been known to wonder whether people who had 1000 sterling per annum will after this war have 100, and those
? that had 100, whether they will have 20 left 'em or the purchasing power of 20 pounds per annum left to their credit.
And IMPOVERISHMENT is not strength. Neither is the loss of your eastern possessions and the British Broadcasting Company view that Malta is a (textually) "LONELY OUTPOST of empire," used to be umbelicus in my time; in the days of my heady youth.
After the comic prelude of the anonymous "special correspondent" not even alleged to be over in Lisbon, probably in Kensington West or South West, after the comic prelude he gets a bit dirty: usual mean streak of a man with a weak case. Then he talks about Apuleius and so forth. Dis liking Italian broadcasts.
Why don't he stand up to the broadcasts from Rome transmitted in English ? Why is he such an abject moral and intellectual coward that he DARE not face the arguments about money that go over this air from me, as an independent speaker, and from the REGULAR staff speakers, whenever they touch on the problem of making money by FOUNTAIN pen scribblin' instead of doing an honest day s work?
Why do ALL the British papers and ALL the British Broadcasting Company bunkosteers keep so gingerly OFF all the ground where there is ideological COMBAT ? Worse funk-holers [than] the Whore Behsha
WHERE are the Coventry marchers ? Where are the Green Shirts ? Suppressed of course [This] visible image EMBODYING thought on the hoof was prohibited before the Jews got you to fighting In the whole of your rotten parasitic ranks the whole of the British Broadcasting Company hireling company NO ONE dares and no one wants and no one would be there if they did want or dare to TOUCH the real issues.
Monopoly of gold components of your gold exchange, nature of money, how it is issued, how the people are bled, state of health in Your ISLAND.
? Now to get down to brass tacks, to answer that ass in the Times. No ONE here expects you to do ANYTHING in this war save to LOSE it. From Dunkirk to Dakar, with at most a few successes over your onetime ALLIES. No one expects you to do anything with or IN this war save to LOSE it. BOTH to Germany and to Roosevelt.
Roosevelt portrayin' (if you like the word) JEWRY No one expects you to do anything in or with this war but to lose it. If that expectation is an illusion it nevertheless EXISTS so that when the gent in the Fly Fisher s dub writes his next article, let him say that ENGLAND expects to emerge impoverished but fierce as [the] stone Trafalgar Square fountain lion of Briton, not as a stuffed lion skin, used as a bed mat.
But fer Gawd's sake let him lay off saying this is what ITALY looks to. Italy just ain't got that kind of jimjams. NO ONE here is surprised one atom at your fighting the war badly, from Dunkirk to Dakar, from Hong Kong to Calcutty. One is mildly set to wonder WHY you are fighting Europe instead of fighting Marx and P. Spencer, and Karl Marx and Lyons, and the one hundred enemies that had got you by the short hairs: and got you hog-tied BEFORE the war started. Over DANZIG, allegedly.
Over a year ago a man of the former social age, an international tennis ace, unsuspectible of political passions, the kind that jokes about these things, said his wife said to him, "WHY ever do they (meaning the English) FIGHT the Germans ? Don't they know that is all the Germans CAN do ? Why do they go to WAR? "
Now firstly, the lady was inexact, as anyone who has read enough German philosophy, or heard Johnnie Bach's music, or seen Albrecht Durer's painting, or knows the work of the Frobenius Forschung's Institute KNOWS. The Germans have quite a lot of assorted abilities.
? But the question SUBSISTS ? WHY did the people of England LET them selves get catched by the short hairs and HOG-tied, and led into losing the eastern parts of their empire, and getting allied to red Russia?
Let the TIMES go into THESE things--TELL PAPA! WHY did the Times, which LOST YOU Hong Kong, and Singapore, and Rangoon KEEP the REAL news and the real thought of the past 50 years (yaaas, not 20 but 50) years OUT of its columns. What causes that?
Well my time at this microphone is drawin' to a close for this evening and I haven't leisure to go into the other columns of that issue of the Old Thunderer. But when you are sad and downhearted, git out your back issues of the Times Newspaper of London, if they haven't been confis cated by the dog-catcher to make biscuit for miner's children, and lull yourself with Tennysonian legends, such as "Dutch leadership in the Indies," rivaling that of Luzon, resistance, all merry and bright.
I do hate to return that stray copy of the Old Thunderer to its owner. Lord knows when I shall see yet another one, and having my head chuck full of things I want to emit to you, it will be a long time before I again animadvert to the paleozoic habits of your island crustaceans.
#25 (April 13, 1942) U. S. (B20) QUESTION OF MOTIVE
I do not expect perfect and COMplete comprehension of these discourses on the part of all of my audience. I should be content if I get over even a small part of what I am driving at, and WHY I am drivin'. For over 30 years I have been driving at some of the same objective objectives.
I thought in 1908 and before then that a nation's literature IS important. State of a nation's literature, is important. Words, means of communication, literature, the most condensed form of communication,
? communication of the most basic and essential facts, ideas necessary for leading the good life, registered in the best books.
And man's duty, as soon as he is fully a man, is to keep those books, to keep that tradition available. Keep it handy. And the public: American and English, but for the moment let me stick to the United States of America. [The] American public [is] rather like that lunatic in Pea's novel Moscardino, chap in gook house who just wouldn't believe that there could be enough microbes on the back of a postage stamp to knock a man cold. Thought it was doctors' fables, in fact thought the doctors had heard it from other gooks in the asylum.
Waal, the Americans and the English just couldn't believe that it made any difference what a man or a nation put inside its head via its reading.
Hence I was supposed to exaggerate when I bust out against such dung heaps of perfumed pus as the Atlantic Monthly, and Harper's and Scribner's, as they were in the year 1900 and ceased not essentially to be as long as they lasted. The stink of stale perfume contains the deadly gasses which finally poison. No language could quite cover the loathing I feel for a Sedgewick, but it doubtless seems exaggerated. Later in London I did a sottisier, trying to make a few people see why the printed matter on sale in that city would finally kill off the inhabitants; witness Dunkirk.
The XIX stinking century saw what is called an advance in science. People learned that bacilli can kill. Prophylaxis entered the general mind, but an older concept got knocked OUT of the popular mind. It had been possibly once a good concept, but it had decayed. It was what is or was called a theological concept. The age, called the age of faith, thought a wrong idea could bring evil.
? In the Middle Ages they got a bit fantastic, got their eyes off the here and now, and thought the bad idea would land a man in perdition, eternal flames, purgatory, or whatever.
Then something got tangled, and the people got fanatic, and heretics were burned and so forth. And M. Voltaire tried to get that untangled, worked all his life against the cruelties of fanaticism, was called an atheist; which he was NOT. I strongly suspect that almost no heretics were burnt, at least not at the beginning, except those who interfered with the usury racket, those whose ideas were seen as inimical to the usury racket, leaving out the question. But so far as I know no research has ever been done along these lines. I am speaking of heretics proper, ideology, not people who went into witch persecutions.
The idea that a WRONG idea could damage people here and now was perhaps not fully developed. The British theory was that free speech was a blow hole. Let 'em TALK and they will DO nothing. Hyde Park corner, etc.
Gus Flaubert and I myself, and diverse others, includin' if you must go so far back, Mencius and Confucius, saw something worse than just one BAD idea, and that was the corruption of the whole and TOTAL means of communication of all ideas whatsoever. The corruption of language, the destruction of all precision in terminology, which takes man back and down to the status of beasts, or what beasts are SUPPOSED to be; namely, unable to communicate with one another.
Yet even animals, packs of wolves, and wild dogs do seem to under stand each other, and to collaborate. Very well, I set up and gradually got some ideas as to combat tin' this universal gonorrhea of language and this rotting of ALL Printed means of communication, monthlies, dailies, weeklies, mercantilist publishing system.
? All of which has bloody well dished and ditched the pore old British iniquitous empire. Too late to save that now. And anyhow, I am speaking to the United States of America. Forty years ago Brooks Adams made a quite good study of England, foreseein' she would bust up, and part go to the United States of America and part go to Germany with, if I remember it right, Japan gettin' a look in. Nacherly VERY few people read Mr. Adams. I only know of ONE Englishman who has quoted him.
And I am not enamoured of retrospect. I ought to have been given Brooks Adams when I was havin' a shot at American history in the University of Pennsylvania--that's 40 years ago. Might have accelerated me in giving him a little publicity. In fact ALL history teachin' in American universities ought to have got hold of Brooks Adams THEN, 1897-1900, 1903 his best volumes.
His weak an' pindlin' young brother Henry was not the man that his elder brother Brooks was. Brooks seeing what had happened in history, seem' it pretty clearly, foreseeing what would happen in HIS time, but not seeing beyond that. Knowing that an age of faith, or ages of faith had existed, but did not see the next one. Livin', you may say, in his own phase. Foreseein' the down flop of England, that is, of the Empire, noting symptoms of England's decline, which the English remained deaf to, and blind to.
BUT not foreseeing the Italian rise, not foreseeing the change of phase: from material to volitional.
Reactin' against John Quincy Adams' judized form of religion. I forget where he notes that, maybe in the preface to his book on New England.
ANYhow trying to figure out where John Quincy Adams, whom he greatly admired, had gone off the rails, not gittin' back to his great grandad John Adams, the father of his country and inventor to some extent of General Washington.
? Waaal, can't get it all into one discourse. But if there is still some campus not yet invaded by the hosts of Belial and Jewry not wholly squashed under the dung-flow from Wall Street and Washington, I suggest you start taking notes and figures. Figure out this affair of the ruin of language, the falsification of all reports in the well paid magazines, the falsification of newsprint. And ALSO the attack on historic knowledge. The rise of TALMUDIC schools, quite UNNOTICED by the high class periodicals. Note when America began to be filled with talmudic schools, not listed and having big sign boards. Note when American history went out of fashion. When the kids in the lower grades heard of Lenin and Marx and Trotsky, and not so much of Lincoln and Washington. Watch the gradual creep up of obscurantism, the neglect, ab initio, from the start, of John Adams, Van Buren, and Johnson.
There ought to be 700 STUDENTS, and 30 professors, digging into this question, these questions. SOME DAY you will need to KNOW, need to know more than you do at present.
Lord knows what will come to you first.
#26 (April 16, 1942) U. S. (B33) CLARIFICATION
For the United States to be makin' war on Italy AND on Europe is just plain damn nonsense and every native born American of American stock KNOWS that it is plain downright damn nonsense.
And for this state of things Franklin Roosevelt is more than any other one man responsible. Of course he was puffed up, and put thaar, or kept thaar, and that dirty Kike Lippmann has declared that Roosevelt is MOVED by others; and does not act proprio motu.
? All of which whatnesses do NOT adulterate the fact that WAR between the United States and Europe is nonsense. And its makers ought to be smacked.
How long it is going to take the American people to make at least a partial return toward their senses, I know not, I do not know.
I suggest yet again that you look at the way the WAR, this war, has been wangled. And HOW it has been conducted. FIRST, the American people were SANE enough to see that the war was phony. DANZIG, Poland, and all the rest of it, COOKED and the American people KNEW it was cooked. Second, England's offensives effective against neutrals and Allies. Third, the United States offensives effective against England, Iceland, and Venezuela, at the cost of losin' the Philippines. Well, damn the Philippines. We promised 'em independence, and the dirt in our national makeup prevented our keepin' the promise. Our conduct as a nation to various is lands, let alone to South American republics, is NOT our title to glory. And Aguinaldo has as good a right to the Philippines as any God damn Jew in Roosevelt's family caballa. I do hate to see Hawaii endangered. We got the Sandwich Islands more or less decently, and they could have been held as a defensive position.
The Philippines WERE NOT, they were an offensive position, and the conduct of Roosevelt's government was plain downright silly, not to say nasty, not to say mean, not to say stinkin', it was all of these things put together.
Anyhow, one of the LIES of this war is the LIE about the anti-Axis alliances. Russia is NOT Britain's ally but her enemy, America is NOT Britain's ally but her enemy.
Chiang Kike Chek is the prize buyer of gold bricks, and where did Soong git his money ? Mrs. Chiang Kike is always flittin' and floatin' in Semite entourages. If Charlie Soong warn't staked out by kikedom, you
? come here and tell papa. I can't prove this assertion, but I await any disproof, and I don't expect it to be forthcomin'.
The phrase, cut off the NOSE to spite the face, may seem invidious and SUGgestive. "Wasn't she a silly slut, to sell her bed and lie in dirt? " Yaas, SHE was, Margery Daw or Columbia, Solomon's jewel. You have cut your nose off to the extent of three summer vacations in Europe. You have cut your nose off to the extent of what you haven't had in those three years in the way of cultural contacts and the amenities. Whatever is happening in the way of BASHING abundance INSIDE the United State of America you know better than I do, and I am not going to tell you about Cincinnati. I have heard British fools talk about Italy which they had not visited. I have seen men get het up about what happens in other countries, meaning what is SAID to happen in other countries. And what they have read in the noozwypers, and I am not going to participate in that form of foolery.
YOU TELL ME about what is going on in the United States of America and I'll tell you what I see here in Italy. That will be fair exchange and no kikery.
I do NOT admire your making war on Finland, Iceland and Venezuela, on the pretense that you don't like Hitler's municipal government.
Or that you steal from other countries because they are incapable of governing themselves, or because their governors are incapable of stealing from them. Neither, I think, do you.
EIGHTY years peace for England would have been useful to England. Thirty years peace for the United State of America would have been useful to YOU. It would have meant a whole generation.
I don't know how long the Pacific would have maintained its status quo, but I am right, downright certain that I could have done BETTER in
? dealin' with Japan than any of Mr. Roosevelt's lowbrow assistants, among whom I know of none who was fit for the Japanese mission.
England was bilked, and that was NOT done without United States assistance. Well, I don't admire the men who assisted. And neither, I think, do YOU.
As to what you can do to get out of it, that is another story. Haven't you got any folks at home who can tell you ? After all my mission in life had been rather special. Maybe that was my error, but one can't be in ten places at once. I believe, like bed rock, I believe, that if the American people had been consulted in 1938-39 and 40 and 41 NINETY percent of the American people would have been content to have the American government stick to its best traditions, to stay OUT of international shindies, and to USE the United States prestige. (We HAD some prestige in those days. ) And the American people would have wanted used to get a SANE, peaceful arrangement of the problems of Europe. And a clean government in Washington would have aimed at that target. When, before Gawd, are we going to get a clean government ? It is time for the American people to start gettin' ready to think about that.
Whether Frankie is a gook or a kike, I don't think the American people LIKE him. I don't think they wanted him back in the White House. And the election figures don't prove it.
They may possibly prove the DEFECTS of the American electoral system and the power of bribery and corruption. And then again they may not. The only excuse of most voters was "you don't vote against Santa Claus. " Look what Santa has brought you now. Waaal ole Franklin Kris Kingle, Sant Nicalaus, ain't got any live children back out of the pork barrel. If that is too mixed a metaphor, let me remind you of the old French chanson, about St. Nicholas. Frankie looks to me more like gettin' the live young INTO the salt pork barrel than rescuing the little dears out of it.
? As for the English, nine of 'em out of ten do NOT believe they ought to be fighting the Germans. And that goes a long way to explain why a lot of them don't seem anxious to do it. They don't like their empire being ruined. They don't want their island invaded.
But nine of 'em out of TEN do NOT believe they ought to be fighting the Germans. That is, down there under their skulls, down under their thick bully hides they DO NOT think they ought to be fightin' the Germans. They DO not believe in Bolshevik methods, or in the Bolshevik propaganda. None of it is spontaneous in England, and a lot of British KNOW the Bolos are HIRED.
Some of 'em, not the nicest among 'em, think, oh yes, they OUGHT to fight Italy cause Italy is small on the map, and the small ought to be jumped on. That is British tradition. But they do NOT think they ought to be fighting the Germans, and they do NOT want to see geography books with England's empire reduced to probable figures: but they do NOT think they ought to be fighting the Germans.
Well, think it over.
#27 (April 19, 1942) U. K. (B29) TO SOCIAL CREDITORS
Last Sunday I came on some typed pages signed "W. A. Nyland," Secretary pro tem. That seems all a long way back in faded lavender. A time like this gives one time to go thru quite a lot [of] postal matter that one hadn't time to look at very thoroughly when it arrived.
A time like this, when the postal service with the Western Hemisphere is somewhat reduced. Result, so far as my private life is concerned, is that not bein' able to continue private correspondence by letter with the more lively American youth, gentry and professoriate, I had to stir round and git onto the air, only line [left] me.
? Now I ask Social Creditors if anyone of 'em except Major Douglas gave in the old days--the dim and distant 20s or the almost as dim 1830 and 35s--ANY thought as to the sort of paralysis that allus seemed to creep into the Social Credit movement, about as soon as it got near action.
I have told you of Senator Cutting's hope, and his disappointment. Aberhart may for all I know still rule in Calgarry, like Brian Duff in -- --still. The jewbrew and rabbinical stations do NOT stress either present or past of Alberta province.
Mebbe no one has told 'em you OUGHT, you really ought NOT to ask the pliant public to put a stamp on its stamp scrip once a WEEK. Lord knows I have tried in my time to stop a fairly wide set of foolishnesses on [the] part of people who LACK historic perspective, or who failed to grasp the inner workin's of economic mechanisms, and the relations between one expression of monetary honesty and another.
I am not concerned with the merits of particular bills, I am not concerned with the injected paralysis that has stopped any and all bills having economic basis in honesty since 1873, or say since 1863, gettin' back to the start of the present phase of the unending swindle. Is that paralysis due to the Talmud ? Or to the spieir [? ] whereof the Talmud is the most complete (and dirty) and thorough verbal manifestation extant?
There is no doubt that C. H. Douglas began to notice some years ago that certain elements, call 'em elements, seemed to penetrate into the works of the Social Creditors' movement just about the time it seemed to be about to be real. In fact his writin's during the three years precedin' Mr. Churchill's new war were largely spent in lookin' for the source of these penetrations, these injections of paralysis. He left off his a plus b, or left it in the background and got right out with Henry Ford in IDENTIFYIN' the Hebrews as a possible source of infection. And the circulatability of his publications got lower and lower.
? Now what do you think causes that? And what do you think you can or could do to UNcause it, not necessarily re the a plus b theorem but in the case of ANY and every economic reform or basic reorganization that you chose to believe in ?
You say: change in direction of will. All right, say you had wild imagination. Say you had guts enough to IMAGINE a man you really would like to see in the White House: I mean would REALLY think ought to be in the White House.
What would you DO ? Would you communicate your thought to your neighbor ? What would he do ? What effect would it have on the oncomin' elections, 1942, 19447 Has anybody but the present speaker had any such flight of poetic fancy dunn' the past 20 years ? You can't tell me that Harding or Coolidge or any of 'em were chosen, nominated because anybody really felt: well now, that is what we need in the White House.
Wouldn't that fellow just add to the American tradition ?
Well what about it ? What would happen IF every American over the age of 21 suddenly voted for what he wanted ? I don't mean, for just what he felt to be the lesser evil, the less rotten apple ? Now just think a minute; supposin' you went down to Washington and walked up the front path to the White House. What would you like to find sittin' in a rockin' chair on the lawn, or find inside in a drawin' room, to greet you as the American President ?
Just what qualifications ought the fellow to have whom you would like to find in there? Who would make you feel that his presence added, yes, I say, added to the joy of bein' alive ?
Yes, I know it is a vision. I never had it but once. Nobody ever told me I was wrong; in fact nobody ever said while I was in America three years ago, nobody said I was foolish, they just thought it impractical. They
? didn't think he could get there. Or mebbe that was the trouble; mebbe they DID think he could get there.
Of course the nomination has sometimes been quite within reach of almost impecunious people. I have been given extremely low figures as to the bottom price for the ante, which depends of course on the year, and the state of the political market. But mebbe those low figures only apply to duds, whom the wise guys just KNOW won't be elected.
Such I suppose is democracy. Or perhaps such is the modesty of political parties.
Well, up in BREMEN they seem to have decided that you folks can't keep your minds on any one thing more'n about three minutes. I used to listen to their Mirror, now I hear their magazine. Three minutes talk, then a gigue tune. Mebbe Rome would give me with music included if I put up a howl. Not every topic NEEDS 12 and 21/2 minutes. Sometime I feel just like askin' a string of questions; as fer example: WHY do you Yanks fall for the FOREIGN or exotic wheeze? I mean Jews from all over Europe come to America, and you think they are Frenchmen and Dutchmen. Now why is that ?
And then this appointin' ambassadors to imaginary unlanded governments? Ought I to get ambassadors appointed every time one of my Italian friends wants to ask me what time is it or whether Faulkner is better'n Caldwell, and WHICH Caidwell or whether Josh Bathos writes better'n Bromfield, or what's become of that refined almost writer Mr. Thornton Wilder ? Do you dare fall for it ? I mean this elevated from rank of minister to that of dambastador, in order to treat with the government of Ruthenia, at 29 Wardour Street, third floor back, W. C. in London ?
I should like to see that subject treated in Puck or Judge, if those monuments of the ash-barrel era still flourish. Puck used to be Democrat
? and Judge Republican, back in 1892. Have they conserved their old sense of coarse humor, coarse but robust and healthy, or are they all peter'd out ? I mean Arno'ed.
Lookin' back and rememberin' my far distant childhood on the corner of 47th and Madison Avenue where there is now such [a? ] sumptuous Hotel Accommodation Thinkin', thinkin of my Great Aunt's family furniture, moved a few blocks up the street. I wonder if the ole grand piano is still workin' for the folks that took over, foreclosed the mortgage, or something, anyhow, sold the old lady up.
And Mr. Fouquet, and pop Quackenbush, all that generation that remembered the Civil War. All gone with the ash barrels. Think of swell ballroom, right where my Great Uncle used to keep his bunch of bananas, and I used to play chequers with him; my old Great Aunt's black man of general all work, or rather any work, some work, that he used to dodge to play chequers on top of the apple barrel, before the days of the Windsor Fire, Two Hotels, Windsor and Buckingham, ornament of Fifth Avenue, back before you kids remember.
An' yaller Martha. She used to take snuff. That's a long time before the great night life of Harlem. Back when Owen Wister, it may have been, wrote "Philosophy 4"--now why do I think of that ? And why did that darkie porter in Grand Central Station look at the E. initial before my name on my suitcase in 1939 and say: Now how do I come to know that, that E. stands for Ezra? Sort of nearly undersized porter.
My mind goes back to before the invasion. I mean I suppose that is what is occurrin' in my psychology leadin' me up to the question: Have you GAINED by the interval ? WHAT have you gained by the interval, from 4 to 8 million invaders, all part of a widely distributed RACE, that has a radio out by San Diego or somewhere, known as the universal world Jewry station, or some similar title, and does a HIGHLY organized 7 to 7 to 7 [for] 6 or 8 million people of a decidedly OTHER
? race; in the midst of 100 million or so assorted descendents of people racially European, MEAN anything for the welfare or illfare of the UNorganized 100 million ? And if so, how so ? And sailors don't care? Whalers don't care, landlubbers seem fairly indifferent.
Ernest Poole might write a book on the subject. Another bloke whose name I forget might write a book on the subject. Wrote a novel I rather liked, about a New England family goin' to seed on a farm that was like a white elephant. I mentioned it and was promptly reproved by a highbrow friend (not a professor) who assured me that that novelist would never write a somethin' or other. Marquand, that's the fellow's name, Marquand the novelist.
Well, I don't take such high ground. I think all those American novelists who try to set down a slice of history ought to get credit for it. Even if they go a bit heavy, or leave in 40 pages in 3 or 4 hundred that just aren't quite book-writin'. But still you get a bit of Van Buren, or a bit of some epoch that young America OUGHT to know more of; 1830 or 1930, but at least tryin' to peg down some part of our white man's heritage and tradition. Not bein' cute and cunnin', but trying to tell the next generation at least part of what ought to be known.
That's why I keep on hammerin' on the disgrace to the nation implicit in not printin' Joe Gould. I mean that is one why. And Mr. McAlmon always printed in Paris. Two sets of men, tryin' to put down American history, one doin' it in meritorious novels, that the highbrows niff at snobistically, one set or a few scattered fragments doing impractical stuff, lack of national discipline, lack of civic responsibility.
Workin' in BOTH these branches of United States incompetence. Oh, little things, here and there, just a straw shows how the wind blows. And then the United States gets bumped OFF, like the frogs did. After more 50 years warnin'. And the frogs sellin' 15 thousand copies, a whole
? series of editions (Flammarion editions) where American author wouldn't sell 1500.
Mebbe that is part of the national trouble, part of the great American bellyache, part of the American IMMATURITY; to call it by no more harsh name.
And then the omissions, the things Mr. Dewey, Professor Davis Rich Dewey leaves OUT of his Financial History.
Well that's all for this spasm. Ezra Pound at the microphone. Why not have a real President ?
#28 (April 20, 1942) U. S. (B34) ABERRATION
The Daily Mail of London got round a few weeks ago to reprinting one of those libelous photographs that were shot on board the REX last time I came into New York harbor.
Well, that did not harm, unless it cast a little indirect discredit on the capacity of American press photographers. The Daily Mail seemed to be followin' in the wake of the Sunday Times. The Mail contented itself to saying my admiration for fascism was notorious.
The "Special Correspondent" (address not given) of the Sunday Times, apart from an erroneous statement as to my views of the American President, used a qualifying statement saying that "Among Pound's many eccentricities and aberrations, his admiration of the Fascist regime in Italy has long been notorious. " Both papers neglected to tell their British readers that I broadcast to ENGLAND now and again. That is not the point either.
? What I am a lookm' at is this word ABERRATION. They call it an aberration for me to admire or whatever the present Italian system of government. Has a fascist government itself ABerrated, or has it aberred? Firstly, if it aberred, it aberred into drainin' a powerful lot of swamp land which OTHER Italian governments had been lookin' at since the time of Tiberius Caesar and signally failed to get DRY. Those swamps had been lying thaaar breedin' malaria for over two thousand years, sometimes a bright boy would take a smack at 'em and dry up a bit or a corner. But the FASCIST regime lit in and got quite a lot of [it] dried, and under healthy cultivation.
Secondly, if I aberr, it [is] in the aberration of admirin' the increase of grain yielded in Italy.
Thirdly, fourthly, and etceterarialy, there is the question of national health, bein' improved, there is the question of the increase in living quarters for the NOT-rich sectors of the nation's community, there is the question of water supply.
Sixthly, etc. there is the question of electric power. So as they don't have [to] waste their substance buying dirty old smoke coal from England. Petrified frogs, Frenchies, biologically fixed, had been yapping about la hOOOOOOuille blanche for decades. Well, the Fascist REGIME got the Italian railway runnin' by electricity. That is by lettin' water flow down wards, OVER some selected turbines. All of which is notorious, if it an't just a little bit more than! I
But it is merely material and my respect for the Fascist Regime, for FASCISM in fact, goes a bit further. Along about the time Tony tin-toes Eden was tellin' Italy where to get off at, and she did NOT GIT. There came a day when Italy sat up sassy and defied fifty-two so-called nations, England among 'em. That required something more than mere itch toward luxury economics. And the idea of having an airplane crash onto a battle ship did not START in Japan. About the time Tony's
? England was trying to bully NEW Italy, there was something here in this peninsula.
Do I aberr in admiring it? I think I do not.
And at England's present condition, I wonder if the Sunday Timesers and their parishioners aren't mebby ready to wish some of their bosses had aberrated in similar manner. The aberration of an alliance with Japan, now wouldn't England have done better to aberr into an alliance with Japan, rather than being hoffed out of Shonanko, Hong Kong, and Rangoon? An alliance with Germany, rather than with a paralytic Jewed France?
Let us say the British Foreign office had committed a few aberrations along my line, would England be today a brighter and happier country? Instead of droppin' so many old naval bases and stations into Frank Roosenstein's pocket? I don't say Washington would have welcomed these moves, but I am opening up a line of Enquiry, about the word ABERRATION.
Perhaps I should also open up a line about representation. An Italian said to me yesterday, "But so many people in England have NO representation, you could have a party of a million people in England, and it might not have even ONE member in Parliament? " Here EVERY man of what ever trade or profession has the OPTION of joining up with his sindacato; he don't have to, but if he wants to be represented directly, that is the method. If he don't join up, his interests are nevertheless looked after, cause if he is a carpenter, or a rice grower, or a field worker, or a fellow that trims olive trees, there is the UNION, the sindacato, working up to the confederazione. It's thaaar to represent the interest of peasant, or carpenter, or dentist, or whatsoever. All of which may be notorious, at least plenty of people here know it, and nothing has
? been concealed. No secret back of the curtain conspiracies. No trade union leader can sell out to the employers, nor blackmail employees.
I, for example, would come under the confederation of artists and professional men, painters, doctors, writers, dentists, etc. WHAT Congressional representation or parliamentary representation have the professional classes had in the United States or England since the beginning of their government system?
Aberration? If this be an aberration, let me aberr. What bloody chance has the stray man, the individual in old style so-called democratic organization, in comparison to what he has in a corporate system, EMBODIED system?
Oh, is THAT so ? sez the aristocrat, wrinklin' up his nose with amusement.
So I continue readin' the tidbits:
"A SINISTER image HAUNTS the rulers of Italy. It portrays (I'spose in some kind of language an image can portray, but I ain't yet seen an IMAGE portrayin'; if the word portray means to paint a portrait. But let us pass the Times writer choice of words. ) It PORTRAYS Britain emerging from the present struggle impoverished but still sound and strong. It portrays America turning her mighty industry . . . and SO forth.
Waaal, now really. If some of the Sassoon's last opium cargoes got toted up from what is now Shonanko, into the Printing House Square or Holland Park West, or wherever, there may be an IMAGE portrayin'. But the only reaction to America having an industry I have read was one about the multiplication of bed bugs; that was considered beneath the dignity of Rome radio, but might in time be found to be the only adequate reply to such nonsense.
As to Britain's FUTURE might, you git "420," quattro cento venti; the Italian penny comic and you will find what Italy is FEELING and thinking; during the 1914 unpleasantness "420" used to bring weekly pleasure to thousands with its "IMAGES" of Franz Josef. That is now what Italy THINKS about Roosevelt and England. And as for being strong but impoverished, there are still tender hearts, NO longer anglophile in general; but having traces of friendship for personal friends IN England and they have been known to wonder whether people who had 1000 sterling per annum will after this war have 100, and those
? that had 100, whether they will have 20 left 'em or the purchasing power of 20 pounds per annum left to their credit.
And IMPOVERISHMENT is not strength. Neither is the loss of your eastern possessions and the British Broadcasting Company view that Malta is a (textually) "LONELY OUTPOST of empire," used to be umbelicus in my time; in the days of my heady youth.
After the comic prelude of the anonymous "special correspondent" not even alleged to be over in Lisbon, probably in Kensington West or South West, after the comic prelude he gets a bit dirty: usual mean streak of a man with a weak case. Then he talks about Apuleius and so forth. Dis liking Italian broadcasts.
Why don't he stand up to the broadcasts from Rome transmitted in English ? Why is he such an abject moral and intellectual coward that he DARE not face the arguments about money that go over this air from me, as an independent speaker, and from the REGULAR staff speakers, whenever they touch on the problem of making money by FOUNTAIN pen scribblin' instead of doing an honest day s work?
Why do ALL the British papers and ALL the British Broadcasting Company bunkosteers keep so gingerly OFF all the ground where there is ideological COMBAT ? Worse funk-holers [than] the Whore Behsha
WHERE are the Coventry marchers ? Where are the Green Shirts ? Suppressed of course [This] visible image EMBODYING thought on the hoof was prohibited before the Jews got you to fighting In the whole of your rotten parasitic ranks the whole of the British Broadcasting Company hireling company NO ONE dares and no one wants and no one would be there if they did want or dare to TOUCH the real issues.
Monopoly of gold components of your gold exchange, nature of money, how it is issued, how the people are bled, state of health in Your ISLAND.
? Now to get down to brass tacks, to answer that ass in the Times. No ONE here expects you to do ANYTHING in this war save to LOSE it. From Dunkirk to Dakar, with at most a few successes over your onetime ALLIES. No one expects you to do anything with or IN this war save to LOSE it. BOTH to Germany and to Roosevelt.
Roosevelt portrayin' (if you like the word) JEWRY No one expects you to do anything in or with this war but to lose it. If that expectation is an illusion it nevertheless EXISTS so that when the gent in the Fly Fisher s dub writes his next article, let him say that ENGLAND expects to emerge impoverished but fierce as [the] stone Trafalgar Square fountain lion of Briton, not as a stuffed lion skin, used as a bed mat.
But fer Gawd's sake let him lay off saying this is what ITALY looks to. Italy just ain't got that kind of jimjams. NO ONE here is surprised one atom at your fighting the war badly, from Dunkirk to Dakar, from Hong Kong to Calcutty. One is mildly set to wonder WHY you are fighting Europe instead of fighting Marx and P. Spencer, and Karl Marx and Lyons, and the one hundred enemies that had got you by the short hairs: and got you hog-tied BEFORE the war started. Over DANZIG, allegedly.
Over a year ago a man of the former social age, an international tennis ace, unsuspectible of political passions, the kind that jokes about these things, said his wife said to him, "WHY ever do they (meaning the English) FIGHT the Germans ? Don't they know that is all the Germans CAN do ? Why do they go to WAR? "
Now firstly, the lady was inexact, as anyone who has read enough German philosophy, or heard Johnnie Bach's music, or seen Albrecht Durer's painting, or knows the work of the Frobenius Forschung's Institute KNOWS. The Germans have quite a lot of assorted abilities.
? But the question SUBSISTS ? WHY did the people of England LET them selves get catched by the short hairs and HOG-tied, and led into losing the eastern parts of their empire, and getting allied to red Russia?
Let the TIMES go into THESE things--TELL PAPA! WHY did the Times, which LOST YOU Hong Kong, and Singapore, and Rangoon KEEP the REAL news and the real thought of the past 50 years (yaaas, not 20 but 50) years OUT of its columns. What causes that?
Well my time at this microphone is drawin' to a close for this evening and I haven't leisure to go into the other columns of that issue of the Old Thunderer. But when you are sad and downhearted, git out your back issues of the Times Newspaper of London, if they haven't been confis cated by the dog-catcher to make biscuit for miner's children, and lull yourself with Tennysonian legends, such as "Dutch leadership in the Indies," rivaling that of Luzon, resistance, all merry and bright.
I do hate to return that stray copy of the Old Thunderer to its owner. Lord knows when I shall see yet another one, and having my head chuck full of things I want to emit to you, it will be a long time before I again animadvert to the paleozoic habits of your island crustaceans.
#25 (April 13, 1942) U. S. (B20) QUESTION OF MOTIVE
I do not expect perfect and COMplete comprehension of these discourses on the part of all of my audience. I should be content if I get over even a small part of what I am driving at, and WHY I am drivin'. For over 30 years I have been driving at some of the same objective objectives.
I thought in 1908 and before then that a nation's literature IS important. State of a nation's literature, is important. Words, means of communication, literature, the most condensed form of communication,
? communication of the most basic and essential facts, ideas necessary for leading the good life, registered in the best books.
And man's duty, as soon as he is fully a man, is to keep those books, to keep that tradition available. Keep it handy. And the public: American and English, but for the moment let me stick to the United States of America. [The] American public [is] rather like that lunatic in Pea's novel Moscardino, chap in gook house who just wouldn't believe that there could be enough microbes on the back of a postage stamp to knock a man cold. Thought it was doctors' fables, in fact thought the doctors had heard it from other gooks in the asylum.
Waal, the Americans and the English just couldn't believe that it made any difference what a man or a nation put inside its head via its reading.
Hence I was supposed to exaggerate when I bust out against such dung heaps of perfumed pus as the Atlantic Monthly, and Harper's and Scribner's, as they were in the year 1900 and ceased not essentially to be as long as they lasted. The stink of stale perfume contains the deadly gasses which finally poison. No language could quite cover the loathing I feel for a Sedgewick, but it doubtless seems exaggerated. Later in London I did a sottisier, trying to make a few people see why the printed matter on sale in that city would finally kill off the inhabitants; witness Dunkirk.
The XIX stinking century saw what is called an advance in science. People learned that bacilli can kill. Prophylaxis entered the general mind, but an older concept got knocked OUT of the popular mind. It had been possibly once a good concept, but it had decayed. It was what is or was called a theological concept. The age, called the age of faith, thought a wrong idea could bring evil.
? In the Middle Ages they got a bit fantastic, got their eyes off the here and now, and thought the bad idea would land a man in perdition, eternal flames, purgatory, or whatever.
Then something got tangled, and the people got fanatic, and heretics were burned and so forth. And M. Voltaire tried to get that untangled, worked all his life against the cruelties of fanaticism, was called an atheist; which he was NOT. I strongly suspect that almost no heretics were burnt, at least not at the beginning, except those who interfered with the usury racket, those whose ideas were seen as inimical to the usury racket, leaving out the question. But so far as I know no research has ever been done along these lines. I am speaking of heretics proper, ideology, not people who went into witch persecutions.
The idea that a WRONG idea could damage people here and now was perhaps not fully developed. The British theory was that free speech was a blow hole. Let 'em TALK and they will DO nothing. Hyde Park corner, etc.
Gus Flaubert and I myself, and diverse others, includin' if you must go so far back, Mencius and Confucius, saw something worse than just one BAD idea, and that was the corruption of the whole and TOTAL means of communication of all ideas whatsoever. The corruption of language, the destruction of all precision in terminology, which takes man back and down to the status of beasts, or what beasts are SUPPOSED to be; namely, unable to communicate with one another.
Yet even animals, packs of wolves, and wild dogs do seem to under stand each other, and to collaborate. Very well, I set up and gradually got some ideas as to combat tin' this universal gonorrhea of language and this rotting of ALL Printed means of communication, monthlies, dailies, weeklies, mercantilist publishing system.
? All of which has bloody well dished and ditched the pore old British iniquitous empire. Too late to save that now. And anyhow, I am speaking to the United States of America. Forty years ago Brooks Adams made a quite good study of England, foreseein' she would bust up, and part go to the United States of America and part go to Germany with, if I remember it right, Japan gettin' a look in. Nacherly VERY few people read Mr. Adams. I only know of ONE Englishman who has quoted him.
And I am not enamoured of retrospect. I ought to have been given Brooks Adams when I was havin' a shot at American history in the University of Pennsylvania--that's 40 years ago. Might have accelerated me in giving him a little publicity. In fact ALL history teachin' in American universities ought to have got hold of Brooks Adams THEN, 1897-1900, 1903 his best volumes.
His weak an' pindlin' young brother Henry was not the man that his elder brother Brooks was. Brooks seeing what had happened in history, seem' it pretty clearly, foreseeing what would happen in HIS time, but not seeing beyond that. Knowing that an age of faith, or ages of faith had existed, but did not see the next one. Livin', you may say, in his own phase. Foreseein' the down flop of England, that is, of the Empire, noting symptoms of England's decline, which the English remained deaf to, and blind to.
BUT not foreseeing the Italian rise, not foreseeing the change of phase: from material to volitional.
Reactin' against John Quincy Adams' judized form of religion. I forget where he notes that, maybe in the preface to his book on New England.
ANYhow trying to figure out where John Quincy Adams, whom he greatly admired, had gone off the rails, not gittin' back to his great grandad John Adams, the father of his country and inventor to some extent of General Washington.
? Waaal, can't get it all into one discourse. But if there is still some campus not yet invaded by the hosts of Belial and Jewry not wholly squashed under the dung-flow from Wall Street and Washington, I suggest you start taking notes and figures. Figure out this affair of the ruin of language, the falsification of all reports in the well paid magazines, the falsification of newsprint. And ALSO the attack on historic knowledge. The rise of TALMUDIC schools, quite UNNOTICED by the high class periodicals. Note when America began to be filled with talmudic schools, not listed and having big sign boards. Note when American history went out of fashion. When the kids in the lower grades heard of Lenin and Marx and Trotsky, and not so much of Lincoln and Washington. Watch the gradual creep up of obscurantism, the neglect, ab initio, from the start, of John Adams, Van Buren, and Johnson.
There ought to be 700 STUDENTS, and 30 professors, digging into this question, these questions. SOME DAY you will need to KNOW, need to know more than you do at present.
Lord knows what will come to you first.
#26 (April 16, 1942) U. S. (B33) CLARIFICATION
For the United States to be makin' war on Italy AND on Europe is just plain damn nonsense and every native born American of American stock KNOWS that it is plain downright damn nonsense.
And for this state of things Franklin Roosevelt is more than any other one man responsible. Of course he was puffed up, and put thaar, or kept thaar, and that dirty Kike Lippmann has declared that Roosevelt is MOVED by others; and does not act proprio motu.
? All of which whatnesses do NOT adulterate the fact that WAR between the United States and Europe is nonsense. And its makers ought to be smacked.
How long it is going to take the American people to make at least a partial return toward their senses, I know not, I do not know.
I suggest yet again that you look at the way the WAR, this war, has been wangled. And HOW it has been conducted. FIRST, the American people were SANE enough to see that the war was phony. DANZIG, Poland, and all the rest of it, COOKED and the American people KNEW it was cooked. Second, England's offensives effective against neutrals and Allies. Third, the United States offensives effective against England, Iceland, and Venezuela, at the cost of losin' the Philippines. Well, damn the Philippines. We promised 'em independence, and the dirt in our national makeup prevented our keepin' the promise. Our conduct as a nation to various is lands, let alone to South American republics, is NOT our title to glory. And Aguinaldo has as good a right to the Philippines as any God damn Jew in Roosevelt's family caballa. I do hate to see Hawaii endangered. We got the Sandwich Islands more or less decently, and they could have been held as a defensive position.
The Philippines WERE NOT, they were an offensive position, and the conduct of Roosevelt's government was plain downright silly, not to say nasty, not to say mean, not to say stinkin', it was all of these things put together.
Anyhow, one of the LIES of this war is the LIE about the anti-Axis alliances. Russia is NOT Britain's ally but her enemy, America is NOT Britain's ally but her enemy.
Chiang Kike Chek is the prize buyer of gold bricks, and where did Soong git his money ? Mrs. Chiang Kike is always flittin' and floatin' in Semite entourages. If Charlie Soong warn't staked out by kikedom, you
? come here and tell papa. I can't prove this assertion, but I await any disproof, and I don't expect it to be forthcomin'.
The phrase, cut off the NOSE to spite the face, may seem invidious and SUGgestive. "Wasn't she a silly slut, to sell her bed and lie in dirt? " Yaas, SHE was, Margery Daw or Columbia, Solomon's jewel. You have cut your nose off to the extent of three summer vacations in Europe. You have cut your nose off to the extent of what you haven't had in those three years in the way of cultural contacts and the amenities. Whatever is happening in the way of BASHING abundance INSIDE the United State of America you know better than I do, and I am not going to tell you about Cincinnati. I have heard British fools talk about Italy which they had not visited. I have seen men get het up about what happens in other countries, meaning what is SAID to happen in other countries. And what they have read in the noozwypers, and I am not going to participate in that form of foolery.
YOU TELL ME about what is going on in the United States of America and I'll tell you what I see here in Italy. That will be fair exchange and no kikery.
I do NOT admire your making war on Finland, Iceland and Venezuela, on the pretense that you don't like Hitler's municipal government.
Or that you steal from other countries because they are incapable of governing themselves, or because their governors are incapable of stealing from them. Neither, I think, do you.
EIGHTY years peace for England would have been useful to England. Thirty years peace for the United State of America would have been useful to YOU. It would have meant a whole generation.
I don't know how long the Pacific would have maintained its status quo, but I am right, downright certain that I could have done BETTER in
? dealin' with Japan than any of Mr. Roosevelt's lowbrow assistants, among whom I know of none who was fit for the Japanese mission.
England was bilked, and that was NOT done without United States assistance. Well, I don't admire the men who assisted. And neither, I think, do YOU.
As to what you can do to get out of it, that is another story. Haven't you got any folks at home who can tell you ? After all my mission in life had been rather special. Maybe that was my error, but one can't be in ten places at once. I believe, like bed rock, I believe, that if the American people had been consulted in 1938-39 and 40 and 41 NINETY percent of the American people would have been content to have the American government stick to its best traditions, to stay OUT of international shindies, and to USE the United States prestige. (We HAD some prestige in those days. ) And the American people would have wanted used to get a SANE, peaceful arrangement of the problems of Europe. And a clean government in Washington would have aimed at that target. When, before Gawd, are we going to get a clean government ? It is time for the American people to start gettin' ready to think about that.
Whether Frankie is a gook or a kike, I don't think the American people LIKE him. I don't think they wanted him back in the White House. And the election figures don't prove it.
They may possibly prove the DEFECTS of the American electoral system and the power of bribery and corruption. And then again they may not. The only excuse of most voters was "you don't vote against Santa Claus. " Look what Santa has brought you now. Waaal ole Franklin Kris Kingle, Sant Nicalaus, ain't got any live children back out of the pork barrel. If that is too mixed a metaphor, let me remind you of the old French chanson, about St. Nicholas. Frankie looks to me more like gettin' the live young INTO the salt pork barrel than rescuing the little dears out of it.
? As for the English, nine of 'em out of ten do NOT believe they ought to be fighting the Germans. And that goes a long way to explain why a lot of them don't seem anxious to do it. They don't like their empire being ruined. They don't want their island invaded.
But nine of 'em out of TEN do NOT believe they ought to be fighting the Germans. That is, down there under their skulls, down under their thick bully hides they DO NOT think they ought to be fightin' the Germans. They DO not believe in Bolshevik methods, or in the Bolshevik propaganda. None of it is spontaneous in England, and a lot of British KNOW the Bolos are HIRED.
Some of 'em, not the nicest among 'em, think, oh yes, they OUGHT to fight Italy cause Italy is small on the map, and the small ought to be jumped on. That is British tradition. But they do NOT think they ought to be fighting the Germans, and they do NOT want to see geography books with England's empire reduced to probable figures: but they do NOT think they ought to be fighting the Germans.
Well, think it over.
#27 (April 19, 1942) U. K. (B29) TO SOCIAL CREDITORS
Last Sunday I came on some typed pages signed "W. A. Nyland," Secretary pro tem. That seems all a long way back in faded lavender. A time like this gives one time to go thru quite a lot [of] postal matter that one hadn't time to look at very thoroughly when it arrived.
A time like this, when the postal service with the Western Hemisphere is somewhat reduced. Result, so far as my private life is concerned, is that not bein' able to continue private correspondence by letter with the more lively American youth, gentry and professoriate, I had to stir round and git onto the air, only line [left] me.
? Now I ask Social Creditors if anyone of 'em except Major Douglas gave in the old days--the dim and distant 20s or the almost as dim 1830 and 35s--ANY thought as to the sort of paralysis that allus seemed to creep into the Social Credit movement, about as soon as it got near action.
I have told you of Senator Cutting's hope, and his disappointment. Aberhart may for all I know still rule in Calgarry, like Brian Duff in -- --still. The jewbrew and rabbinical stations do NOT stress either present or past of Alberta province.
Mebbe no one has told 'em you OUGHT, you really ought NOT to ask the pliant public to put a stamp on its stamp scrip once a WEEK. Lord knows I have tried in my time to stop a fairly wide set of foolishnesses on [the] part of people who LACK historic perspective, or who failed to grasp the inner workin's of economic mechanisms, and the relations between one expression of monetary honesty and another.
I am not concerned with the merits of particular bills, I am not concerned with the injected paralysis that has stopped any and all bills having economic basis in honesty since 1873, or say since 1863, gettin' back to the start of the present phase of the unending swindle. Is that paralysis due to the Talmud ? Or to the spieir [? ] whereof the Talmud is the most complete (and dirty) and thorough verbal manifestation extant?
There is no doubt that C. H. Douglas began to notice some years ago that certain elements, call 'em elements, seemed to penetrate into the works of the Social Creditors' movement just about the time it seemed to be about to be real. In fact his writin's during the three years precedin' Mr. Churchill's new war were largely spent in lookin' for the source of these penetrations, these injections of paralysis. He left off his a plus b, or left it in the background and got right out with Henry Ford in IDENTIFYIN' the Hebrews as a possible source of infection. And the circulatability of his publications got lower and lower.
? Now what do you think causes that? And what do you think you can or could do to UNcause it, not necessarily re the a plus b theorem but in the case of ANY and every economic reform or basic reorganization that you chose to believe in ?
You say: change in direction of will. All right, say you had wild imagination. Say you had guts enough to IMAGINE a man you really would like to see in the White House: I mean would REALLY think ought to be in the White House.
What would you DO ? Would you communicate your thought to your neighbor ? What would he do ? What effect would it have on the oncomin' elections, 1942, 19447 Has anybody but the present speaker had any such flight of poetic fancy dunn' the past 20 years ? You can't tell me that Harding or Coolidge or any of 'em were chosen, nominated because anybody really felt: well now, that is what we need in the White House.
Wouldn't that fellow just add to the American tradition ?
Well what about it ? What would happen IF every American over the age of 21 suddenly voted for what he wanted ? I don't mean, for just what he felt to be the lesser evil, the less rotten apple ? Now just think a minute; supposin' you went down to Washington and walked up the front path to the White House. What would you like to find sittin' in a rockin' chair on the lawn, or find inside in a drawin' room, to greet you as the American President ?
Just what qualifications ought the fellow to have whom you would like to find in there? Who would make you feel that his presence added, yes, I say, added to the joy of bein' alive ?
Yes, I know it is a vision. I never had it but once. Nobody ever told me I was wrong; in fact nobody ever said while I was in America three years ago, nobody said I was foolish, they just thought it impractical. They
? didn't think he could get there. Or mebbe that was the trouble; mebbe they DID think he could get there.
Of course the nomination has sometimes been quite within reach of almost impecunious people. I have been given extremely low figures as to the bottom price for the ante, which depends of course on the year, and the state of the political market. But mebbe those low figures only apply to duds, whom the wise guys just KNOW won't be elected.
Such I suppose is democracy. Or perhaps such is the modesty of political parties.
Well, up in BREMEN they seem to have decided that you folks can't keep your minds on any one thing more'n about three minutes. I used to listen to their Mirror, now I hear their magazine. Three minutes talk, then a gigue tune. Mebbe Rome would give me with music included if I put up a howl. Not every topic NEEDS 12 and 21/2 minutes. Sometime I feel just like askin' a string of questions; as fer example: WHY do you Yanks fall for the FOREIGN or exotic wheeze? I mean Jews from all over Europe come to America, and you think they are Frenchmen and Dutchmen. Now why is that ?
And then this appointin' ambassadors to imaginary unlanded governments? Ought I to get ambassadors appointed every time one of my Italian friends wants to ask me what time is it or whether Faulkner is better'n Caldwell, and WHICH Caidwell or whether Josh Bathos writes better'n Bromfield, or what's become of that refined almost writer Mr. Thornton Wilder ? Do you dare fall for it ? I mean this elevated from rank of minister to that of dambastador, in order to treat with the government of Ruthenia, at 29 Wardour Street, third floor back, W. C. in London ?
I should like to see that subject treated in Puck or Judge, if those monuments of the ash-barrel era still flourish. Puck used to be Democrat
? and Judge Republican, back in 1892. Have they conserved their old sense of coarse humor, coarse but robust and healthy, or are they all peter'd out ? I mean Arno'ed.
Lookin' back and rememberin' my far distant childhood on the corner of 47th and Madison Avenue where there is now such [a? ] sumptuous Hotel Accommodation Thinkin', thinkin of my Great Aunt's family furniture, moved a few blocks up the street. I wonder if the ole grand piano is still workin' for the folks that took over, foreclosed the mortgage, or something, anyhow, sold the old lady up.
And Mr. Fouquet, and pop Quackenbush, all that generation that remembered the Civil War. All gone with the ash barrels. Think of swell ballroom, right where my Great Uncle used to keep his bunch of bananas, and I used to play chequers with him; my old Great Aunt's black man of general all work, or rather any work, some work, that he used to dodge to play chequers on top of the apple barrel, before the days of the Windsor Fire, Two Hotels, Windsor and Buckingham, ornament of Fifth Avenue, back before you kids remember.
An' yaller Martha. She used to take snuff. That's a long time before the great night life of Harlem. Back when Owen Wister, it may have been, wrote "Philosophy 4"--now why do I think of that ? And why did that darkie porter in Grand Central Station look at the E. initial before my name on my suitcase in 1939 and say: Now how do I come to know that, that E. stands for Ezra? Sort of nearly undersized porter.
My mind goes back to before the invasion. I mean I suppose that is what is occurrin' in my psychology leadin' me up to the question: Have you GAINED by the interval ? WHAT have you gained by the interval, from 4 to 8 million invaders, all part of a widely distributed RACE, that has a radio out by San Diego or somewhere, known as the universal world Jewry station, or some similar title, and does a HIGHLY organized 7 to 7 to 7 [for] 6 or 8 million people of a decidedly OTHER
? race; in the midst of 100 million or so assorted descendents of people racially European, MEAN anything for the welfare or illfare of the UNorganized 100 million ? And if so, how so ? And sailors don't care? Whalers don't care, landlubbers seem fairly indifferent.
Ernest Poole might write a book on the subject. Another bloke whose name I forget might write a book on the subject. Wrote a novel I rather liked, about a New England family goin' to seed on a farm that was like a white elephant. I mentioned it and was promptly reproved by a highbrow friend (not a professor) who assured me that that novelist would never write a somethin' or other. Marquand, that's the fellow's name, Marquand the novelist.
Well, I don't take such high ground. I think all those American novelists who try to set down a slice of history ought to get credit for it. Even if they go a bit heavy, or leave in 40 pages in 3 or 4 hundred that just aren't quite book-writin'. But still you get a bit of Van Buren, or a bit of some epoch that young America OUGHT to know more of; 1830 or 1930, but at least tryin' to peg down some part of our white man's heritage and tradition. Not bein' cute and cunnin', but trying to tell the next generation at least part of what ought to be known.
That's why I keep on hammerin' on the disgrace to the nation implicit in not printin' Joe Gould. I mean that is one why. And Mr. McAlmon always printed in Paris. Two sets of men, tryin' to put down American history, one doin' it in meritorious novels, that the highbrows niff at snobistically, one set or a few scattered fragments doing impractical stuff, lack of national discipline, lack of civic responsibility.
Workin' in BOTH these branches of United States incompetence. Oh, little things, here and there, just a straw shows how the wind blows. And then the United States gets bumped OFF, like the frogs did. After more 50 years warnin'. And the frogs sellin' 15 thousand copies, a whole
? series of editions (Flammarion editions) where American author wouldn't sell 1500.
Mebbe that is part of the national trouble, part of the great American bellyache, part of the American IMMATURITY; to call it by no more harsh name.
And then the omissions, the things Mr. Dewey, Professor Davis Rich Dewey leaves OUT of his Financial History.
Well that's all for this spasm. Ezra Pound at the microphone. Why not have a real President ?
#28 (April 20, 1942) U. S. (B34) ABERRATION
The Daily Mail of London got round a few weeks ago to reprinting one of those libelous photographs that were shot on board the REX last time I came into New York harbor.
Well, that did not harm, unless it cast a little indirect discredit on the capacity of American press photographers. The Daily Mail seemed to be followin' in the wake of the Sunday Times. The Mail contented itself to saying my admiration for fascism was notorious.
The "Special Correspondent" (address not given) of the Sunday Times, apart from an erroneous statement as to my views of the American President, used a qualifying statement saying that "Among Pound's many eccentricities and aberrations, his admiration of the Fascist regime in Italy has long been notorious. " Both papers neglected to tell their British readers that I broadcast to ENGLAND now and again. That is not the point either.
? What I am a lookm' at is this word ABERRATION. They call it an aberration for me to admire or whatever the present Italian system of government. Has a fascist government itself ABerrated, or has it aberred? Firstly, if it aberred, it aberred into drainin' a powerful lot of swamp land which OTHER Italian governments had been lookin' at since the time of Tiberius Caesar and signally failed to get DRY. Those swamps had been lying thaaar breedin' malaria for over two thousand years, sometimes a bright boy would take a smack at 'em and dry up a bit or a corner. But the FASCIST regime lit in and got quite a lot of [it] dried, and under healthy cultivation.
Secondly, if I aberr, it [is] in the aberration of admirin' the increase of grain yielded in Italy.
Thirdly, fourthly, and etceterarialy, there is the question of national health, bein' improved, there is the question of the increase in living quarters for the NOT-rich sectors of the nation's community, there is the question of water supply.
Sixthly, etc. there is the question of electric power. So as they don't have [to] waste their substance buying dirty old smoke coal from England. Petrified frogs, Frenchies, biologically fixed, had been yapping about la hOOOOOOuille blanche for decades. Well, the Fascist REGIME got the Italian railway runnin' by electricity. That is by lettin' water flow down wards, OVER some selected turbines. All of which is notorious, if it an't just a little bit more than! I
But it is merely material and my respect for the Fascist Regime, for FASCISM in fact, goes a bit further. Along about the time Tony tin-toes Eden was tellin' Italy where to get off at, and she did NOT GIT. There came a day when Italy sat up sassy and defied fifty-two so-called nations, England among 'em. That required something more than mere itch toward luxury economics. And the idea of having an airplane crash onto a battle ship did not START in Japan. About the time Tony's
? England was trying to bully NEW Italy, there was something here in this peninsula.
Do I aberr in admiring it? I think I do not.
And at England's present condition, I wonder if the Sunday Timesers and their parishioners aren't mebby ready to wish some of their bosses had aberrated in similar manner. The aberration of an alliance with Japan, now wouldn't England have done better to aberr into an alliance with Japan, rather than being hoffed out of Shonanko, Hong Kong, and Rangoon? An alliance with Germany, rather than with a paralytic Jewed France?
Let us say the British Foreign office had committed a few aberrations along my line, would England be today a brighter and happier country? Instead of droppin' so many old naval bases and stations into Frank Roosenstein's pocket? I don't say Washington would have welcomed these moves, but I am opening up a line of Enquiry, about the word ABERRATION.
Perhaps I should also open up a line about representation. An Italian said to me yesterday, "But so many people in England have NO representation, you could have a party of a million people in England, and it might not have even ONE member in Parliament? " Here EVERY man of what ever trade or profession has the OPTION of joining up with his sindacato; he don't have to, but if he wants to be represented directly, that is the method. If he don't join up, his interests are nevertheless looked after, cause if he is a carpenter, or a rice grower, or a field worker, or a fellow that trims olive trees, there is the UNION, the sindacato, working up to the confederazione. It's thaaar to represent the interest of peasant, or carpenter, or dentist, or whatsoever. All of which may be notorious, at least plenty of people here know it, and nothing has
? been concealed. No secret back of the curtain conspiracies. No trade union leader can sell out to the employers, nor blackmail employees.
I, for example, would come under the confederation of artists and professional men, painters, doctors, writers, dentists, etc. WHAT Congressional representation or parliamentary representation have the professional classes had in the United States or England since the beginning of their government system?
Aberration? If this be an aberration, let me aberr. What bloody chance has the stray man, the individual in old style so-called democratic organization, in comparison to what he has in a corporate system, EMBODIED system?
