En Lin Wei wrote:
>
> >My grad student Sarah Holmes, who is finishing up the editing
> >of the 1930s EP/William Borah correspondence (forthcoming with U. Ill.
> >Press), has some questions she hopes you'll help her answer.
> >She is currently off-list.  However, she would appreciate your
> >replying to her email address: [log in to unmask]
> >
> >Her questions follow:
> >==Dan Pearlman
> >----------------------------------------------------


Sarah Holmes question has several answers and as often in the case with
Pound none of them are easy.

Of course, Pound 'hated' Wilson because of the U.S. entry into World War
I. The loss of Gaudier-Brzeska was a tremendous blow to Pound and in a
sensitive individual such as Pound could be enough to set him against a
distant and abstracted figure such as a President.

Also, Pound's correspondence with another Progressive Senator, Bronson
Cutting, sites Pound's disgust with the Passport Control Act of 1918
passed during the Wilson administration, designed to 'restrict' travel.
Pound was forced to seek 'papers' on at least two occasions because of
the law. This might seem like a petty reason for 'hating' Wilson but in
Pound's synthesis this inconveneince seems likely to be connected with
events such as the death of Gaudier-Brzeska. (see. Ezra Pound and
Senator Bronson Cutting: A Political Correspondence 1930-1935,
Walkiewicz and Witemeyer.)

Also Pound connected what he considered Wilson's ineffectual revamping
of the U.S. Banking system and creation of the Federal Reserve with what
he saw as Wilson's giveaway at Versailles. Earle Davis in Vision
Fugitive: Ezra Pound and Economics (p.183) quotes a Wilson explanation
for the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 and then appends "It might have been
Pound speaking." So why wouldn't Pound support Wilson attempts at
reining in the Money Trusts? Was it simply because he supported rival
Progressive measures?

I've got much more laying around me but I'm too tired to draw it
together.
I would like to add that Pound, of course, never got around to
condemning Wilson for his very real and brutal crimes. Wilson ever the
internationalist was chief executive when bloody incursions were carried
out all throughout Latin America most notably Mexico, Haiti, Cuba and
the Dominican Republic. Tens of thousands died as the economic interests
of American corporations and banks were solidified. Reagan had nothing
on the "Bloody College Professor" in this regard.

Major-General Smedley Butler of the U.S. Marines laid it all out before
Congress in 1933 in his famous "I WAS A RACKETEER FOR CAPITALISM"
speech, too long to quote here but dripping with the murderous
rapaciosness of U.S. economic interests. On this very day the Washington
Post has some drivel about the new found "compassion" of the G-8 toward
the developing world. Give me a break. Some days you just feel like an
animal, hung, gutted and bled in the sights of the oligarchic and
kleptocratic forces arrayed against us. Carlo Parcelli

This email does not require a reply from Wei.