Jonathan Gill wrote:

The thread about Brits and Yanks reminds me that Pound's anti-semitism was
at moments almost synonymous with his anglophobia.  The background?
British positions in both world wars and British domination of money
markets in the late-nineteenth century.  But in broader political and
literary terms Pound gets this from Emerson and Whitman and before that
Adams and Jefferson.

Aside to Leon: surely you expected a firestorm!

Well, I didn't expect a firestorm, but I always underestimate how
thin-skinned certain ethnic groups are. I could add to what I said about the
ironical nature of my subsequent post that all of the British scholars to
whom I have spoken regard themselves as embattled.
    The annual Pound conference is, in fact, a British "institution."
However its founding fathers were a Swiss teaching in Londonderry and an
American teaching in Sheffield--both, now retired. As a Canadian I cannot
speak to the British academic landscape, but I have a suspicion that it
would not be extremely bizarre to describe Derry and Sheffield as somewhat
North and West of the centre of things British and academic.
    As to Pound's anglophobia. I see it as a combination of his combative
American inferiority complex with reagard to Europeans (just like Henry
James) in the early years, and the failure of the British to adopt Social
Credit. After all, he regarded London as the centre of the universe from
1909 to 1920.  Of course, in his later years he saw Britain, France  AND the
USA as sold out to the international Jewish conspiracy. This last stage is
fully paranoid. I
    n my view, Pound never ceased to regard London as the heart of English
language culture and civilization. It was just because he did that he was so
bitter at what he regarded as a betrayal of civilized principles--that is,
in his view, Credit and Fascism.

Leon Surette
English Dept.
University of Western Ontario
London, Ont.
N6A 3K7