In a very congenial post, Wei asks of me:
"So you are saying that Pound deliberately endorsed evil, knowing that it
was
evil?  Maybe.  I am not sure what my reaction to that proposition would be."

    No, I am not saying he chose evil because he preferred evil. My
objective was to endorse your position that the political posture Pound
adopted was one which he shared with the evil regimes of Hitler, Mussolini
and the Japanese oligarchy--though not with the evil regive of Stalin. In
that sense he endorsed evil--misidentifying it with virtue. I would add that
the misidentification does him no credit. Few remained as deluded as he. On
the other hand, I would not identify the acts of the allies in bombing
Germany and Japan as virtuous--or even justified. But that is another
matter.
    The point I wanted to make is that Pound's moral failure in the thirties
and beyond was much greater than most of his contemporaries, that is
contemporary artists and intellectuals. Even his anti-Semitic Social Credit
friends showed more constraint and common sense.

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