At 03:01 AM 9/15/99 -1000, Bill Freind wrote:
>It seems to me that regardless of whether Pound was or was not legally guilty
>of treason, a conviction would have been almost certain: legal niceties don't
>usually hold much water in the aftermath of a war. Does anyone know of
>individuals who faced similar charges and were acquited?
 
Without trying to second-guess history, we could consider the trials of two
other broadcasters for the Axis: William Joyce ("Lord Haw-Haw") and Iva
Toguri D'Aquino ("Tokyo Rose"). The British hanged Joyce for treason even
though he was not and never had been a British subject, and the Americans
handed d'Aquino a long prison term followed by an even longer period of
hounding by the Immigration and Naturalization Service -- this even though
she had surrendered voluntarily, convinced that she was no more than a
victim of circumstances.
 
No, those weren't forgiving times. The French didn't even pretend to give
Pierre Laval a fair trial before they stood him up before the firing squad,
and you all know about Mussolini. Maybe poetry owes Dr. Overholser a vote
of thanks.
 
(But what was that anomaly with Lord Haw-Haw, you ask? Answer: although he
spent essentially all of his life in Ireland and England before moving to
Germany on the eve of the war, he was born in New York, the son of Irish
parents who had taken American citizenship. That deus ex machina from his
past was dramatically revealed at his trial, but the Crown nailed him
anyway for having falsely claimed British nationality on his passport
application.)
 
Jonathan Morse