As I plunged deeper into the
study of his work, I was forced to take into account the entire circumstances that had led him to make the broadcasts from Italy, resulting in his indictment on a charge of treason. I learned that he could have avoided the indictment by renouncing his American citizenship, but he had purposely refused to make this sacrifice, for behind his every act was his loyalty to his country. It was this inescapable fact that had caused the government attorneys to place him in the madhouse, rather than to publicly try a man whose only crime was his unswerving and uncompromising patriotism. I reflected that I owed my education to three Americans who were indicted for high treason against duly constituted authority, although none of the three "traitors" was ever tried on this charge. I had previously studied at Washington and Lee University, which had been founded with a grant from George Washington, whom the British had promised to hang as a traitor, and brought to its present eminence by Robert E. Lee, who also had been promised a hangman's noose for the crime of treason. Washington and Lee are now enshrined in the hearts of their fellow countrymen, and no one could think of them as traitors. With the passage of time, and a deeper understanding of the unseen forces at work that promoted the Second World War, his fellow citizens will erase for all time the charge of treason laid against Ezra Pound.