THE FIRST WORLD WAR was a great psychic shock to a
Europe that had known many years of peace. The subsequent
blood-letting removed France and England from the scene as
world powers. As Pound has often pointed out, it also broke up a
process that had been continuously at work since the dissolution of
the Holy Roman Empire. A young, bewildered and pathetically
ill-prepared America emerged as the heir of Western civilization,
as so often happens after a regicide.

Pound also was deeply shocked by the war. Never again would
he be content to be merely an artist. In a brief autobiography pre-
fixed to the New Directions volume of Selected Poems ( 1949), he
stated that "In 1918 began investigation of causes of war, to
oppose same."

The English writers and artists, almost to a man, rushed into
the fray. Pound remained in London, for American sentiment,
we should remember, remained equally balanced between pro-
German and pro-British sympathies, until George Sylvester
Viereck's inept pro-German propaganda pushed the Americans
into the British camp.

Wyndham Lewis, seriously ill with septicemia, had to wait
nearly a year before he was sufficiently recovered to go off to
the slaughter. Ford enlisted, after a farewell party given for him
at South Lodge that ended badly.

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