Pound arrived back in Washington, D.C., on 18 November 1945, two days before the start of the
Nuremberg trials.
[338] Lt. Col. P. V. Holder, one of the escorting officers, wrote in an affidavit that Pound was "an intellectual 'crackpot'" who intended to conduct his own defense.
[339] Dorothy would not allow it; Pound wrote in a letter: "Tell
Omar I favour a defender who has written a life of
J. Adams and translated
Confucius. Otherwise how CAN he know what it is about?"
[340]
He was arraigned on 27 November on charges of treason,
[ac] and on 4 December he was placed in a locked room in the psychiatric ward of
Gallinger Hospital.
[342] Three court-appointed psychiatrists, including
Winfred Overholser, superintendent of
St. Elizabeths Hospital, decided that he was mentally unfit to stand trial. They found him "abnormally
grandiose ... expansive and exuberant in manner, exhibiting
pressure of speech,
discursiveness and
distractibility."
[343] A fourth psychiatrist appointed by Pound's lawyer initially thought he was a
psychopath, which would have made him fit to stand trial.
[344]
On 21 December 1945, as case no. 58,102, he was transferred to Howard Hall, St. Elizabeths' maximum security ward, where he was held in a single cell with peepholes.
[345] Visitors were admitted to the waiting room for 15 minutes at a time, while patients wandered around screaming.
[346] A hearing on 13 February 1946 concluded that he was of "unsound mind"; he shouted in court: "I never did believe in Fascism, God damn it; I am opposed to Fascism."
[347] Pound's lawyer,
Julien Cornell, requested his release at a hearing in January 1947.
[348] As a compromise, Overholser moved him to the more comfortable Cedar Ward on the third floor of the east wing of St. Elizabeths' Center Building.
[349] In early 1948 he was moved again, this time to a larger room in Chestnut Ward.
[350]
Tytell writes that Pound was in his element in Chestnut Ward.
[351] At last provided for, he was allowed to read, write, and receive visitors, including Dorothy for several hours a day.
[352] (In October 1946 Dorothy had been placed in charge of his "person and property".)
[353] His room had a typewriter, floor-to-ceiling book shelves, and bits of paper hanging on string from the ceiling with ideas for
The Cantos.
[351] He had turned a small alcove on the ward into his living room, where he entertained friends and literary figures.
[352] It reached the point where he refused to discuss any attempt to have him released.
[355]