Sometimes you smile (Now that it is all over) And drop me little, thin, gray words, Like the coins we give to the blind. Oh I am not blind! And they are grayer to me than your “Do not come any more.” I dare not think that you care How I cared then, Or now! And yet you smile, And drop me your little words While I Hold out my hand! Das Schone Papier Vergeudet EZRA POUND Before you issue another number of your magazine half blank, I must again ask you seriously to consider the iniquity of the present “protective” tariff on books. This tariff has contributed more than any other one cause, and perhaps more than all other causes, to the intellectual isolation of America, to her general ignorance, to her sodden parochialism. I have expressed myself on this subject many times. Mr. George Haven Putnam has been fighting against the evil for years. It is one ground on which all intelligent Americans, whatever their disagreements as to literary canon may be, can come together. I am too much buried in work to write you an article at present. There are hundreds of young men with more time than I have, to whom this is a matter not of mere general interest, but of vital and personal importance. The simple fact is that it is very, _very_ difficult to get foreign books in the United States. There is _no_ facilitation of their sale. The 25% tariff serves as an excuse for an exorbitant elevation of the price of all foreign books, whether imported in sheets, or bound. Result: Editors of sodden and moribund “better” magazines talking about De Regnier and De Gourmont as “these young men”, in 1914. Result: provincialism, isolation, lack of standards of comparison, and consequent inability to recognize good work when it appears. When it gets praise it is praised in company with rubbish. American writers handicapped in competition with men living in civilized countries. Export of best, and even of moderately good, artists instead of export of art. I can’t go into the whole question of free trade. It has worked in England. It has, more than anything else, made the “Empire.” I do not see why it should ruin the Republic. _But_ that is not my business. I mean, Free Trade in the widest sense is not my present affair. The prohibitive tariff on books is very much everybody’s affair if they care a hang for the intellectual state of the country. The state of the copyright laws is barbarous, but it is perhaps more the affair of the maltreated authors than of the country at large. It is evil only as other obstructory measures are evil. _But_ this matter of excluding foreign books in the interest of a few artizans (who are better paid than authors and who seek nothing above immediate gain, and whose loss in the event of reform would be negligible) is immediate and vital.