The Thirty-Second Canto continues the theme of the American Revolution and Founding Fathers (though John Adams, this time).

It opens in a very interesting juxtaposition. Adams says that “The revolution… Took place in the minds of the people.” But then follows with a list of war materiel, thereby contrasting that intellectual view of revolution with the actual necessities of winning military victories, as any violent revolution must do.

Towards the latter half of the Canto, he appears to mock the unpreparedness of the old European monarchies for the coming changes, ending with what I take to be a metaphor for the wars that rocked Europe in the nineteenth century and possibly also the First World War (not that WWI didn’t rock Europe, but whether Pound’s eye was fixed so far forward).

                   A guisa de leon
The cannibals of Europe are eating one another again
                  quando si posa.