Laudator Temporis Acti

Ezra Pound, letter to Lascelles Abercrombie, quoted in Life Is My Song: The Autobiography of John Gould Fletcher (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1937), p. 72:

Stupidity carried beyond a certain point becomes a public menace. I hereby challenge you to a duel, to be fought at the earliest moment that is suited to your convenience. My seconds will wait upon you in due course.

I don't see this letter in D.D. Paige, ed., The Letters of Ezra Pound, 1907-1941 (London: Faber and Faber, 1951).

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Thanks to Eric Thomson for drawing my attention to Jeff Cooper, Timeline of the Dymock Poets 1911-1916:

1914, June 26?        Abercrombie receives a letter from Ezra Pound challenging him to a duel.

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Thanks to Kenneth Haynes for drawing my attention to Pound / Joyce: The Letters of Ezra Pound to James Joyce, with Pound's Essays on Joyce. Edited and with Commentary by Forrest Read (New York: New Directions, 1967), p. 48, n. 6:

A story is told in many versions about how Pound challenged Abercrombie to a duel for advising young poets to abandon realism and study Wordsworth (some versions say Milton). Abercrombie, it is said, took the challenge seriously and became frightened when told Pound was an expert fencer (Pound had been trying to get Yeats into condition by teaching him the art). But Abercrombie took advantage of the challenged party's right to choose the weapons and proposed that they bombard each other with copies of their unsold books. Soon thereafter, the story goes, Abercrombie paid a visit to Yeats; greeted by Pound at the door, he fled. That apparently closed the menacing incident, and two bards were preserved.