I am not exactly sure, but I believe the ideas of Freud were taking hold around then, and the outward signs of change in morality were more mundane. I think if you look at dress code then, the clothing that women started to wear was much 'looser" than it had been. Take those bone corsets away, and who knows where it will lead? The Roaring Twenties!
Conni
I think Conni is absolutely right about this! So it's Pound referring to, as it were, all this *talk* about daring, looser behavior. Pah! he says. While *they* were all talkin' the talk, *SHE* looked *ME* and so we set ourselves apart. The contrast is pro-imagist in a sense: there's talking, but then there's LOOKING, seeing. Seeing is a form of doing, as opposed to just empty language. Since "empty" language is something the imagists associated with the *old* poetry, the *new* morality is associated with something *old* in fact. So the phrase "new morality" is ironic and Pound is being quite critical of those who can't *do*, which is to say, those who can't do the imagist thing--which is to *see* precisely.
Al