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Show AS BRAVE AMERICANS DIE The appointment of a special board of inquiry to investigate the Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbor, Har-bor, with the idea of fixing responsibility for any negligence that may be disclosed, suggests other inquiries. The bravery of fewer than 400 Marines, in resisting Japanese assaults upon Wake Island, discloses that this force, entirely inadequate to meet attacks, was rather poorly provided ' with fighting tools. Would it be too much to expect some inquiry into the causes for this tragic situation, which also existed at Guam? The people of the United States, the most powerful nation on earth, find their defenders de-fenders pounded to pieces by superior Japanese forces throughout the Pacific area. They may wonder won-der why. Certainly, it is absurd that a country as powerful pow-erful as the United States seems sos helpless in combatting Japanese attacks. Our defenses could have been secure and so powerful as to discourage dis-courage Japan from the treacherous assault that claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 officers and men at Pearl Harbor. Why not officially inquire into the strange apathy of a great nation In the face of steadily increasing in-creasing danger? Why not discover the sources of the strongly organized pacf ist sentiment that strangely strange-ly affected Congressmen when they were asked to vote for an increased Navy, improved island defenses and a moderization of our Army? The idea that we could have peace, by asking for it, was vigorously promoted in the nation by various individuals and organizations, some acting act-ing in the name of religion. This propaganda left America unprepared because too many Congressmen Con-gressmen were sap-headed enough to believe that "the votes" were to be gotten that way. Foreign propaganda may have affected the national morale but it has not hurt us near as much as the twaddle put out by the half-baked lunatic fringe that tried to teach us that the way to get peace was to talk about it. Somebody ought to in-vesigate in-vesigate this form of pacifist insanity in order to protect the nations from similar propaganda when the present war has been won. Meanwhile, as reports from the Pacific area tell us of additional Americans, dead in def ense of the nation which put them in places of unnecessary un-necessary danger, let's remember that we are, in part, responsible for their sacrifice. We listened, lis-tened, or sat idly by, in the years of the past, while incompetents, nimcompoops and mush-headed mush-headed idealists talked about peace by proclamation procla-mation and the saving of money to be effected by cutting appropriations for the Navy, the Army and the Air Corps. |