America United
Not the least important effect of Japan's action seems likely to be that on the internal psychology of the United States. If the Japanese had confined their initial blows to non-American targets, such as Thailand and Malaya and Borneo, the reaction of American sentiment could not have been so strong. But by attacking Americans, and by doing it so far across the Pacific as to sweep away any suggestion that even the widest ocean in the world cannot be crossed by aggressors, they have made President Roosevelt's task incomparably easier. The America to which he addressed his " fireside chat " on Tuesday was a new country. A great people, more diverse in its origins than any other, and never completely at one in itself till now, had been unified overnight. That unity, which the war's opening has brought, and which its continuance will confirm and anneal, cannot be expected to disappear when it is over. The United States confronts the world henceforward as a mature national force. " We shall win the war," said President Roosevelt, " and we shall win the peace."
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