THE infamous and bloody air attacks on United States naval bases by Japan have been followed by declarations of war both on the United States and the British Empire. The name of Japan becomes from today a synonym for treachery never before equalled even in the basest acts of the Axis Powers. HITLER'S methods of unprovoked aggression have been not merely copied, even to the timing of a weekend spring. They have been improved upon with a devilish malignity. Not even HITLER has yet achieved the infamy of a stab in the back while his envoys were still ostensibly negotiating terms of agreement with his intended victim. This is an act which the world will never forget so long as the records of history are read. It will stand for all time as an example of the ultimate depths of deceit to which it is possible for any nation to descend.

Grand-Scale Infamy

AS to what Japan really intended in those parleys which her smiling delegates conducted in Washington, let the words of MR. CORDELL HULL, regarding the Japanese reply to the last United States Note, be remembered.
"In all my fifty years of public life," he said, "I have never seen a document that was more crowded with infamous falsehoods and distortions, on a scale so huge that I never imagined until today that any Government of this planed was capable of uttering them."
Thus the last pretexts of Axis diplomacy are ended. We know now, and America knows at last, and finally, the definitive demarcation of the friends and foes of freedom.

One Decision

IN that fearful combat there never was, there never could be, but one side for the people of the United States. Isolationism dies in the waters of Honolulu. The war which its exponents sought to avoid leaps at America's frontiers. The challenge that Japan dares to throw down is not directed, as HITLER directed so many of his challenges, against unwarned, unprepared, or pusillanimous foes. The Axis Powers now dare the might, the resolve, the resources, and the valour of the most powerful nations in the world. In such an array of forces there can be but one decision, long and bitter though the pathway to it may be.

Our Pledge

MR. CHURCHILL has said that an American Declaration of War on Japan would be followed within an hour by our own. That pledge had the full support of the British Commonwealth of Nations. It will be fulfilled with mighty forces, naval, air and military which we have now assembled in the Far East. This is predominantly America's sphere of War. Our own operations there must be coordinated under American direction. That will be cheerfully done. In this fateful hour we mourn with the people of the United States their dead. We also believe that this will be for them an hour of inspiration. All doubts resolved, all pettiness swept aside, they will now find, as we did ourselves in such a crisis, the essential greatness of soul of a people determined to be free.

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