    31

    retu rned to rake them with machine guns.  Three Americans were killed, and

    another eleven were gravely wounded.  A court of inquiry in Shanghai

    eventually revealed that the attack had been deliberate.

    Historian William Manchester feels that the Japanese assault on the

    Panay was an attempt to see how willing America was to resist the Japanese

    in the struggle for hierarchical dominance.  How did America respond?  Like

    the reluctant dog and the intimidated chimp, we pretended we didn't see.

    Media scarcely covered the event.  Two months earlier, President

    Franklin Roosevelt had mentioned briefly during an out-of-the-way speech

    in Chicago that, "The epidemic of world lawlessness is spreading."  Roosevelt

    had called on peace-loving nations to combine and stop the violence before it

    could travel further.  The president's words were greeted by a howl of

    protest.  Angry letters and newspaper editorials accused FDR of

    warmongering.  Roosevelt learned his lesson and shut his mouth.

    When the Panay and her survivors were mauled, isolationist groups

    went even further.  They tried to get footage of the attack banned from

    newsreels.  Newsfilm, they said, would have "the unquestioned effect of

    arousing the American temper."  The ban wasn't necessary.  Nobody really

    wanted to pay attention to the killings.  Polls revealed that 70% of U.S. voters

    preferred to solve the problem by withdrawing all American citizens from

    the Far East.68  Instead of looking the Japanese in the eye and protesting their

    attack, we pretended we didn't see.

    But the Japanese did not melt into oblivion.  Lack of opposition, in fact,

    fed their illusions of invincibility.  Four years later, they sank eighteen

    American ships, wiped out 188 of our planes, and killed 3,400 U.S. citizens at

    Pearl Harbor.69

    The nation slipping downward averts its eyes.   But the country on the

    rise is often vigorously alert, looking for the tiniest opportunity to lunge

    toward the top.  Instead of turning their backs and hoping for peace,

    superorganisms on the move often manufacture confrontations.  For an

    example, let's revisit the days of Victorian England's decline.

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