The Nome Nugget

SHAME ON US!
By ROBERT NELSON TAYLOR
President and
Editor of
U.S. Press Association

Washington, DC. -- We have been hearing alarming
stories about Alaska. It seems that the chain of
Aleutian Islands that stretches westward from the
mainland for nearly 2,000 miles and is all but a
bridge to Siberia--is not a military asset, as we once
thought, but a liability. The air strips that we considered
so important in World War II are all but abandoned.
Today, we are told, the only military value of
Alaska would be for basing atomic bombers, and there
are few bases in the peninsula large enough for this
purpose.

You might think from all this that we might as
well give it back to Russia, or maybe ask them to return
the original price of $7,200,000! But one aspect
seems to be slightly overlooked. Alaskans happen to
be Americans. They happen to be pioneering Americans.
They, and their forebearers, had the courage to
penetrate this vast wilderness, to pit their strength and
determination against the collossal forces of terrain
and climate, to hack out farms, to build villages and
towns and cities, and to rear, in our own tender times
a race of young Americans as rugged and hardy and
self-reliant as ever our forefathers were.

No one knows the wealth of Alaska, merely
because its natural resources, which have already proved
fabulous, have scarcely been tapped. But that is some-
what beside the point, for the greatest assest of any
land is its people. And if this prodigious territory, which
has been American since 1867, possessed no more
natural treasure than any of the states you wish to
mention,
the Alaskans' right to statehood would be
no less.

We should be ashamed that there is even yet no
star in our flag for this proud peninsula. And we should
be more ashamed if we let another session of Congress
ignore the matter
. . . even though some of the
Pentagon brass hats who regarded it as a special gift
of Providence to their purposes just a few years ago,
may now have changed their minds.