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way of controlling hysteria. If the person in charge refuses to be protesting with a physical manifestation of his protest, others will be calm. The result was that all of us adopted, after a few startled questions, this pattern of keep your shirt on, keep your feet on the ground, don't fly off into tantrums, even though Knox at times showed symptoms of flying off into a tantrum. One or two of the Congressmen present I remember as being very red and flushed, muttering profanities to express their distaste and their revulsion at this whole episode.
It was an incident for which civilized men find it impossible to find any words to describe. Words are not adequate to express what you are deeply feeling. There's no word to say, “How shall we endure this humiliation? How could this enemy do this to us? We've never shown ourselves anything but decently disposed to them.” There's nothing to say except, “The dirty bastards! I hope they roast in hell!” The words that mean something are not there to be said, so people revert into some kind of extreme language which may be profane or exaggerated.
That was the general atmosphere of this room - excited, determined not to be frightened, determined not to be alarmed, determined to keep calm, determined to find a way out of this, although I suppose every person there was saying, “Where in the world is the rest of the American navy? Have we got any navy left?” That thought was certainly in my mind, and I think that was in the mind of everyone else, as I talked
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