IT IS correct, as your correspondent Mr J Beisly points out, that “when [the US] did join in the hostilities, it was because the Japanese attacked them at Pearl Harbor” (Letters, September 17).

He overlooks, however, the fact that when Britain was threatened with a German invasion it received a great deal of assistance under Lend-Lease, starting in mid-1941, well before the US came into the war, as well as a transfer of 50 destroyers in 1940, which may have been decisive in the North Atlantic.

He could also have mentioned the many Americans who put on British and Canadian uniforms to fight Hitler before Pearl Harbor: most notably, perhaps, the RAF Eagle Squadron.

Finally, he should, as they say in school exams, compare and contrast this record with that of Britain (also, I concede, the US) towards Czechoslovakia when it was faced with a German invasion threat.

It was thrown to the wolves at Munich.

Brian A Jones, Clinton Sreet, Brooklyn, New York USA.