FLOOD OF TRIBUTES

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 330, 16 April 1928, Page 1

FLOOD OF TRIBUTES

GREAT FEAT EXALTED ALL THE WORLD STIRRED Recti. 9.5 a.m. NEW YORK, Sunday. Literally hundreds of messages of congratulation from American flyers and men prominent in official life have been wirelessed to the flyers. President Coolidge’s felicitations were wirelessed immediately after the news of the landing had been confirmed. He is also congratulating the Irish and German nations. In the meantime, New York City is planning an official welcome of the flyers upon their arrival here, on an unprecedented scale. Efforts will be made at the great State dinner to broadcast the speeches made by them around the

world. Mr. William Thompson, in the name of Chicago, has wirelessed, inviting tfijpm to be the guests of the city. The flyers also received a message of 'congratulation from the ex-Kaiser Wilhelm, containing an observation that the flight demonstrated German ability ‘‘in defiance of all opposition to German aircraft construction, per aspera ad astra.” The Master of Sempill, Colonel W. F. Forbes-Sempill, chairman of the Royal British Aeronautical Society, warmly congratulates the crew of the Bremen, and says he admires their pluck, initiative and skill. The Prime Minister of Canada, Mr. W. L. Mackenzie King, sent a telegram congratulating the airmen on their safe arival on Canadian territory. The business of the House was suspended while the news was read amid cheers.

British war veterans in New York were the first to send wireles’s congratulations to Commandant Fitzmaiirice, and Commander Byrd cabled his congratulations to the German nation. The Governor-General, Mr. James McNeill, and the President of the Bail, Mr. W. T. Cosgrave, have issued statements praising the achievement of the airmen and expressing their gratification that an Irishman was associated with the venture. The members of the Civic Guard and the Irish Free State Army have jointly paid tribute to the success as a combination of German thoroughness and Irish courage. The British Secretary of State for Air, Sir Samuel Hoare, and the German Ambassador in London, Dr. F. Sthamer, have sent congratulatory messages to Mr. Cosgrave on the success of the flight.