COLONEL LINDBERGH

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 August 1939, Page 5

COLONEL LINDBERGH

RESEARCHES IN AVIATION RETURN TO U.S.A. DECLINE IN POPULARITY. Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh has returned to the United States to undertake an assignment for the War Department. He will canvass research facilities of American aviation, adding his name, his mechanical genius, and extensive observations abroad in all likelihood to the cause of improving the research equipment of his country. The following is taken from an article by Ralph M. Blagden, in the “Christian Science Monitor”: —

They threw 1800 tons of paper on him in New York City. They mingled shabby caps and glossy top hats in the mud of Le Bourget field in the stampede to acclaim him. They named a street and a town after him, and his name became a symbol of ideal youth itself. President Calvin Coolidge made one of the longest speeches of his carerr in his honour after having sent a cruiser of the United States Navy to bring him and his plane home from Paris.

He was offered £500,000 for a tour and £150.000 to appear in the movies, He was youth reclaimed from the cynicism of the jazz age. He was courage. He was modesty and genuineness in a generation of arrogance. “We” had flown high and far in solo, nonstop flight from New York City to Paris, but “We” flew later even higher under the unprecedented publicity and warm, human sentiments. ATTITUDE CHANGES. But that was in 1927. Today the name of this man is being removed from the air line that for

years has been proud to bear it. Am-

ericans have denounced him as proNazi and anti-Liberal because he accepted a German medal from the hands of Air Minister Herman Goering. They have called him aristocratic and royalist in his sentiments because of alleged criticisms of the Russian air strength during the Munich crisis. Even Mrs Anne Lindbergh’s book “Listen! the Wind,” has been banned in a library in a small, upstate New York town. Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh has discovered what it means to be a man after all instead of the idiot the public fleetingly forced him to become. After Colonel Lindbergh had been elevated to the kingly state of men who can do no wrong, he possessed none of the protection always accorded to a king or, for that matter, to a senator. There were no six-foot guards and secret service men to furnish him physical protection. He refused even to countenance a publicity man, and there was no fence around his former estate in Hopewell, New Jersey. Nor was there any century-old tradition ot reverence for royalty • to protect him from sliding down the slopes of fickle public esteem. Democracy had made, one of its own kind king for a day, boosting him giddily on its ephemeral and inconsistant headlines.

In short, while Colonel Lindbergh was called “ambassador of goodwill” he generally goes with diplomatic eminence. Today many of the flyer's friends anxiously hope that he may acquire some measure of immunity and protection as a result of his work for the Army Air Force. Perhaps the Lindberghs themselves think it may be different this time, for Anne Lindbergh with Jon and Land, has arrived in the United States. Their previous return to their native shores in 1937 was unhappy, for shortly after they stepped on American soil from the President Harding they were beset by the same conditions that drove them originally into exile. Flash-bulbs exploded wherever they went in New York or Washington; “cranks” harassed them on the telephone and through the mail; the criminally unbalanced resumed their threats against the flyer and hjs family. The Lindberghs were happy on the last occasion to have a refuge on the island of Illec, near the little Breton town at Blanc, within rowing distance of their friend, Dr Alexis Carrel, whose home and laboratory on the island of St Gildas has been a haven for the colonel. REFUSED TO MEET PRESS. A brief account of Colonel Lind- : bergh’s most recent arrival in New • York harbour aboard the Aquitania ' may furnish some insight not only intc how he is likely to fare on the present visit, but as to his own responsibility ! for the present relations between him- 1 self and the Press.

A large contingent of reporters, photographers, newsreel and radio men — 200 strong—boarded the Aquitania at Quarantine for Colonel Lindbergh's return. They camped outside his cabin No 29 on C deck and on the stairs leading to that deck for two hours and 10 minutes. Every effort was made to persuade the colonel to meet the Press but he would answer none of the notes sent to him. Officials of the Cunard Line even sent in messages explaining that confusion and embarrassment might be avoided if he would receive even a small delegation. Two alien squad detectives guarded the door of Lindbergh’s cabin. Failure to take similar precautions before the door of the adjoining cabin enabled a photographer to slip through it and a connecting bathroom, open the Lindbergh cabin and flash his bulb at the colonel, who was talking with Dr Carrel. The photographer escaped with the picture.

The Aquitania reached her pier at 10 p.m.. and a detail of police stationed themselves in the C deck hallway. Forty minutes later Colonel Lindbergh emerged and police rushed him through a lane between the waiting reporters. He was almost carried through the crowded pier shed. Ho did not speak a word. Police said that the colonel had not wanted them to accompany him. insisting that if things got “too bad" he would call on them. LEFT ALONE. Since his arrival in the United States newspapermen have virtually left him

alone, beyond routine coverage of his activities. At the White House, as in New York, Colonel Lindbergh had the protection of the police. The army is apparently resolved 1 to see that its commissioned officer is adequately guarded, at least, so long as he is on War Department business. This fact alone may give the Colonel the opportunity, which he has never possessed since his epochal flight, to adjust himself to America, and a similar opportunity for America to adjust itself to Colonel Lindbergh and his passionate desire to live the life of an ordinary citizen. Jn this interim Colonel Lindbergh may grow more aware that he is not quite a private citizen, and the Ameri-i can public may grow aware that Col-; onel Lindbergh is not quite a goldfish. ] If such comes to pass it will be a happy reconciliation.

In 1938 Colonel Lindbergh went to the big Soviet air circus at the Tushina airport upon invitation from Moscow. Upon his return to England he visited Lady Astor at Cliveden. Undoubtedy there was some general discussion of Russia, but as usual the headlines soared higher than Colonel Lindbergh. Immediately stories were circulated to the effect that Colonel Lindbergh, at Cliveden, and even Prague and Paris had said that the German air force could destroy the combined strength of France, Belgium, and Russia. Since such a statement would play into the hands of those who at Munich did not want organised resistance to Germany, Colonel Lindbergh was believed to have abetted international intrigue against the liberal cause.

NOT SUPPORTED. Evidence does not support these accounts. Colonel Lindbergh saw virtually nothing of the Russian air force or its supporting plant. He is reliably reported to have said as much to Mr David Lloyd George, and to have added that he could not tell how good Russia was in the air. False reports of Colonel Lindbergh’s statement on Russia could logically have been circulated by the German propaganda machine or by groups in the democracies who were opposed to any resistance to Germany. Colonel Lindbergh’s acceptance of the German decoration is now .better understood. It would have been a rare —perhaps an unwisely rash — map who would have refused the medal—the circumstances being what they were. The colonel was accepting German hospitality for the third time in the German capital. To have refused the decoration would not only have constituted a resounding insult to Herr Adolf Hitler, but it would have seriously embarrassed the American Embassy.

Within the last two years the Press has probably once again painted Colonel Lindbergh in dangerously extreme colours. In the Cliveden case he was in all likelihood not a party to international intrigue. In the medal episode, he was probably in no way a reactionary American going ovei’ to national Socialism. If he were such an American going over to national Socialism. If he were such an American the National Socialists must have de-| cided to put. him to school after he! proposed this toast: — “Here’s to bombers. May they become slower and slower. And here’s to pursuit planes. May they become faster and faster ”

There seems to be enough wrong and enough right on both sides to warrant a better understanding between Colonel Lindbergh and the American public. In the meantime, as we have said, it may be well that the colonel finds himself on War Department business. Somehow, the army takes care of its own.