The Evening Post, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1937. LINDBERGH'S TYRANT FAME

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 49, 27 February 1937, Page 8

The Evening Post, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1937. LINDBERGH'S TYRANT FAME

Is it possible to do good by stealth? In many walks of life, yes; in those walks of life on which beats the fierce light of publicity, no. Perhaps that "no" should be qualified. One of the great doers of this generation is Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh. His deeds as airman have been written across the sky; he has'flown over oceans and continents. No higher' pedestal exists in the physical world than that on ■ which the oceanconquering airman inevitably stands; even the human being who first sets his foot on the top of Everest, top of the world, will have more chance of keeping out of public sight than has the man who in a few hours flies from capital to capital in some new triumph of air-conquest. As an airman, therefore, Lindbergh has had little opportunity of doing great, things by stealth. He.has.tried to keep out of publicity, and has put up a gallant fight, but it seems to be at best a drawn battle. In the laboratory his reticence has been more successful. The reporters have not pursued him into cytology, as they have little time to consult dictionaries; and the inventing, by the airman and Dr. 'Alexis Carrel, of "the Lindbergh.mechanical heart" did not increase curiosity so much as it promoted a needed sense of awe. Air conqueror and laboratory magician —"what a man!" So far, no one has kidnapped the mechanical heart. But a publicity that will allow the mechanical heart to beat in silence never fails to respond to the tuningup of a Lindbergh air engine. The human heart, set on air-conquest since the days of Icarus, thrills to an airman, and more particularly to an airman whose hatred of the,limelight is closely akin to that of Aircraftman Shaw. When Lawrence, became Shaw, even though he turned himself into a ground mechanic instead of an airman, his past followed him. into his dim retreat. What new mischief was LaA\'rence-Shaw up to? The human curiosity that would not let Shaw rest even on the ground side of aeronautics will not be stilled when Lindbergh, however furtively, takes to the air. For months after he moved into his Kentish home ("Long Barn," village of Weald) the "exile from the land of kidnapping" did no flying. This could not last. In July of last year, with Mrs. Lindbergh, he flew to Germany in a borrowed aeroplane, and saw there the German re-arming. American papers record that he made in Germany but one speech, but there was enough in it to set world:publicity as well as his Nazi hosts by the ears. At an Air Ministry banquet he offered this fateful toast:

Aviation has abolished what we call defence. We can no longer protect our families from the enemy. Here's to pursuit 'planes—may they become faster and faster. Here's to bombing 'planes—may they become slqwer and slower.

Nazi aviators, it is recorded; drank the toast smiling, but "smiling as if they had found hairs in the wine."

Obviously, the news services can never neglect a man—least of all an airman—who out of his long silences can suddenly hurl a verbal bomb like that. When an ordinary "stunt" airman starts off, there is generally some idea of Avhat he is after; but Lindbergh, like Shaw, leaves them guessing. Consequently the world, and its publicity services, are ever on tiptoe. On the night of November 24 and the folloAving day wires and wireless all over England gave the signal "Lindbergh missing!" He had left Ireland on November 24 for Croydon, Avhere he arrived not. The British Air Ministry canvassed aerodromes and flying-fields; shipping was warned. All that had really happened was that Lindbergh, to escape fog, had landed at a military flying-field, and had requested the officers not to broadcast his presence, With tolerant understanding, the American chronicler apologises for him:

In his understanding of publicity, the Colonel was still the Lindy who landed at Paris in 1927, expecting to "see a few of the boys" and sail quietly for home.

What had he been doing in Ireland? He had been testing Irish landingfields for the transatlantic air-ser-vice which (it was recently cabled) will start in November, and which Lindbergh had in mind from the very first, when he made his famous flight in 1927 from Long Island (U.S.A.) to Le Bourget (France) —a feat to be commemorated in the Lindbergh transatlantic air race in August of this year. Whether he flies to Germany, to Ireland, or to Asia, there is apt to be something doing where Lindbergh goes. No wonder that his fight with publicity is a drawn battle. Blazing the world's air-trails is not the kind of good that can be done by stealth.

This month found the hue-and-cry

of November renewed. Colonel and Mrs. Lindbergh flew from England on February 1, and on February 2 London cabled ' ignorance of their whereabouts, along with a Budapest report that they had crashed near the Yugoslav-Hungarian frontier. But Budapest was wrong; they turned up at Rome, which they left for Brindisi on February 4. The story now is coming rapidly up to date, but is following the old familiar lines of flying mystery and hotly-pursuing history. All that history had to go on Avas the Colonel's remark on February 1, "We are just going on a little jaunt." A popular journalistic guess Avas South Africa, but by February 18 the flying pair Avere at Bushire (after a sandstorm landing at Rutbah Wells), and by February 20 at Karachi. And so the pilgrim's progress proceeds, the pilgrim seeking to spin hisAvebs in silence, pursued by a questioning A\-orld and its journalistic eyes and ears. It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a trailblazer like Lindbergh to fly unnotited to some haven of silence.

Long ago an American paper asked the question: "Has Lindy a right to his own life?" No doubt he has, but the penalty of flying in the face of the world is as certain as the penalty of flying in the face of Providence. The fastest aeroplane will not carry him away, from his own shadow or from the shadow of publicity. A Pasteur might labour unnoticed, and have all the stealth he requires to perform hjs mysteries and to render good to the human family. Without fuss, the whole world accepts the blessings "of bacteriology, and only a small portion of the world has any desire to examine the works—least of all does the daily neAvspaper reading public. But it is Colonel Lindbergh's misfortune that the world has taken him to its heart not as a cytologist but as an airman—has taken him to its heart and has created a mental condition exposing his family to a cruel wound. The world will do anything at all for a Lindbergh except leave him alone; yet to be left alone is the thing which he most desires, and, as the family grief shows, for no mere petulant reason. Herein, then, is a tragedy deeper than Aircraftman Shaw's. Yet it is a tragedy born, for the most part, out of hero-worship and good will. The human heart thrills to. great and good deeds; human inquisitiveness, with its publicity pin-pricks, is merely the vice of a virtue. For this there seems to be no cure whatever, unless Lindbergh the cytologist can equip human beings with purely mechani.cal hearts—but to do so is far beyond the range and purpose of the Lindbergh-Carrel experiments. So the penalties of popularity, as well as the rewards, will continue. And he to whom applause is not music may well wonder whether he is hero or victim. .'■' . ,