COLONEL LINDBERGH

Greymouth Evening Star, 7 November 1939, Page 8

COLONEL LINDBERGH

SUDDEN RISE TO FAME

Colonel Charles Lindbergh, who recently made a bitter radio speech urging the United States to warn Europe off the Western Continent, should be the last man to advocate the isolation of the Americas. Not only does he owe his success to the contribution he made to the linking of America with Europe by air, but also he chose to live in the old world for a number of years. Charles Augustus Lindbergh is the son of a radical Minnesota Congressman and a high school chemistry teacher. A shy, raw-boned fellow, he developed a great passion for flying and became a mail pilot between St. Louis and Chicago.

In May, 1927, he flew solo from the United States to France. This was an ■ astounding feat and would have been hailed as such by any nation, but the United States completely lost its heart and head over “Slim” Lindbergh. His native shyness (which was hailed as a marvellous modesty), his youth and his engaging appearance and personality attracted to him a spate of national adulation, the like of which has hardly been paralleled in modern times.

Life for Lindbergh when he returned from his flight changed utterly. Gifts, riches and honours were showered upon this plucky and competent mail pilot. Having won his dicing with Fate above the grey waters of the Atlantic, he was raking in winnings on an unbelievable scale. The former pawn of commercial aviation found himself a knight. An air line was named after him and he became its technical adviser. He was raised to social eminence and married Anne Morrow.

Three years later tragedy entered Lindbergh’s life. His 20-mohths-old son was kidnapped from his home in Englewood, New Jersey, and murdered. The subsequent man-hunt and trial must have been an added nightmare to a man of Lindbergh’s peculiar temperament and after it was all over, he and his wife left the country and settled in England. Now a wealthy man, Lindbergh was able to do as he pleased. His voluntary exile from America was partly the result of his dislike of Press and public attention. In London, where people do not glance twice at the King except on ceremonial occasions, Lindbergh got what he said he wanted. No one took the least notice of him.

Presently he shifted to Illirc, secluded Breton isle, and took up research work on a mechanical heart with one Dr. Alexis Carrel (who, after the outbreak of the present war, was appointed to an important position in the French Government). During the next three years Lindbergh found time for a. number of air tours —to India, Russia and Germany. By this time he had two sons, Jon and Land. In the last year or so the publicity spotlight has again picked Lindbergh up. Following his visits to Russia and Germany he developed a poor opinion of Russia’s air strength and a high one of Germany’s. Cynical people who have always doubted the genuineness of the flyer’s rather peevish and aggressive modesty, said that this was because the Russians did not make a considerable fuss of him, whereas the Nazis did. Just after the Munich agreement when he was in Berlin he accepted an Order of the German Eagle from Hitler. This roused resentment in the United States and whittled away a lot of Lindbergh “fans,” especially when stories began to circulate that their hero was talking pretty freely in high places about Nazi supremacy in this and that, and generally acting a part uncommonly like that of a Nazi propagandist. In April of this year the Lindberghs returned to the United States. The flyer took up an important post in the Air Corps as a technical adviser, and is now stationed in Washington. The spectacle of a Government servant, and a military officer to boot, suddenly taking the radio air as a violent political partisan, is an extraordinary one. But the one-time mail pilot who believes German is supreme in the skies, and, having got safely back home, wants the United States to do nothing to prevent the Nazis from bombing Europe to pieces, does not seem to have been troubled p% afijj question of service tradition, or his own qualifications as an arbiter of the nation’s destiny.