Lindbergh Senior Would Have Been Surprised

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 637, 13 April 1929, Page 18

Lindbergh Senior Would Have Been Surprised

ENGAGEMENT OF “LONE EAGLE” RECALLS INTERESTING CLAIMS MADE BY HIS FATHER. ■OLO NE L CHARLES AUGUSTUS LINDBERGH, prime bero of the United States, is well used but by no means resigned to the idolatry of his public. When he landed in Havana from British Honduras one evening recently in a Sikorsky amphibian, he eyed the thronging newsgatherers more moodily than ever. He knew their eagerness this time was not solicitude for his safety. He knew that they were not going to ask him about, the new Pan-American air mail route he had been inaugurating. He knew, alas, that they knew that he was going to do something that contained the essence of what is called “Human Interest.” It did seem to him that when a man, even a hero, is going to get married, that he might be let alone. The newsgatherers, according to the

magazine “Time,” were waving slips of paper which read; “Ambassador and Mrs. Morrow announce the engagement of their daughter Anne Spencer to Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh.” Well? Colonel Lindbergh compressed his lips and only opened them to say: “You know all about it. I have nothing to say. I will confine my remarks to aviation.” The next day he flushed in angry silence at public comment and curiosity about his plans. Finally in Miami he said: “I believe the announcement is sufficient acknowledgment of the engagement.” But it really was romantic. The country gurgled its delight. The tabloids went wild with headlines about Lindy and Anne,” “ ‘We’ now a Trio,’’ etc. Arthur Brisbane, whose editorials are syndicated all over the States, pontificated: “It Is pleasing to know that the chain of Lindbergh’s ancestry stretching back across the ocean to powerful men in the North is not to be broken.”

Instead of sharing the not altogether delicate Brisbanal anticipation of a Lindbergh son and heir, other commentators preferred to ponder the social evolution represented in the conjunction of the Lindbergh tradition and the House of Morgan. The late Charles Augustus Lindbergh, sen. (1860-1924) was a ’“radical” Congressman from Minnesota.

At least “radical” is the word that J. Pierpont Morgan must have thought of when Charles Augustus Lindbergh, sen., was abusing the “Money Trust'' and helping to precipitate the Congressional investigation of 1911. An interested spectator during the crusade against the “Money Trust” at that time was Dwight Whitney Morrow. He was then a member of an old Manhattan law firm. In 1914 he became a partner of J. P. Morgan and Co.

A subtle metamorphosis has come to pass since 1914. Not often or loudly, nowadays, is the Horae of Morgan called sinister or arrogau Among men generally credited with helping this change is Thomas William Lamont, who became a Morgan partner in 1911. But even more credit has gone to Dwight Whitney Morrow. The elder Lindbergh, It is true, was never satisfied that any change had come in the manner and method of large banking houses. To the end he saw them only as “accursed burdens upon the plain people.” In 1923, in the “Economic Pinch,” he wrote:

“God pity our children for unless they compel the recognition of their rights . . . they will be borne down with added burdens of Increased wealth in profiteers’ hands to command and

compound still greater interest dW' dends and rent. “But,” he added, “give the childwh the facts and they will correct thing s when it comes their time." The Morrow-Liudbergh engagemen was incredible not only to dream-slo* young girls. Mr. Morrow’s good friend and neighbour, potent Board ChaWJJ* Seward Prosser of the Bankers' Tm Company, could 'not believe his when he heard the announcement radio. . In Mexico City, Miss Anne Spence Morrow, 22, sft sin, brunette, Obeyed, literary, bashfully quiet, from the glare of being her coun hero’s fiancee. Her father * e world guess, without assistanc . to the time and place of the Industrious Press ferrets brougk Miss Morrow’s poems. Her 1 “Scribner’s” concluded? —

Still, like a singing lark. 1 , Rapture to leave the grass ben - And sometimes standing ** a ._q My lips are cool against a curt**In the midst of the general feeling, the fatherly New “Times” publishes a report tb hero’s mother, Mrs. bergh, returning from Turkey the s.s. President Wilson, was to Captain F. A. Anderson ot vessel. Soon it was discovered, ever, that Captain Anderson / possessed a wife of 39 years stafi