THE GREATER HERO

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 54, Issue 3894, 26 April 1937, Page 7

THE GREATER HERO

FATHER BEFORE SON. STAND OF CHARLES A. LINDBERGH, SNR., IN THE GREAT WAR. Few people have heard of Charles A. Lindbergh, Snr., father of “Lindy,” world-famed conqueror of the air (says the London Sunday Referee). Fewer still know that the senior Lindbergh in his day endured perils more grim and dramatic than any his son has faced several times came face to face with death because he chose to fight popular feeling among his countrymen rather than drift with the! tide. In America there are many who hold that the elder Lindbergh was a greater hero than “ Lindy ” himself. ’ Lindbergh, Snr., died in 1924. He died three yeare before his son became a national hero by his conquest of the Atlantic himself, at sixty - five, still suspected of “ disloyalty ” by the country he had striven to serve. Charles A. Lindbergh, Snr., became unpopular when he withdrew from Congress and opposed America’s entry into the World War. He attacked Wall Street, and accused capitalists of backing the war. The big voice in Wall Street was Dwight W. Morrow. A partner in the banking firm of J. P. Morgan and Company, he supported Morgan’s, loan to the Allies.

Ironically, years later, Morrow’s daughter became the wife of Lindbergh’s son. He told “Lindy,” 16 at the time: “ Son, it isn’t safe to think in wartime unless you travel with the mob.”

Soon life was far from safe for the man who stubbornly stood out. He became the best-hated man in the States among America’s advocates of the war. He stood for the Governorship of Minnesota. “ Minnesota mustn’t be governed by a traitorous skunk,” his enemies declared, Hot-heads screamed that the “ traitor ” should be hanged out of hand.

Lindbergh declared that the war “ would fail to make the world safe for democracy.” Democracy replied. Lindbergh, campaigning, had to be barricaded in a gaol to save him from the mob. One of his helpers, quoting Lindbergh’s views, was tarred and feathered and left half dead. Another was seized and beaten.

Several times Lindbergh was shot at, and escaped death by inches. He once, while driving with, his son, was chased by men wearing black hoods. “ Don’t be scared, son,” he said calmly, to the future airmen. Then, to the driver, “ Don’t drive so fast, or they will think we are afraid of them.”

On another occasion “ Lindy,” just winning his spurs in the air, gave his father a lift by plane after one of his meetings. Suddenly the plane lurched, dipped, threatened to become out of control.

“ Lindy ” just managed to make a landing. He and his (father were shaken and bruised.

They found that one of the wingstays had been severed by a wirecutter. Old Lindbergh, shrugging in the shadow of death, said grimly: “ You see what it means to champion an unpopular cause.”

Several times he stood for office. He tried, at sixty-one, to win back his seat in Congress. Always he failed.

Yet to-day in the Minnesota that once reviled him, Lindbergh, Snr., is honoured as something more than Flyer Lindbergh’s father, for he told America that the Great War would not end war.