OBJECTION TO PICTURE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20105, 26 March 1928, Page 8

OBJECTION TO PICTURE

HERO AND CHAMPAGNE STRONG PROTEST MADE Public opinion in the little colony of artists and writers at* Interlaken U.S.A., has been greatly aroused by the publication on the front page nf The Ashbury Press of a picture of Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh, the airman hero, seated opposite a girl at a table on which stood a bottle of champagne. The local School Board voted to protest strongly to the paper’s editor- The picture was taken on Colonel Lindbergh’s recent trip through South and Central America, and bore the caption: “Lindy, Can This Be True?” The board’s protest was sanctioned by Wiliiam M. Smith, superintendent of Monmouth County schools. The hoard declared that it made its protest “in loyalty to our young folks, who are at the mercy of that which their adults pattern for them.” It was sponsored, among others, by Airs Louis Koerner, wife of the illustrator The resolution also charges the “framing” of American youth and “regrets the point of view of any one whft would care to 4 get anything’ on the young man who has proved to be so truly American.’’

The editors of The Ashbury Press deny they are trying to get. anything” on Colonel Lindbergh or any one Jlso or that they had any other motive in publishing the picture than that it was news.

They state their stand as follows: “Th e members of the School Board who consider it disgraceful seeing Lindbergh perched at a table whereon stood a bottle of champagne do their thinking by such devious process?s that we cannot follow them. If Colonel Lindbergh is liberal enough to permit a bottle of champagne on his table when he is visiting a country where the beverage is in good standing, what harm is done in publishing the fact? Lindbergh’s temperance is w T ell known, but he is tolerant enough in his views not to consider the presence of a bottle of champagne on his table in a South American country as a cardinal sin.”