Hero Speaks

Last week began the Great Debate on U. S. Neutrality. Franklin Roosevelt argued for action, short of war (see p. 11), Idaho's Borah for Isolation (see p. 12), Elder Statesman Henry Lewis Stimson for traditional neutrality. These and many another who joined issue were professional exponents of known views. None owned a fresh voice to bespeak the people's horror of war. But at 10:45 o'clock (E.D.S.T.) one night last week that voice was heard, the voice of the one U. S. citizen who could command a radio audience comparable to Franklin Roosevelt's.

Charles Lindbergh last spoke on the radio eight years ago, in Tokyo. Not even the chance to plead for the return of his kidnapped son in 1932 had brought him to a microphone since. The sudden break in his silence was a phenomenon of World War II (which he painstakingly refused to call a World War), an evidence of its great impact upon the U. S. It was also the end of his protective pretense that Charles Lindbergh is just a private citizen. By his act last week Hero Lindbergh deliberately undertook a spokesman's, if not a leader's, responsibility.

The idea was planted in his head last month by bumptious, able MBS Commentator Fulton Lewis Jr., who got Washington press galleries opened to radio reporters (TIME, May 8). At a small dinner party in Washington, Fulton Lewis heard Colonel Lindbergh on war in the world, peace in the U. S., and suggested that he broadcast his thoughts. On a Sunday afternoon three weeks later, Charles Lindbergh urgently telephoned Commentator Lewis, asked whether the offer of radio time was still good. It was, said Mr. Lewis. Hero Lindbergh then drafted a speech. His wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, writer of repute (Listen! The Wind, North to the Orient), smoothed out the draft, typed the finished version, left on it the hallmark of her husband's direct simplicity.

He was pure & simple Lindbergh when, with his wife and Mr. & Mrs. Lewis, he repaired to the Carlton Hotel suite in Washington where MBS, NBC and CBS had set up their microphones. He greeted all the announcers and technicians, with his mechanic's eye pried into the electrical arrangements, wanted particularly to know whether telephones would be ringing during the broadcast.

As he stood and read his piece, shifting continually from foot to foot, some among his hearers remembered his father, who died in 1933. Charles Lindbergh Sr., of Minnesota, was one of 56 Congressmen (50 in the House, six in the Senate) who voted against declaring war in 1917. Outwardly cold, privately devoted Father Lindbergh wrote on Feb. 4, 1917: "Charles is fifteen today. He does not allow me to forget that, but I would not have forgotten it anyway, for this is a serious time. The world has gone mad. . . ."

Last week, having just returned to inactive status in the Army Reserve (after looking over aircraft production facilities for the Air Corps), Charles Lindbergh could say what he pleased. His associates in the War Department guessed enough of what he wanted to say to ask him not to say it. Some of his few intimates insisted before & after he spoke that Charles Lindbergh is for shipping arms and airplanes to the Allies. If he expected his speech to be so interpreted, he was notably naive. It was as the son of his father that he said:

P:"In times of great emergency, men of the same belief must gather together for mutual counsel and action. If they fail to do this, all that they stand for will be lost."

P:"Let us not delude ourselves. If we enter the quarrels of Europe during war, we must stay in them in time of peace as well. It is madness to send our soldiers to be killed as we did in the last war if we turn the course of peace over to the greed, the fear and the intrigue of European nations."

P:"These wars in Europe are not wars in which our civilization is defending itself against some Asiatic intruder. . . . This is not a question of banding together to defend the white race against foreign invasion. This is simply one more of those age-old struggles within our family of nations--a quarrel arising from the errors of the last war. . . ."

P:"The Treaty of Versailles either had to be revised as time passed, or England and France . . . had to keep Germany weak by force. Neither policy was followed. Europe wavered back and forth between the two. As a result, another war has begun ... a war which may even lead to the end of our western civilization."

P:"We must be as impersonal as a surgeon with his knife. Let us make no mistake about the cost of entering this war. . . . Munitions alone will not be enough. . . . We are likely to lose a million men, possibly several million. . . . And our children will be fortunate if they see the end in their lives. ..."

P:"If we enter fighting for democracy abroad we may end by losing it at home."

P:"We must not be misguided by this foreign propaganda to the effect that our frontiers lie in Europe.* What more could we ask than the Atlantic Ocean on the East, the Pacific on the West? ... An ocean is a formidable barrier, even for modern aircraft. . . ."

P:"The German genius for science and organization, the English genius for government and commerce, the French genius for living and understanding of life--they must not go down here as well as on the other side. Here in America they can be blended to form the greatest genius of all."

Projected this week by Hudson County (N. J.) Young Republicans was the first "Draft Lindbergh for President Club."

* For further delineation of U. S. frontiers by Franklin Roosevelt, see p. 11.

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