Eagle to Earth

Monday, Jan. 12, 1942

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He always sounded earnest, uninformed, young for his years, though they were nearing 40. His neat mechanic's mind attacked monumental problems as if they were as simple as a combustion engine. From Alexis Carrel, with whom he worked for the Rockefeller Institute, he heard about a brave new world in which scientists would be the elite guard; in Ger many he discovered a society where he was never troubled by the vulgar herd.

When World War II began to inundate the world, he began to think about west ern civilization. He evolved a panacea, full of the gusty notions of Oswald Spengler. He proposed that the battling nations abandon their differences, present a united front against "foreign races." Among those he described as inferior aliens were the Mongols, the Persians and the Moors, who he feared would corrupt the blood stream of the west. That bloodstream, he pointed out, was our most precious pos session.

He found himself with some strange bedfellows in his isolationist bed: some of them had Communist whiskers. He did not care. He remained steadfastly convinced that the Soviet Union's western border, whose defenses he scoffed at, was the last outpost of white supremacy. Even if England went down, .he was confident that the U.S. could get along fine with Hitler's New Order. The New Order, he felt, was riding the triumphant wave of the future.

Last week reality caught up with Charles Augustus Lindbergh. From his hideaway on Martha's Vineyard, Mass., he offered his services to the Army Air Corps from which he resigned last April, after Frank lin Roosevelt had pegged him as a new-day "Copperhead." At his age (40 next month), Lindbergh probably could not get a job as a combat flyer. If he were given a commission—for which, as a new applicant, he would have to wait his turn—he could serve his country usefully as a specialist in aviation. He knows a lot more about that subject than he does about world politics.