The first man to fly from New York to Paris would write several magazine articles and a book. He might make some money by lecturing. He would be offered contracts for moving pictures, jobs as manager of something or other, and honorary memberships in a hundred organizations of more or less doubtful value.
Then someone would break a homerun record or commit a murder; whereupon the world would forget with pitiless promptness the first man to fly the broad Atlantic.
Who, by the way, can name the dauntless pilots that circled the globe by air not so many months ago?
The reason Lindbergh’s story is different is that when his plane came to a halt on Le Bourget field that black night in Paris, Lindbergh the man kept on going.
The phenomenon of Lindbergh took its start with his flight across the ocean; but in its entirety it was almost as distinct from that flight as though he had never flown at all.
It is probable that in the three ensuing weeks Lindbergh loosed the greatest torrent of mass emotion ever witnessed in human history.
This narrative is a record of events, not an analysis. It therefore cannot pretend to explain the “phenomenon of Lindbergh.” Whether it was his modesty or his looks or his refusal to be tempted by money or by fame that won him such a following we cannot say. Perhaps the world was ripe for a youth with a winning smile to flash across its horizon and by the brilliance of his achievement momentarily to dim the ugliness of routine business, politics and crime. Many said that his sudden meteor-like appearance from obscurity was an act of Providence.
Whatever the reason for it all, the fact remains that there was a definite “phenomenon of Lindbergh” quite the like of which the world had never seen. This strange phenomenon is the opening fact of our simple narrative of events culled from a list far too long to include in the space allowed.
All who followed press accounts of the flier’s adventures after landing agree that his “meteor” did not glow in its full radiance at first. There was a faint but unmistakable artificiality in the news reports on this side of the Atlantic immediately following his arrival in Paris. To be sure, unstinted praise was poured on his courage and on the skill of his unprecedented flight. But the true Lindbergh had not yet impressed itself upon America.
His personality caught the French at the very moment when their natural enthusiasm for his deed was at its height. It was like pushing a swing just when it has started downward.