© Wide World Photos
NEW YORK CITY—SPEAKING AT THE CEREMONIES IN CENTRAL PARK. GOVERNOR SMITH OF NEW YORK BEHIND THE “MIKE”
© U. & U.
BROOKLYN, N. Y.—SPEAKING AT THE CEREMONIES IN PROSPECT PARK
At the end of this bewildering array of orations and gifts the speaker of the evening was announced. One has only to put oneself in Lindbergh’s place after reading some of the eloquence listed above to admire the moral courage it took to face that huge audience and once more speak with directness and precision of the things nearest his heart—things often furthest from the burden of the discourse:
“I want to express my appreciation of the reception I’ve met in America and the welcome I have received here tonight.” It was plain the flier was going to cover another field than the infinitely delicate one he had touched earlier in the day. “When I landed at Le Bourget a few weeks ago, I landed with the expectancy and hope of being able to see Europe. It was the first time I had ever been abroad. I had seen a number of interesting things when I flew over Ireland and Southern England and France. I had only been gone from America two days or a little less, and I wasn’t in any particular hurry to get back.
“But by the time I had been in France a week, Belgium a day and England two or three days—by that time I had opened several cables from America and talked with three Ambassadors and their attachés and found that it didn’t make much difference whether I wanted to stay or not: and while I was informed that it was not necessarily an order to come back home, there was a battleship waiting for me.
“The Ambassador said this wasn’t an order, but advice,” the aviator added.