"We" : $b The famous flier's own story of his life and his trans-Atlantic flight, together with his views on the future of aviationLindbergh, Charles A. (Charles Augustus)
History
"We" : $b The famous flier's own story of his life and his trans-Atlantic flight, together with his views on the future of aviation
Lindbergh, Charles A. (Charles Augustus)
Aeronautics -- Flights; Air pilots -- Biography; Transatlantic flights
At the City Hall Mayor Walker expressed the city’s sentiments with a
felicity that deserves their record here. He spoke more informally than
most had spoken in Washington; by the same token he echoed through
his easily forgivable eloquence much that the inarticulate thousands
waiting without the lines would like to have said.
He struck right at the heart of things when he began:
“Let me dispense with any unnecessary official side or function,
Colonel, by telling you that if you have prepared yourself with any
letters of introduction to New York City they are not necessary.
“Everybody all over the world, in every language, has been telling
you and the world about yourself. You have been told time after time
where you were born, where you went to school, and that you have done
the supernatural thing of an air flight from New York to Paris. I am
satisfied that you have become convinced of it by this time.
“And it is not my purpose to reiterate any of the wonderful things
that have been so beautifully spoken and written about you and your
triumphal ride across the ocean. But while it has become almost
axiomatic, it sometimes seems prosaic to refer to you as a great
diplomat, because after your superhuman adventure, by your modesty,
by your grace, by your gentlemanly American conduct, you have left
no doubt of that. But the one thing that occurs to me that has been
overlooked in all the observations that have been made of you is that
you are a great grammarian, and that you have given added significance
and a deeper definition to the word ‘we.’
“We have heard, and we are familiar with, the editorial ‘we,’ but not
until you arrived in Paris did we learn of the aeronautical ‘we.’ Now
you have given to the world a flying pronoun.
“That ‘we’ that you used was perhaps the only word that would have
suited the occasion and the great accomplishment that was yours. That
all-inclusive word ‘we’ was quite right, because you were not all alone
in the solitude of the sky and the sea, because every American heart,
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, was beating for you. Every American,
every soul throughout the world, was riding with you in spirit, urging
you on and cheering you on to the great accomplishment that is yours.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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