New-York tribune., 1919-05-21
The Heroic Age

S "Whether it be wise in men to do such
actions or no, l sure it is so in states
Ito honor them."-Sir William Temple as
quoted by Robert Louis Stevenson.
The conduct of the mad fellows who,
astride pasteboard machines. flung them
selves into the air in the North Atlantic
meets the frown of common sense The
proceedings are as alien to the calm
pulsed who prefer the safe and sane as a
ballad is to a man with a prose mind
Yet, as Temple remarked, it is wise for
states to honor such.
The foolhardy build peaks and ranges
in sight of dwellers on the level, and be-
holding them, there is born general de-
sire to climb. Courage in excess flames
iiercely and its bright light shames the
cowardice which turks in the common
heart to screen itself. An army not led
by memories of the quixotic will not go
often over the top. III will fare the race
when divine folly, climbing into the
drivers seat, no longer orders prudence
to let go the reins.
Why do they do it? Is it love of fame?
1t is doubtful. Fame is wooer, but
scarcely capable of commanding surren-
ders so complete. Tower and Read and
Hawker, of course, knew, if the waters
gulped them down, they would be re-
membered; but what of their crews, just
as heroic, though their names are in
smaller type and in their nostrils little
perfume of personal distinction?
IA peerage or Westminster Abbey"
cried Nelson in one of his excellent mo-
ments, but when the straining. test came
and he was actively doing his thought
ran not beyond the minute in hand. The
bud does not say II am to become a
flower" 1t simply becomes one through
the spontaneous working of inner forces.
Fame is a motive, but love of it does not
account for these aviators any more than
it did for Scott and Peary in their quests
for the poles.
Vital men such as these scorners Of the
surface were pushed on by creative in
stincts, by the outswellings of a spirit
they little stopped to study OF define
They did not know why, but they heard
a call from their very tissues and they
responded The conduct of such men has
the sound Of a trumpet to raise other
men to fellowship with the quick So let
us not attempt to decompose their psy-
chology or vainly try to trace acts to
their origins 1t is the nature Of fire to
leap upward Let us rejoice that it is SO.
Let US hope that as long as men are men
the lure of the unattained will lead
them on
"Sr,' blurted out DR.. johnson after
his experience with the waters of the
.Hebrides, no man will be a sailor who
has contrivance enough to get himself
into jail" 1t is the historic feeling of the
landlubDer. And aviators, the sailors Of
the air, have inherited the perils once
the possession of a profession now safe
and humdrur, but as no billowing cata-
racts drove back the old sailors, SO the
birdmen, the heirs of their glory, breast
the heights where dwell Boreas and his
brethren and leave not a hair to their
boards
<~' 1t is not whether or not there is arrival
at the other side which so much appeals
as the sheer moral grandeur Of deeds
which If done by Hercules would have
lived in myth and lifted their performers
TO celestial citizenship. The present,
rather than the past is the heroic age,
sand things are which never before were
dreamed
----------~----~-