Milford chronicle., 1927-07-22
KNOCKING THE KNOCKERS

Two young men from the 'Bible
belt" are in the public eye. Both
Minnesota small town products, they
typify opposite extremes in Ameri-
can character. One is simple and
one sophisticated One is man of
deeds, the other of words. One says:
81 talk American, 1 think American,
1 am an American" The other
bushes whenever he thinks of his
national origin.
One has gained his reputation by
attempting to expose his country
and his countrymen to the worlds
contempt. The other, leaping from
obscurity to world fame by single
unhearlded heroic deed, has given
a new dignity to the name Ameri-
can. With one bound he vaulted
the ocean which rolls between Main
Street and the Champs Ulysses. By
his courage, sagacity and modest
dignity he has brought to an Ameri-
can the most spontaneous, univer-
sal tribute of admiration that has
ever been accorded citizen of the
new world.
In so doing Charles Lindberg re-
vealed what the cynic Sinclair Lew
is overlooked on Main Street, when
he peopled it with contemplate
caricatures of humanity and sought
to make the world believe that this
baroness of mind and character
typifies small-town America.
In the unknown Lindberg of a
year ago such students" of small
town types as Lewis would have
seen only another yokel, for here
was youth silent, reserved, BASH
full unsophisticated, guilty of the
provincialism of abstention from
every bad habit These casual OBJ
serves of the superficial would not
have given him a second glance or
thought. Yet here were qualities,
awaiting only some opportunity for
expression, which have thrilled the
world.
Every great emergency in Ameri-
can history has brought from OBJ
scurity leaders of unsuspected great
ness. Such an emergency brought
Grant from a tannery, Lincoln from
a country law office and Lew Wal
lace from the ring of loafers at a
village livery stables. Grant shoul-
dering. hides and Lincoln in linen
duster riding rattling buggy over
a rural circuit would have been
merely amusing to a boulevardier.
Yet within a few years these almost
grotesque rustics were to be the CEN
trail figures in one of the great crises
of history.
The super smart-alecks of the
self styled intelligentsia seem to
have overlooked something on Main
Street; something the world is not
now overlooking while it forgets
them. For Charles Lindbergh has
been accepted by Europe as an
American type, with far more justi-
hcation than in the case of Babbitt
or Gantry. To this youths very
lack of sophistication, his innate
dignity and simple modesty, is due
no small share of the popularity
which has made him the idol of
mobs and the companion of kings;
the first successor, in Europe's most
sophisticated capital, of Benjamin
Franklin in his drab tradesman's
suit and squirrel-skin cap.
II one of these Minnesota youths
has had some measure of success in
his attempt to degrade his country
and his countrymen in the worlds
eye, in the pursuit of his chief call
ing as a socialist propagandist, the
other has ennobled his country and
inspired his countrymen. The spon-
taneous outburst of adulation which
has risen to greet the boy Lindbergh
throughout the civilized world, is
evidence that humanity, weary of
the jeremiads of egocentric pessim-
lists and cynics, still loves above all
else the old fashioned qualities
more often developed on Main Street
than in Greenwich Village; qualities
which lie too far beneath the sur
face, except in times of crises, to be
visible to those sour cynics who
prowl about looking only for rea-
sons to think ill of humankind.
1zSzl