Aviation, Geography, and Race
by Charles A. Lindbergh
featured in Reader's Digest, November, 1939, pp. 64-67
Aviation has struck a delicately balanced world, a world where
stability was already giving way to the pressure of new dynamic
forces, a world dominated by a mechanical, materialist, Western
European civilization. Aviation is a product of that
civilization, borne on the crest of its outlook. Typical also of
its strength and its weakness, its vanity and its
self-destruction - men flung upward in the face of God, another
Icarus to dominate the sky, and in turn, to be dominated by it;
for eventually the laws of nature determine the success of human
effort and measure the value of human inventions in that
divinely complicated, mathematically unpredictable, development
of life at which Science has given the name of Evolution.
Aviation seems almost a gift from heaven to those Western
nations who were already the leaders of their era, strengthening
their leadership, their confidence, their dominance over other
peoples. It is a tool specially shaped for Western hands, a
scientific art which others only copy in a mediocre fashion,
another barrier between the teeming millions of Asia and the
Grecian inheritance of Europe - one of those priceless
possessions which permit the White race to live at all in a
pressing sea of Yellow, Black, and Brown. But aviation, using it
symbolically as well as in its own right, brings two great
dangers, one peculiar to our modern civilization, the other
older than history. Since aviation is dependent on the intricate
organization of life and industry, it carries with it the
environmental danger of a people too far separated from the soil
and from the sea - the danger of that physical decline which so
often goes with a high intellectual development, of that
spiritual decline which seems invariably to accompany an
industrial life, of that racial decline which follows physical
and spiritual mediocrity.
A great industrial nation may conquer the world in the span of a
single life, but its Achilles' heel is time. Its children, what
of them? The second and third generations, of what numbers and
stuff will they be? How long can men thrive between walls of
brick, walking on asphalt pavements, breathing the fumes of coal
and of oil, growing, working, dying, with hardly a thought of
wind, and sky, and fields of grain, seeing only machine-made
beauty, the mineral-like quality of life. This is our modern
danger - one of the waxen wings of flight. It may cause our
civilization to fall unless we act quickly to counteract it,
unless we realize that human character is more important than
efficiency, that education consists of more than the mere
accumulation of knowledge.
But the other great danger is more easily recognized, because it
has occurred again and again through history. It is the ember of
war, fanned by every new military weapon, flaming today as it
has never flamed before. It is the old internal struggle among a
dominant people for power; blind, insatiable, suicidal. Western
nations are again at war, a war likely to be more prostrating
than any in the past, a war in which the White race is bound to
lose, and the others bound to gain, a war which may easily lead
our civilization through more Dark Ages if it survives at all.
In this war, aviation is as important a factor as it has been a
cause - a cause due to its effect on the balance of strength
between nations, a factor because of the destruction and death
it hurls on earth and sea. Air power is new to all our
countries. It brings advantages to some and weakens others; it
calls for readjustment everywhere.
If only there were some way to measure the changing character of
men, some yardstick to reapportion influence among the nations,
some way to demonstrate in peace the strength of arms in war.
But with all of its dimensions, its clocks, and weights, and
figures, science fails us when we ask a measure for the rights
of men. They cannot be judged by numbers, by distance, weight,
or time; or by counting heads without a thought of what may lie
within. Those intangible qualities of character, such as
courage, faith, and skill, evade all systems, slip through the
bars of every cage. They can be recognized, but not measured.
They lie more in a glance between two men than in any formula or
mathematics. They form the unseen strength of an army, the
genius of a people.
Likewise, in judging aviation, in its effect on modern nations,
no satisfactory measurement of strength exists. It is bound to
geography, environment, and racial character so closely that an
attempt to judge by numbers would be like counting Greeks at
Marathon. What advantages will they gain? What new influence can
they exert? To judge this, one must look not only at their
aviation but at them, at the geography of their country, at
their problems of existence, at their habits of life.
Mountains, coastlines, great distances, ground fortifications,
all those safeguards of past generations, lose their old
significance as man takes to his wings. The English Channel, the
snow-capped Alps, the expanses of Russia, are now looked on from
a different height. The forces of Hannibal, Drake and Napoleon
moved at best with the horses' gallop or the speed of wind on
sail. Now, aviation brings a new concept of time and distance to
the affairs of men. It demands adaptability to change, places a
premium on quickness of thought and speed of action.
Military strength has become more dynamic and less tangible. A
new alignment of power has taken place, and there is no adequate
peacetime measure for its effect on the influence of nations.
There seems no way to agree on the rights it brings to some and
takes from others. The rights of men within a nation are
readjusted in each generation by laws of inheritance - land
changes hands as decades pass, fortunes are taxed from one
generation to the next; ownership is no more permanent than
life. But among nations themselves there is no similar provision
to reward virility and penalize decay, no way to reapportion the
world's wealth as tides of human character ebb and flow - except
by the strength of armies. In the last analysis, military
strength is measurable only by its own expenditure, by the
prostration of one contender while the other can still stagger
on the field - and all about the wolves of lesser stature abide
their time to spring on both the warriors.
We, the heirs of European culture, are on the verge of a
disastrous war, a war within our own family of nations, a war
which will reduce the strength and destroy the treasures of the
White race, a war which may even lead to the end of our
civilization. And while we stand poised for battle, Oriental
guns are turning westward, Asia presses towards us on the
Russian border, all foreign races stir restlessly. It is time to
turn from our quarrels and to build our White ramparts again.
This alliance with foreign races means nothing but death to us.
It is our turn to guard our heritage from Mongol and Persian and
Moor, before we become engulfed in a limitless foreign sea. Our
civilization depends on a united strength among ourselves; on
strength too great for foreign armies to challenge; on a Western
Wall of race and arms which can hold back either a Genghis Khan
or the infiltration of inferior blood; on an English fleet, a
German air force, a French army, an American nation, standing
together as guardians of our common heritage, sharing strength,
dividing influence.
Our civilization depends on peace among Western nations, and
therefore on united strength, for Peace is a virgin who dare not
show her face without Strength, her father, for protection. We
can have peace and security only so long as we band together to
preserve that most priceless possession, our inheritance of
European blood, only so long as we guard ourselves against
attack by foreign armies and dilution by foreign races.
We need peace to let our best men live to work out those more
subtle, but equally dangerous, problems brought by this new
environment in which we dwell, to give us time to turn this
materialistic trend, to stop prostrating ourselves before this
modern idol of mechanical efficiency, to find means of combining
freedom, spirit, and beauty with industrial life - a peace which
will bring character, strength, and security back to Western
peoples.
With all the world around our borders, let us not commit racial
suicide by internal conflict. We must learn from Athens, and
Sparta before all of Greece is lost.
Reader's Digest, Nov. 1939, Vol. 35
I would have lived in peace. But my enemies brought me war.
