“We”

“We”

By Charles A. Lindbergh.

Table of Contents

1. Titlepage
2. Imprint
3. Dedication
4. Foreword
5. Frontispiece
6. “We”
   1. I: Boyhood and Early Flights
   2. II: My First Plane
   3. III: Barnstorming Experiences
   4. IV: Heading South
   5. V: Training at Brooks Field
   6. VI: Receiving a Pilot’s Wings
   7. VII: I Join the Air Mail
   8. VIII: Two Emergency Jumps
   9. IX: San Diego–St. Louis–New York
   10. X: New York to Paris
7. Publisher’s Note
8. Author’s Note
9. A Little of What the World Thought of Lindbergh
   1. I: Paris
   2. II: Brussels
   3. III: London
   4. IV: Washington
   5. V: New York
   6. VI: St. Louis
10. Endnotes
11. List of Illustrations
12. Colophon
13. Uncopyright

Imprint

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Dedicated to
My Mother
And to the Men Whose Confidence and Foresight Made Possible the Flight of the
Spirit of St. Louis

• Mr. Harry H. Knight

• Major William B. Robertson

• Major Albert Bond Lambert

• Mr. J. D. Wooster Lambert

• Mr. Harold M. Bixby

• Mr. Earl C. Thompson

• Mr. Harry F. Knight

• Mr. E. Lansing Ray

Foreword

When Joan of Arc crowned her King at Rheims she became immortal. When Lafayette risked his all to help the struggling Americans he wrote his memory forever across a mighty continent. Shepherd boy David in five minutes achieved with his sling a place in history which has defied all time.

These three shining names represent the triumph of the idealism of youth, and we would not speak of them with such reverence today had their motives been less pure or had they ever for an instant thought of themselves or their place in history.

So it was with Lindbergh, and all the praise awarded him, judged by the rigid standards of history and precedent, he has merited. He was the instrument of a great ideal and one need not be fanatically religious to see in his success the guiding hand of providence.

For he was needed and he came at the moment which seemed exactly preordained. He was needed by France and needed by America, and had his arrival been merely the triumph of a great adventure the influence of his act would have gone no further than have other great sporting and commercial achievements.

There have been moments here in France when all that my eye could reach or my intelligence fathom appeared dark and foreboding and yet, in spite of all, my soul would be warmed as by invisible sunshine. At such times when all human efforts had apparently failed, suddenly the affairs of nations seemed to be taken from out of the hands of men and directed by an unseen power on high.

Just before the Battle of the Marne I was standing on the Seine embankment.

A great harvest moon was rising over the city near Notre Dame. It seemed to rest on the corner of a building. The French flag was blowing steadily across its face. In fleeting moments while this spectacle lasted people knelt on the quay in prayer. I inquired the meaning of these prayers. The answer was that there is a prophecy centuries old that the fate of France will finally be settled upon the fields where Attila’s horde was halted and driven back and where many battles in defence of France have been won. And pointing up the Seine to the French flag outlined across the moon people cried, “See, see the sign in heaven. It means the victory of French arms. The prophecy of old is come true and France is once again to be saved on those chalky fields.”

Now when this boy of ours came unheralded out of the air, and circling the Eiffel tower settled to rest as gently as a bird on the field at Le Bourget, I was seized with the same premonition as those French people on the quay that August night. I felt without knowing why, that his arrival was far more than a fine deed well accomplished, and there glowed within me the prescience of splendor yet to come. Lo! it did come and has gone on spreading its beneficence upon two sister nations which a now-conquered ocean joins.

For I feel with every fibre of my being that Lindbergh’s landing here marks one of the supreme moments in the history of America and France, and the faith we have in the deciding power of spiritual things is strengthened by every circumstance of his journey, by all his acts after landing, and by the electrical thrill which ran like some religious emotion through a whole vast population. The Spirit of St. Louis was to the French people another sign come out of the sky⁠—a sign which bore the promise that all would be well between them and us.

What a happy inspiration it was to christen his ship with such a name!