An article written by Charles
Lindbergh for Reader's Digest that was
printed in November 1939, in which he warns his audience of the dangers of
sharing our technology with the non-White world:
Aviation, Geography and
Race
Col. Charles A. Lindbergh
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, and 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, <![endif]> 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, and 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 <![endif]> 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 the entire 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.