Mr. Charles A. Lindbergh, the well known international boy scout, apparently does not view the order cancelling all air mail contracts with unmixed joy. Unfortunately, his telegram to Mr. Roosevelt was not appreciated by the President, who, oddly enough, felt that the former Boy Hero's motives were not entirely altruistic in spite of the fact that Lindbergh was thoughtful enough to publish the telegram prior to sending it so that Mr. Roosevelt could read all about it in the papers before he received it.

The plain fact of the matter is that our Lindy has not been very clever about this business. It is perfectly evident that the air mail contracts were shot through with graft and their wholesale cancellation was precisely what the sleek promoters of the air companies deserved; there is nothing to support the argument that some companies may be innocent and are consequently getting a raw deal. None of the members of that Jesse James guild had any more chance--or desire--to maintain their business integrity than a sailor landed in Scollay Square after six months at sea has of keeping himself physically inviolate; and it was only because some of the boys became disgruntled at having their snouts kept out of the public trough by their rivals that they let out a loud and agonized howl and gave away the whole business.

While Lindbergh is not in any way implicated in the scandal it is hardly possible to believe that he was not pretty well aware of what was going on, for he was high in the councils of a company which is one of the chief offenders. Moreover, he is financially interested in the companies which are affected by the new order, and his great yen for justice in this case is all too intimately connected with his pocketbook. Apparently, he expected--somewhat naively, one is inclined to think--that any telegram from him would simply be assumed to proceed from the most altruistic reasons. For how could the boy who flew across the ocean with only a sandwich for company, who was so blushing and modest and gawky in the face of virtual deification, who got bored at a risque musical comedy, who ostentatiously spurned liquor and lechery, do anything ignoble? Unfortunately, Lindy has been as mistaken in his analysis of the public temper as he was in his estimation of Roosevelt's naivete; the people are, in fact, damn sick and tired of these Clean Cut Young Men; Mr. James Cagney has been substituted as a somewhat bawdier idol, and even the self-conscious college rake with a girl on his arm, a flask on his hip, and a vacuum in his head is held to be preferable to young Master Purity. Roosevelt's rebuke to Lindbergh--even though it does smack somewhat of a teapot tempest--will be loudly cheered by those unfortunate men who do not look as though they worshipped Pure American Motherhood and lived the Clean Life.