(3 of 7)
While their editors groveled, reporters scurried around in search of news, added a few facts and a mass of apocrypha to the Times' scripture. By Monday afternoon it was revealed that the Lindberghs had sailed on the U. S. Lines' small American Importer, a cargo liner of 7,590 tons. Not even the ship's officers had known who their passengers were to be until Colonel Lindbergh marched into the captain's cabin with his familiar, "I am Charles Lindbergh." All arrangements had been made by a U. S. Lines vice president, who had thoughtfully put aboard a six-foot Christmas tree, ornaments, three Christmas stockings. The Lindberghs had paid the standard rate of $280 for two and a half one-way fares. It was reported that the Lindberghs would have a Christmas dinner of turkey with all the trimmings. It was reported that the Lindberghs would have a Christmas dinner of roast pork & applesauce. It was reported that the Lindberghs had been accompanied by three servants, by two servants, by no servants.
International News Service was led to believe that the Lindberghs had fled simply to escape the approaching tumult over Murderer Hauptmann's execution scheduled for this month. The New York Sun reported that Mrs. Hauptmann had planned to take her child to the Lindberghs' doorstep on Christmas Day, plead for her husband's life. Canvassing of every available Lindbergh relative and associate brought confidential information that the Lindberghs had gone away ''for a three-week Christmas vacation." "until spring," "for a year," "forever."
Quitter? Coward? Editorial sentiment was overwhelmingly but not unanimously with the fleeing Lindberghs. After a conventional expression of shame and regret, the Milwaukee Journal declared: "We say that after making due allowance for the somewhat peculiar personality of Colonel Lindbergh."
More daring. James M. Cox's Dayton (Ohio) Daily News observed: "It is not the game thing the Lindberghs do. -. . There is something of the quitter in this running away from one's own country's woes."
In Chicago, Mayor Edward J. Kelly snorted: "If Colonel Lindbergh is correctly quoted in the newspapers, I think his action is ridiculous."
In Kansas City, City Manager Henry F. McElroy whose daughter was kidnapped two years ago (TIME. July 24, 1933 et seq) sneered: "It is an act of cowardice and the country would be better off without him if such is true. I cannot believe it." LL S, v. England. United Press reminded its readers that Motormen Errett Lobban Cord and Horace E. Dodge, also threatened by kidnappers, had taken their children to England without fanfare. Scripps-Howard newspapers distinguished themselves with an editorial from headquarters concerning the splendid kidnapcase record of the U. S. Bureau of Investigation (TIME, Aug. 5). But these calm voices were lost in the cries of shame and outrage with which the mass of U. S. editors compared native law & justice with the British variety. A dozen U. S. Senators called for new laws against crime and aliens, and New York's Mayor LaGuardia exclaimed with magnificent irrelevance: "Rather than have a Lindbergh exile himself, we will chase these punks out of the city."