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FOREWORD
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has ever gathered between two nations, for under the shadow of its wings a hundred and fifty million Frenchmen and Americans have come together in generous accord. No diplomatic bag ever carried such a stupendous document as this all-unaccredited messenger bore, and no visiting squadron ever delivered such a letter of thanks as he took up the Potomac in returning. Has any such Ambassador ever been known!

Lindbergh was not commissioned by his government any more than Lafayette was by his, in each case it has merely been left for statesmen to register and approve the vast consequence of their acts. Both arrived at a critical moment and both set in motion those imponderable forces which escape the standards of the politician’s mind, Who shall say but what they were God-sent messengers of help, smiling the defiance of their faith at an all too skeptical world? What the one accomplished has already changed history through a century; what the other has just