The Readiness To Blame A Dead Pilot

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.

It Is Not The Willingness To Kill On The Part Of Our Soldiers Which Most Concerns Me. That Is An Inherent Part Of War. It Is Our Lack Of Respect For Even The Admirable Characteristics Of Our Enemy; For Courage, For Suffering, For Death, For His Willingness To Die For His Beliefs, For His Companies And Squadrons Which Go Forth, One After Another, To Annihilation Against Our Superior Training And Equipment.

If I Were Entering Adulthood Now Instead Of In The Environment Of Fifty Years Ago, I Would Choose A Career That Kept Me In Touch With Nature More Than Science. ... Too Few Natural Areas Remain; Both By Intent And By Indifference We Have Insulated Ourselves From The Wilderness That Produced Us.

Wind, Weather, Power, Load - Gradually These Elements Stop Churning In My Mind. It's Less A Decision Of Logic Than A Feeling, The Kind Of Feeling That Comes When You Gauge The Distance To Be Jumped Between Two Stones Across A Brook. Something Within You Disengages Itself From Your Body And Travels Ahead With Your Vision To Make The Test. You Can Feel It Try The Jump As You Stand Looking. Then Uncertainty Gives Way To The Conviction That It Can Or Can't Be Done.

To A Person In Love, The Value Of The Individual Is Intuitively Known. Love Needs No Logic For Its Mission. It Roots In A Bare Wisdom That Exists In Senses More Than Mind, A Wisdom That, In Primitive Form, Evolved The Mind Which So Often Overlooks It.