MERMOZ Jean (1901-1936) aviateur.

Lot 195
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Estimation :
2000 - 2500 EUR
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Result : 790EUR
MERMOZ Jean (1901-1936) aviateur.
AUTOGRAPHIC MANUSCRIT, L'aviation populaire, [October 1936]; 3 pages in-4 with erasures and corrections. Political article in favor of a popular aviation for the youth, not affiliated with the Popular Front. It was published in Le Flambeau, the journal of the French Social Party, on October 10, 1936. "For too long, the idea of popular aviation should have been born in people's minds and should be completely realized today. It should have begun to live and develop, not under a political sign, but under that of a bold understanding of the aspirations of modern youth expanded in a sense of sportsmanship and social education," as was the case in Germany and Russia. "Since the creation of the Ministry of the Air Force, no one had been concerned about it until the day when Mr. Marcel Déat, Minister of the Air Force, had with Wibault and Massenet the idea of creating a National Council of the Air Youth where all the major social organizations and youth associations would be represented without distinction of political shades. This council was to be in charge of grouping in a common aeronautical ideal all the young people without distinction of classes or opinions, to encourage, to advise and to help all the new formations of popular clubs, to distribute equitably the official subsidies of the private aviation, until now reserved to the unique class of the people who could afford the luxury that the purchase and the maintenance of a tourist airplane present. The purpose of this youth aviation movement was to impartially give young people the opportunity to fly with the support of all political parties. The state and the organization had to respect an "absolute neutrality", ensuring technical means, security, coordination of activities, etc. Two meetings were held, bringing together many organizations, of which Mermoz lists them. "Then came the elections, the departure of Marcel Déat from the Ministry of the Air, the total and immediate abandonment of the project and finally the creation of the Popular Aviation for the sole benefit of the Popular Front. The airfield that was supposed to become the field of political neutrality, of social reconciliation of young people having above all the aeronautical faith, was transformed for the needs of a policy into a field of maneuvers where the pure, collective action of all the classes of the French youth was divided once more into two political camps". And Mermoz denounced the subservience of the Popular Aviation Council to the politics of the Popular Front. "The Fédération Aéronautique de France existed. Under its aegis, all the existing clubs or those being formed could have been grouped. But it represented too much the "insufficiently republican" tourist aviation - by acting as the semi-official aeronautical organizations did too often, it was almost decided to suppress it and to kill thus in one blow the private aviation privilege of the "rich". In the new organization of popular aviation, it was finally tolerated, another Federation was created immediately, politically preponderant, with as a starting point the Federation of the Tense Wing of the Communist and Socialist Youths: the Popular Federation of the Aeronautical Sports. - Two Federations, two classes, two youths... There is only one youth: the one who aspires to live in an air free of political miasma, to fly in peace, to escape, even for a few minutes, from a ground where he finds the material and moral miseries of the daily life. It is necessary that the airfield be the ideal place where a youth who knows the ease of an easy life learns to know, to understand and to love the one who leads a hard and laborious existence, where the spirit of collective sacrifice, the spirit of sharing a useless superfluity, dominate the spirit of personal interest, of selfish enjoyment, where all characters can melt in the same spirit of social justice, where the selection of values is done without class clashes, where the spirit of hatred that one has tried to develop to better exploit its effects is irrevocably banished. The possibility... The right to fly for all... on the same level as the right to work, this must be the goal of Popular Aviation. But the will to act in this sense must not make us lose sight of the essential moral goal: to create an Air generation in which each young element is united to the other by a feeling of brotherhood, free from all influences of divergent opinions, and crystallizing its aspirations in a common action placed under the sign of the social "squadron spirit". This is what the French Social Party will do... Provenance: MERMOZ archives (Artcurial sale October 11, 2008, M111).
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