Transport: Kiwi

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As airman, journalist and British subject, Charles Grey ("Center of Gravity") Grey is a bird rare as the wingless kiwi. Editor since 1911 of Britain's well-informed trade weekly The Aeroplane, he seldom stuck his balding head inside one, when he did, prayed it would "land slowly and not burn up." In a publication ostensibly technical, aerophobic Editor Grey devoted whopping columns to his pet political peeves and peevish political pets. He was shrilly pro-Nazi, anti-French, abominated U. S.-made planes, roundly clapperclawed the British Air Ministry for buying them. A colorful penman with spectacular contempt for fact ("What's the good of that when you can invent your facts as you go along?"), führious Editor Grey perennially brewed bumpy weather in European air politics.

Particularly galling to patriotic homebodies were his frequent junkets into darkest Nazi Germany, whence he would return to his sanctum at No. 175 Piccadilly to decant fresh magnums of purple ink in praise of totalitarianism. In The Aeroplane for July 5 he finally rared back and delivered this sockdolager: "Even the misguided English Foreign Policy which tried to make an enemy of Italy over the Abyssinian business, instead of adopting Sir Samuel Hoare's sensible scheme for splitting Abyssinia between Italy, France and ourselves, has failed to destroy Italian friendliness. But then, naturally, the Italian people do not read English newspapers, whereby they are spared much."

Fortnight after the issue hit London newsstands, 63-year-old Charles Grey Grey announced his resignation (effective some months hence). His sole comment: "Only the directors of Temple Press Ltd. [his publishers], not even C. G. Grey, know why I'm resigning." But British airmen only marveled that the divorce had not occurred sooner.

Lame, lank, atrabilious Charles Grey Grey is a 32nd generation Northumberlander. He studied engineering at London's Crystal Palace School of Engineering. Never more than a competent draftsman, he took to peddling bicycles, then advertising for a motoring journal, The Autocar. The Autocar's, editors presently discovered in Grey a clever pen, converted him into a reporter, in 1908 gave him his first big assignment: a Paris air show. When Cub Grey pointed out that he spoke no French his editor tut-tutted: "At least you won't be misled by French eloquence." Nor was he ever. In 1936, still immune, he nearly caused a diplomatic breach between England and France by contemning France's role in the London Locarno Conference. Excerpt: "The position of France is as usual that of a bad-tempered vixen of a woman who up to a point has discovered that merely by making herself unpleasant she can get poor male things to do anything she wants."

Grey's spunkiness delighted rich Jewish Banker Ellice Victor (later Sir Victor) Sassoon, inveterate flying bug, who agreed to back him in a new aviation magazine. In June 1911, Editor Grey brought out the first issue of The Aeroplane. Through several changes of management, many a near-fatal slump, he held the editorial chair. Lately, under the aegis of Temple Press, the magazine boomed.