KESSEL (Joseph). Men of the air. Circa 1950. Autograph manuscript signed, 3 ff. in-8, 13.5 x 21 cm handwritten on the front in blue ink. Draft article with erasures and additions. Very fine article praising a new race, "the men of the air": pilots, navigators and radios, "crews of peace who have replaced those of war". "If there is a vast people who know no frontiers, who are not separated by differences of language or size, whose members hold each other in loyal and virile esteem, who are ready to help each other at the risk of their lives, it is this young, magnificent and ever-moving people of the air". We know how central aviation is to the work of Kessel, who made it the main subject of his first novel, "L'Équipage".