UFOs in the daily Press:

THE CHRONICLE

Astromaniacs

I would never have been interested in flying saucers if they had not, in recent days, come very close to my belfry.

A fortnight ago, they were in Mantes-la-Jolie. This week, they descend near Valenciennes and its macrocephalus occupants come to disturb the rest of a good man and make his dog howl at the moon.

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Of course!

We can very well admit that the possible inhabitants of a distant planet, possessing the secret of the atom for some centuries, allow themselves to send tourists to visit our miserable regions.

The Baudart saucers and the Eugène Poullet saucers are unleashed!

But that they come, these tourists, ny night, to visit the black country, seems to me to be of the most certain masochism.

There are so many beautiful countries... the French Riviera, the Balearic Islands, the enchanted islands of the Pacific, the Orient, Greece, the Antilles, etc...

And then that a machine delicately lands on the rails of the S.N.C.F., in spite of all the regulations, leaves me dreaming. This presupposes both knowledge of timetables, not only of passenger trains, but also that of freight trains.

And that's pretty dumpy!

Finally, this railway landing requires exact knowledge of the gauge of our railways.

So, no way for the Valenciennes astronauts, to go and land in the U.R.S.S.

They came deliberately to the Atlantic country, of course, and to Western Europe!

They must therefore also have known our political divisions, which must represent a real Martian puzzle for a resident of the Milky Way.

You may think, reading these lines, that I am skeptical, if not about the good faith of the witnesses, at least about the reality of the things they claim to see?

Not at all!

I believe it!

I believe in it like uranium!

Because the curiosity and interest that I will not fail to bring to the saucers will prevent me from realizing that, less far than the moon, there are many things that are not going well round.