The article below was published in the newspaper The Statesman Journal, Salem, Oregon, USA, on page 4, on July 20, 1947.
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Kenneth Arnold of Boise is a much happier man, now that wide-spread confirmation has followed his startling story of seeing saucers flying through the air, and he's now carrying a camera in his airplane hoping for a picture to "shove down the throths of those stiff-necked doubters" who gave him a bad time. As far as Arnold is concerned, he doesn't share the alarm felt in many quarters because he feels the army could give the answer if it would.
His latter view is not shared, however, by Dr. J. L. Merono, widely-known New York psychiatrist. The New Yorker does not doubt that many witnesses have seen what they described. But he contends that strange things have been noted in the air off and on, for centuries and tzhat the present-day difference lies in the public belief that such signs portend some new dreadfulness. In fact, he says present developments are not unlike those wich produced belief in witches, pixies, devils, giant and cultism in years past, and that the "flying saucers, when viewed with similar phobias of the post-war period, prognosticate a crop of similar disturbances to come."
There are almost as many explanations of the phenomena as there are people discussing them, and at least one explanation may be right. Then again, there is much about the universe yet inexplicable to man. Barring proof of something or other, we can hardly afford to yield to a fear such as clutches a wide-eyed small boy who lies on his back looking at the stars and cries out with the sudden realization that the world is a vast mystery.
To: Kenneth Arnold or Newspapers 1940-1949.
