The article below was published in the daily newspaper Libération, Paris, France, pages 1 et 5, le 15 octobre 1954.
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Two loose pages from a brochure of the Prince of the Loch, discarded by Vietnamese campers, were mistaken for interstellar messages
CONTRARY to what some colleagues print, the file on "flying saucers" is not open in France because, for the moment, it would contain nothing but hot air. What is wide open, however, is the malfunctioning tap of those same colleagues and of the press agency that continues to feed us the most fanciful reports, mixed with clarifications and denials, indiscriminately, in bulk, as if they were road accidents and "incidents."
Among this uncontrolled flood, from which we have now decided to spare you, let us nevertheless gather, for the edification of our readers, these little pearls of imagination from some of our contemporaries.
On a vacant lot in Toulouse, three witnesses—including a teenager—saw, on October 13 at 7:33 p.m., a small diver-like figure, with a head large in proportion to its body, descend from a spherical craft and
Jacques DEROGY.
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reddish. The diver-like figure shone like glass and rolled two enormous eyes. This is a classic portrait from so-called science fiction literature. But this time the green ray was missing.
Better still, in Montluçon, an SNCF employee, while crossing the tracks near the Gers bridge, encountered a 4-meter-long torpedo resting near a diesel fuel tank intended for railcars. Nearby stood a terribly hairy being.
"What are you doing there?" the railway worker reportedly asked, intrigued.
- "Diesel," replied the unknown, who was no doubt refueling his craft, since a few minutes later the vision vanished vertically without leaving any trace.
But as for traces, there are always "witnesses" ready to provide them. Witnesses such as the hunters of Saint-Ambroix (Gard), who, having seen seven tiny beings rush into a phosphorescent craft, discovered at the spot seeds of a strange appearance which no seed merchant in the region—emphasizes the report—was able to classify within any known species.
The best story of the day is nevertheless this one from Haute-Garonne, where a mechanic from Léguevin, Jean Marty, 42, claimed yesterday morning to have seen, during the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, a luminous disc 7 meters in diameter and 2.5 meters high land in the middle of a field.
When the "witness" tried to approach, the disc rose into the air, silently, vertically, and at a dizzying speed. On the grass, at the spot from which the craft had taken off, Mr. Marty picked up two glossy sheets of paper, covered with printed characters, neither soiled, nor crumpled, nor damp, as if they had just been placed there. A former Indochina serviceman living in the region was able to decipher the text written in "quốc-ngữ," the Romanized script of the Vietnamese language, dealing with matters concerning Vietnam and the Viet Minh! From there to confusing the flying saucer file with that of "leaks" was only a step, one which a quick investigation prevented certain overactive imaginations from taking. Investigations immediately undertaken by air safety authorities revealed that they were in fact two pages torn from a brochure published by the services of Prince Buu Loc (representative of Bao Dai in France and cousin of the "emperor") and left at Léguevin by Vietnamese who had come to picnic... They dealt with ship arrivals in Indochinese ports and fish deliveries...
Thus do the finest bubbles burst. It is enough to investigate. In the same way, the military authorities of Metz, who had opened an inquiry into the "mysterious" luminous circle caught Sunday evening in a searchlight beam, concluded that there was no need to take the published reports on the matter into consideration.
But military authorities should not be the only ones authorized to investigate the observations reported here and there. If we truly want to address the problem of the phenomena observed in our skies these days, we must put an end to this avalanche of hoaxes, rumors, and more or less fanciful tales, either by questioning the alleged witnesses, or, when their good faith is not in doubt, by investigating and informing the public about events that are often at the origin of serious observations.
Thus, a clarification was made yesterday by a resident of Croth-Sorel, Mrs. Omonts, regarding the "saucer" reported Saturday around 6:30 p.m. over the Saint-André region.
- The object was nothing more than an ordinary balloon, bearing a design painted in red at its top, and a gondola held by ropes.
We would no doubt also have been informed of a strange phenomenon in the Savoy sky, observed this morning in Modane, in Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne, in Aiguebelle where buses and cars stopped, in Chambéry and in Grenoble, where it was simultaneously attributed the shape of a flying serum bottle, if a radio amateur from Besançon, Mr. Brunet, had not at 1:30 p.m. picked up the following message:
University of Padua, in Milan (Italy), has launched balloon for nuclear research. Due to radar failure [!], craft has crossed the border heading toward Grenoble or probably at 5 p.m. GMT. Warn population as balloon may be dangerous [!] upon landing or afterward."
Toward the end of the evening, the prefecture of Isère received elsewhere two telegrams from Milan and Paris requesting "assistance for recovery of balloon carrying scientific equipment for the study of cosmic rays"... The parachute had been recovered in Briançon at 5:30 p.m., and the balloon envelope around 10 p.m. at the outskirts of Grenoble.
These examples show the possibilities of honest reporting. It does not consist of opening a "file" full of press clippings, excerpts from science fiction, and unchecked dispatches from agencies or correspondents. Still, such an "archive file" would have to be complete. It is rather amusing to read in the "file" opened four days ago by "France-Soir" that "the physicist George Adamski, who takes it for granted that the passengers of the saucers come from another planet, Mars or Venus, adds the decisive detail that the "Navy" is preparing brigades of specialists whose mission will be to welcome visitors from another world." Our colleague "Paris-Presse" had, in fact, ten days earlier, let the cat out of the bag—and others before him: "Finally, a certain George Adamski, a cabaret owner in California, made a fortune by describing the splendid blond youths from Venus who came in lampshade-shaped saucers and with whom he had the advantage of conversing at length."
Information has a positive role to play by submitting to specialists the plausible, precise, complete, and consistent accounts of good-faith witnesses, such as the observations reported yesterday by five residents of Toulon and by inhabitants of Le Luc, Cavalaire, and Saint-Jean-du-Var, who saw between 6:10 p.m. and 6:15 p.m. a fireball coming rapidly from the sea and disappearing behind the Cannet des Maures, leaving phosphorescent traces around it.
