The article below was published in the daily newspaper L'Aurore, Paris, France, pages 1 and 9, on September 15, 1954.
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If it seems legitimate for the press to seek exclusive news, it would be proper, in the interest of the profession's good reputation, not to use methods that make journalists appear as unserious as they are moderately educated.
Thus, one could read yesterday - with sketches to support it - on the front page of several major dailies, lengthy reports about the friendly visit of “Martians, stocky and with big heads,” who supposedly honored some inhabitants of northern France and a farmer from Corrèze, whom, in their courtesy, they even went so far as to kiss on the forehead. All this was told in great detail, with the utmost seriousness, even though one of the newspapers in question briefly mentioned in passing that the main witness to the big-headed Martians' intrusion among the “ch'timis,” a year ago,
Robert CUSIN
- Continued on page 7 (4th col.)
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Continued from the front page
"was the victim of a cranial trauma"...
There is no need to specify that not a single reader of this incredible nonsense could have, for a second, found any of it plausible. Because, truth be told, it hardly is.
But there is worse still. The Air Police went to investigate in Quarouble (Nord) following the statements of the witness with the cranial trauma...
They carried out lengthy investigations, analyzed the stones supposedly burned by the passage of the saucer piloted by the big-headed Martians (why, by the way, Martians, and not Venusians or Saturnians?), and measured TO THE CENTIMETER the traces of the crutches supposedly supporting, according to the narrator, the interstellar craft!...
It's enough to make one think they're delirious. Does the ministry overseeing the Air Police really authorize its officers to amuse themselves by measuring, with a folding ruler, the imprints of a saucer's crutches? If so, that's quite unfortunate. Then at least give the agents the proper technical training: oblige them, for example, to read *The War of the Worlds* by the late charming dreamer Wells, and to watch the extravagant film that Hollywood made from this novel, from which the cranial-trauma witness of Quarouble has quite obviously taken most of the elements of his entertaining vision.
For alas! The most competent scientists-astronomers, physicists, biologists-laugh heartily whenever they hear talk of flying buses and visits from inhabitants of neighboring planets, because, first of all, despite the extraordinary means of modern scientific investigation, we have never even found the slightest trace of animal or plant life on other planets. We have published their opinion-slightly disdainful-many times. But if illiteracy is everywhere quite resilient, it is in no case the duty of a journalist or a policeman to contribute to making people believe there could be anything true in these crutch-bearing Martians and these Martians who kiss foreheads.
That said, without mentioning the still-mysterious atmospheric electrical phenomena that could be mistaken for unknown aerial craft, do TERRESTRIAL flying saucers exist? That is another matter.
Aeronautical technology is constantly evolving. Thus the English have just revealed that they were experimenting with a WINGLESS jet plane, which might be the closest thing to a flying saucer. And it is certain that all over the world, design offices are working to launch ever more extraordinary aircraft into the skies. It is therefore not impossible that some of these fantastic prototypes, spotted during testing, may pass for what the common man calls a “flying saucer.”
But affectionate Martians, with big heads, on crutches, and with green rays? No, thank you! Let's hear no more about them. And let the representatives of law enforcement not waste their time chasing them. If indeed these are Martians, they are surely far more clever and better equipped than the Air Police.
