The 1954 French flap:

There was a very recent time when two people could not meet without talking about the endless rain that spoiled the whole season. The topical subject is otherwise interesting, since it is... you can probably imagine... saucers, cigars, mushrooms, wings and other abnormal craft which take their frolics in our skies of France. Very little elsewhere it seems.

But here, this is a bouquet! A small fireworks display, an uninterrupted carousel, and as soon as you have a newspaper in hand, it's to be interested in who has seen a flying cigar or a "Martian"...

***

Opinions are very divided on this. Some - such as my sympathetic neighborhood police inspector - admit this, to say the least, abnormal thing as scientifically impossible: he would like to see in order to believe. Many others are shaken by this avalanche of apparitions across the country.

I resolutely side with them. It is impossible that we do not witness tests of new machinery. Let's wait some more time to find out where they might come from, because we will one day know, what the hell! The Minister of Air will give us an explanation following the interpellation he is going to be the subject of these days, in the House.

***

Superstrong all the same those who designed these curious craft whose speed, I was told, would reach 13.000 kilometers per hour! This explains the concordance of the visionaries when they tell, like a well-learned cliché, that the craft suddenly moved in the air at very high speed... And we would like to know the rest of the information of a great illustrated weekly relating that one of these famous "saucers" would have been captured in Chicago, with inside, the small beings or robots who operate these weird machines, which, according to our colleague, do not have anything which recalls an engine. All this would work, it seems, thanks to the magnetic rays alone...

Strange really as much as strange, despite the "experiences" of a facetious Beuvry resident which our colleagues from Bethune attended, and wo appears below the practical truth. Thus, this brave baker from Loctudy (Finistère) said he saw a saucer three meters in diameter land at his side while he was drawing water from the well. A gnome got out of it, who came familiarly to meet him, tapped him on the shoulder, uttering incomprehensible sounds to our unhappy Breton. The baker returned to his bakery, where in the light, he noticed that his "visitor" had a hairy face and eyes the size of a crow's egg...

It was all told over the radio on Wednesday morning. Finally, the last visions of cigars, tops, discs, tails or flying wings are located in Tulle, in Paris (ah! Ah! ... the Parisians who took the people of the Nord for jokers when the guy from Quarouble announced his first encounter with the "Martians"...) in the Poitou, in Berck-Plage, in Marseille (but go believe these merry jokers...) in Concarneau, in Clermont-Ferrand (this saucer smelled of nitro-benzol), finally in Limoges, near Belfort, in the Somme, in Saint-Jean d'Engely [sic], in the Côtes-du-Nord, the Aude, Bergerac, in Nevers... Don't throw any more! But we must admit that never as much as recently, did we scrutinize the sky with so much interest. Were it not for the bad season, we would gladly spend the night on the balconies...

***

After what Robert Romain had seen three weeks ago in Maubeuge, other people from our region "saw"... For example, ask this taxi driver from Aulnoye who Sunday, around 8:30 p.m., with five people on board, saw on the road to Taisnières, a brilliant saucer, moving at high speed... His adventure was told to Police inspector Dusuel.

And what about our maubeugois merchant from the Rue de l'Hermitage, in Sous-le-Bois who, driving at high speed on the road to Valenciennes, on the Boiscrète side, was enveloped in a beam of light, the origin of which he cannot explain...

In Jeumont lastly, something abnormal happened in the sky, two night wanderers claimed.

***

All this does not fail to be very odd... As seemed fabulous, at the time, the shells fired on Paris - 120 kilometers away - by the Big Bertha... How it seemed incredible, thirty years ago, the development of radio... Even more chimerical that of Television. And yet!

***

Good advice, and your fortune will be made. If you ever see a "Martian", give him a go and lock him up in a fairground hut, but never let him take you away! That's the last word that my friend Leon gave me tonight.

Jean MABUSE