The article below was published in the daily newspaper Combat, Paris, France, page 1, on October 9, 1954.
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Alone or in groups, saucers and cigars fly. We hear it from all sides.
It's hard to imagine that from Brittany to Provence, from Kansas City to Stockholm, there could be so many hallucinated people on this Earth. Since the notion of "normal" is tied to that of the majority, we'll soon have to accept that only the abnormal—or at least the backward—see nothing but blue in the sky.
The saucers, and in any case those who see them fly, take off or land—without mentioning the more gifted visionaries who have even seen the pilots—are starting to pose a problem. They've already caught the attention of Mr. Jean Nocher, a parliamentarian not indifferent to such matters.
Mr. Jean Nocher has therefore asked the government to clarify its position on this undeniably national phenomenon.
We do not yet know how the “concerned minister” will respond to a parliamentarian legitimately worried about the mental health of voters. One almost wishes the Minister of Public Health would step up and take responsibility.
Saucers, soon outdated, and ultra-modern cigars have sparked various hypotheses. The more serious ones are not the least amusing.
So let's not fear ridicule and propose an additional hypothesis:
If the sky has never granted you a supernatural vision—if you have never, through a saucer or a cigar, caught the slightest glimpse of the beyond (which, nowadays, means the planet Mars)—if, in a word, you are a “nonbeliever,” then why not consider that mankind simply needs miracles?
Let's admit, whether true or false, that the miracles of the past carried more symbolism and were, undeniably, more poetic.
Elves and goblins used to dance by moonlight on the Breton moors, where today lands a big stupid cigar watched, dumbfounded and stupefied—but confident—by one of those “pragmatic” men who no longer believe in fairies or “old wives' tales.” We've forgotten how to believe in those. But he believes in his cigar. He hasn't seen Mélusine, but he's seen a Martian. He saw it. He tells you so. He's not crazy. He holds a certificate of primary studies (or a high school diploma, or a university degree).
He is a man of a rationalist century where education is mandatory, where, thanks to the blessings of science, we laugh at werewolves and the poor Loch Ness monster. And yet, since Nietzsche proclaimed that “God is dead,” man has created, here and there, other idols. And although we are now exploring, industrializing, and simplifying the universe, the need for mystery remains—more or less repressed, more or less latent. Only, the miracles we record these days (and which are promptly logged, of course, in statistics) are rather dull miracles. The spectacle revealed to the new “chosen ones” is disappointing.
What symbols do they discern? What emotional qualities do they feel?
These saucers and cigars that seem to have come out of (or perhaps did come out of) science fiction magazines don't move us. They are supernatural visions experienced by prosaic people, some of whom claim to be nonbelievers, but who are all nonetheless credulous. These are the sad miracles of a faithless century.
That is what one thought one could believe about flying saucers and those who see them. But this hypothesis has just suffered the most devastating contradiction. It collapses. We have learned that a Dominican priest has seen a saucer flying through a sky that, for him at least, is not hopelessly empty!
Eugène MANNONI
