UFOs in the daily Press:

Still They Could Be Real

Whether flying saucers are a reality or exist only as a figment of the imagination is a moot question that remains unanswered among the high up officials of this country, and now a British society of scientific minded persons comes to the front to cautiously poo-poo the flying saucer theory.

The British Interplanetary society, after great deliberation and study, has decided that people are much more likely to see a flying saucer if they keep up with the latest comic books.

Carefully avoiding any direct answer that would actually deny the existence of such things as flying saucers real as life, the British group took a firm grip on its reputation and concluded that it was not able to go along with the idea that flying saucers are the real McCoy, although they would "rather like to believe that space ships are already flying in the neighborhood of our earth, even if they were not our own."

For a conservative group of Britishers to make this much of an admission seems almost as unbelievable as flying saucers do to the people who have not yet experienced the strange thrill of seeing one.

The society opened its thinking to the rest of the world in its journal for this month, and said it prefers to retain an opened mind, tinged with skepticism, until one of its members spots a saucer. It was admitted, however, that some of its members have written in stating that the group should not be too hasty and that the society would do well to avoid be flippant about the matter for the time being and until there is more study in the possibility that there really are such things as saucers.

This interplanetary society is by no means a fly-by-night group of know-nothings who have no idea what they are talking about. It was founded in 1933 to promote the collection and spread of knowledge dealing with possible flights to other world and its members study everything from astronomy and rocket engine construction to the social, political and legal problems that may arise when adventurous people of this earth do make the trip to mars some day. Many of the most prominent British and foreign scientists are included in the group's membership.

One of the things that most bothers the society is the fact that the saucers appear to show no uniformity and that the reports collected so far describe the strange aircraft in a wide variety of sizes, shapes, colors, although most of them are extremely bright and appear to spit green fire.

The society is taking no chances of getting caught on a limb with no parachute on this flying saucer business, because it also notes that there is a possibility that some observers are enjoying a large practical joke at the expense of their fellow men. The members are told that a number of sightings of such saucers over the U.S. is at an all time high, although jet fighters vectored into the radar echoes have found nothing there, and it appears fairly certain that the phenomenon is the well known "radar-mirage."

Thus the British Interplanetary society with all the tact and diplomacy for which the people of that country have long been noted, say that the saucers probably don't exist, that they may be only a mirage, that a bunch of jokers maybe having lots of fun kidding their firends and the public in general by saying they saw something they didn't see, or finally that maybe saucers do exist and that if such things really don't exist, they wish they did.

We go along with the British theory, book, line, and sinker. We don't know whether saucers or [sic, are] real, or whether lots of people in this country are going around with spots before their eyes.

We do know that people who claim to have seen saucers have a thoroughly convincing story, and that they themselves are sold on the idea before they mention it loud. It takes a lot of nerves to sit down at breakfast or step by the next desk to tell about that flying saucer you saw last night - particularly if it was only a dream and you really didn't see anything after all. In fact that is what probably seems like, in view of the skepticism that greets each saucer theory.

But saucers are happening to so many people these days, it is getting to the point that you really have not lived, if you haven't seen one.

W.T.