This article was published in the daily newspaper Le Provençal, France, page 8, on March 26, 1950.
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It is known that Marseilles-Radio the raised the question of the "flying saucers" during its Provence-Magazine. The host [Jimmy Guieu] did not speak in the desert: many letters already arrived at the information service of this station.
Right now, we do not have anything any more to envy the nightbirds of the USA.
In Meyrargues, a resident of this community clearly saw getting immobilized in the twilight sky - and this, during a good minute - an incandescent mass, of an apparent volume much larger than that of the usual meteors.
At the same hour, Venelles also observed the phenomenon.
Un Marseillais, Mr. L. Orbello, accompanied by two friends, and coming out of the movie theater, suprized the slow walk of a fluorescent fireball which he could see disappearing at the horizon, in the direction of Aubagne!
These various testimonys - for fallible which they are - strangely corroborate the more precise observations of the American pilots.
Is the flying saucer a celestial "Loch Ness monster", does it betray the war tests of a terrestrial power, or should they been seen as precursory signs of a planetary invasion?
Let us recall here only for memory, the crushing on the ground of captain Thomas Mantell in Kentucky, a few seconds after he approached a craft of approximately 100 meters in diameter.
A little later, Clarence B. Chiles and his copilot John Witter [Whitted] reported to have been buzzed by a monstrous luminous cigar which was to disappear quasi instantaneously!
But the top of sensational information still remains with journalist Perry Hars who clams to have attended the capture of a true Martian in Missouri!
In this very newspaper, finally, for a few weeks, we have published the most recent encounters of "flying saucers".
Will Meyrargues, Venelles and Marseilles be registered in the future, among the elected cities whose glance detected the passage of the fabulous machines?
Chi lo sa... ? [Who knows?]
* * *
"Provençal-Dimanche" however, believed useful to consult - semi-serious, semi-jokingly - some scientific personalities initially, artisic then, and of which we will conceal the names not to engage their responsibility.
An astronomer whose work does not leave any place to imagination, simply declared us:
"As long as one of these fast objects is not recovered, intact or not, on the ground, the existence of the flying saucers will remain as debatable as their origin.
"The cinematographic trickeries have sufficiently excited the imagination of the Earthmen which follow them on the big screen so that they lend to any shooting star all the characteristics of a interplanetary nave.
"Let's just note - the death of Mantell put aside, and that cannot be formally charged to the craft that he chased
[Missing part]
and does the sky send these... porcelain tomatos to us!"
"At the restaurant, the saucer always announces the bill. We did so many fooih things that maybe paytime is not distant!"
Un céramiste d'Aix-en-Provence s'est contenté de soupirer:
"Si seulement je savais où et à qui adresser mon catalogue!"
Dreaming in front of so much different opinions, I doodled on the tablecloth a kind of wafer in rotation when my girlfriend, carrying er hand in her hair and thinking of her modiste, began to dream aloud:
"As a hat, my God, with a halation of feathers, it would be very becoming for the winter..."
* * *
At the next table, my colleague T..., would-be poet, was already improvising:
What domestic quarrel
Brings us this golden saucer?
Does an Olympic dissension
replicate ours?
What to make of such a glare?
Mars, in love with the Earth,
is she by this trying to make out
with it in its own way?
At the coffee shop I tell it flatly:
So many saucers don't make me dream
so much than fear the waitress
Who rings me the bill!
Laurent VILLARS.
