UFOs in the Press:

Joe Slugg, From Mars

A difficulty about flying saucers is that they have not been sufficiently down to earth. Now, however, there are signs that the Space King - or the ruling committe on the Soviet post-Stalin model - has given the order for "close contact" work to supersede the reconnoitring of our planet from high altitudes.

In other words, we can expecct the "Meet you under the post-office clock" sort of thing - that's if the post office has a clock. Anyway, two French motor cyclists found a flying saucer parked in the middle of a road near Toulon the other night, and had a short conversation with the captain before he re-enetered the machine through a triangular opening, took off vertically, and left an orange glow in his wake as he disappeared at great speed.

At first sight it may seem odd that the police denied that he was a Martian, did not know where he was, and spoke French instead of saying "Let's get to hell out of here." Was this machine really a "circular object," or merely the local concrete mixer with the village baker, upliflet by thoughts of Paris and the Folies Bergeres, was using as a flying bedstead? Inbelievers qould have us believe that only men in their cups could see a saucer.

It would not need a Royal commission to establish the probability that an intelligence agent from another planet would deny his true identitiy on his first visit. When Colonel Lindbergh landed after his famous flight across the Atlantic 27 years ago he said to the cheering crowd: "I am Charles Lindbergh, from Michigan." In these less friendly times we must not expect a man n a flying saucer to say: "I am Joe Slugg, from Mars." As for speaking French, what intelligent visitor from another world, wanting to get a quick, precise idea of this one, would equip himself with any other language? If those qho constantly ridicule the flying saucer ever find one on their front lawn they will have got what was coming to them.