In the Best of Humour

Otago Witness, Issue 4041, 25 August 1931, Page 5

In the Best of Humour

(Copyright.—For the Otago Witness.)

MORE MESSAGES FROM MARS.

By

STEPHEN LEACOCK.

For some little time back it has become only too evident that we are on the brink of getting into communication with the planet Mars. Everybody knows that Mars is a planet just like our own. It is only forty million—or forty billion—miles a wav.

During this very winter the most distinguished of British mathematical astronomers has assured the press that there is life on Mars; that the conditions are such that there cannot fail to be life there. And at the same time a London medical scientist, an expert in radio communication, has announced the receipt of actual messages from the planet. t

The announcement has been followed by similar news from other quarters, of messages partly radioactive, and partly telepathic, messages which of course were imperfect and at times undecipherable, but still, from their very content, undoubtedly messages. To those who have the will to believe and who have not hardened their understandings into scepticism, the thing is achieved. Communication has begun.

Messages have been coming across the gulf of forty million —or forty billion — miles of empty space. I confess that I, like many other people, have been following every development with the greatest interest, an interest that has amounted almost to abstraction.

But till just the other evening 1 should never have dreamed that it would be my individual good fortune to come in contact with an actual Martian, the first, so I am entitled to believe, who ever made his way to the surface of the globe. Where I met' him was at the dark end of a railway platform, in the night, at a lost railway junction, where trains meet and go on. He sat there alone, huddled up in the dark against an express truck. The very outline of him told me that there was something strange about him, and yet I didn’t know why. His figure was frail, but certain human; his clothes queerly cut, but yet not so very different from ours. No, there was nothing external, but merely something psychic, to tell me that he was a being different from the common terrestrial kind. He spoke. “Is there a train south?”-he said. His voice was the voice of a person framing the syllables to be understood. But the words were English and the sounds at least intelligible. At the sudden sound of his voice I had not been able to restrain a start for which I apologised. “ I beg your pardon,” I said, “ I am afraid you startled me; to tell the truth, I was lost in thought. I was thinking of the Martians.” “ Martians ? ” he said. “ That’s me. I am a Martian.”

“A Martian!” I exclaimed. “Great heaven, a Martian! From Mars? But how did you get here?”

“ I wish I knew,” he said. “ I’m from back there all right,” and he pointed his thumb over his shoulder to the south, to where the planet Mars glowed red just above the horizon. “ But as to how I got here, with all these trains and things, I’ve lost all track of it.”

“ Poor fellow,” I reflected, “ he doesn't understand.” I knew, of course, from what our leading scientists have told us that he had come to this earth by a process that will one day be as familiar as the passage of light and radioacting. He had been disembodied and sent over. I could have explained to him, in a rough and ready sort of way, that his atomic structure had been broken loose and sent across the gulf of empty space and then had reassembled itself on this planet. Five minutes ago, as I could have told him, he was in Mars. But it seemed cruel to mention it. Those who had sent him over could reassemble him again, and bring him back—full of territorial information.

Even at the present stage of our scientific development there is no mystery in this; nothing but the need of further elaboration of processes already known. I determined, while there was still time, to make full use of him.

“ There is no train south,” I said. “ for over half an hour. But tell me about the Martians.”

“ About the Martians,” he repeated. “ What about them ? ” “Yes,” I said, “about their life, how they live and what it feels like, and what they do and what they think aliout things.”

The Man from Mars seemed amazed and puzzled at the question. “What they do and what they think?” he repeated, “ why—much like any other people, I guess.” I realised that of course this extraordinary being, the denizen of another world, could have no idea that he was extraordinary. He took himself and his Martian world for granted.

I decided to approach things more gently. “ Have the Martians,” I asked, “ ever hoard of Mr Hoover ? ” “Of Mr Hoover!” he answered with surprise. “ Why, what do you take us for? Of course we have. We had the radio all before the elections and everything since.” I hadn’t realised that of course our terrestial radio messages had reached the planet Mars as easily, or almost as easily, as they encircle our little globe. I saw myself on the brink of wonderful information.

“ Wait a minute,” I said, “ till I get out a note book. Even in this imperfect light I can jot down what you tell me.

Now' then, what are the principal things that the Martians are discussing, or ‘7'«re discussing when you left ? ” “ Weil — prohibition ” he said. “ And What their feeling about it? ” “ Most o£ them it a good thing in the business Sense, bfli.a lot of them think it would be better stxS A wan could get a good drink when he xeaily needs it. As we see it in Mars,” hf? pronounced the name of his planet with a peculiar lisp, “ the real solution would be some way of having total prohibition with honest enforcement and good liquor.” I wrote it all down. What do they think about the women’s vote?” I asked.

“ Oh, we’ve accepted that long ago,” the Martian said. “ There’s no question of going back on their having the vote; the only trouble is that they seem to be using it too much.”

“Do the Martians,” I asked, “know anything about the question of the United States building a big navy?” “ Oh, sure.” he answered, “we all say that the United States needs a navy big enough to guarantee peace by licking all the European nations one after the other.” “ It is amazing,” I said, as I wrote his answers down, “ wdiat you Martians know about our big questions. What about the St. Lawrence waterways scheme? ”

“ We’re all for it,” answered the Martian. “We think it a good idea. It will help the Middle West.”

“ And what are they saying over there about Church Union in the United States?”

“We ourselves,” he replied, “ are about evenly divided among Methodists and Baptists and Presbyterians. But We think that union is coming. But I tell you,” he broke off with something like impatience, “ naturally, we don’t spend most of our time talking over things like that. We are more interested in our own local concerns, the things that interest ourselves ”

“Of course, of course,” I said. “ Tell me about those.”

“ Well, you see, just at this time of year there ar c the hockey matches every Saturday, and they draw a big crowd; and then there’s a good deal of excitement over the question of th e new post office, and this coming week we are to take a vote on having a new radial railway t'o Philadelphia ” “To where? ” I Exclaimed. “To Philadelphia. Why not? ” A feeling of uncertainty began to come over me. “ Excuse me,” I said, “ you are a Martian, are you not? ’ ’ “ Certainly,” he said, “ I am.” “From Mars?” “ Not Mars,” he corrected me. “ Marsh. It’s in Chester County, Pennsylvania; just a little place, but you seemed to have heard of it. Though how I got mixed up on these trains and got away up here is more than I can tell.” “And this information,” I said, “that you’ve been giving me is not from the Martians of the planet Mars, but from the Marshians of Marsh. Pennsylvania ? ” “ Sure,” he answered.

“Well, never mind,” I said, as I turned away, “ from all I’ve seen of the Martian communications from Mars up to now they are not any different from yours. That’s your train pulling in now. Good night.”