The Columbia Broadcasting System and its affiliated station,

present Orton Welles and the Mercury Theater on the air,

in the War of the World, by H. G. Welles.

Ladies and gentlemen, the director of the Mercury Theater and star of these broadcasts,

Orton Welles.

We know now that in the early years of the 20th century,

this world was being watched closely by intelligences greater than man's,

and yet as mortal as its own.

We know now that as human beings vivid themselves about their various concerns,

they were scrutinized and studied.

Perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures,

but swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

With infinite complacence, people went too unfro of the earth about their little affairs,

serene in the assurance of their dominion over this small spinning fragment of solar driftwood,

which by chance or design, man is inherited out of the dark mystery of time and space.

Yet across an immense ethereal gulf, minds that are to our minds as ours,

that are to the beasts in the jungle, intellects, vast, cool and unsympathetic,

regarded this earth with envious eyes and slowly and surely through their plans against us.

In the 39th year, the 20th century came the Great Disillusionment.

Near the end of October, business was better.

The war scare was over.

More men were back at work.

...