War with the Newts

by Karel Čapek

Captain van Toch's complexion began to break out in purple blotches. First he offered to murder all the Bataks in the world, then the offer went down to giving them all three hundred good kickings, and finally he agreed to content himself with stuffing the mayor and putting him on display in the colonial museum in Amsterdam; for their part, the Bataks went down from two hundred rupees to an iron pump with a wheel, and finally insisted on no more than that the captain give the mayor his petrol cigarette lighter as a token.

Jew-boy, Jew-boy, you go to Hell.

the oysters hold as fast to the rocks like a Jew holds to his faith and have to be cut away with a knife

"I think Gobernador, sir; but Mister Greggs thinks Pelham Beauty." Andy nodded his head. "Always buy English products. Snider's braces are the best. Do you have the new six-cylinder Tancred Junior yet? Fast, economic and elegant."

It takes an interest in the same subjects as the average Englishman and reacts to them in a similar way, ie. with fixed and generally accepted views. Its spiritual life - if it is possible to speak of such a thing - remains in conformity with the conceptions and opinions of our times.

In the exemplary Écoles Zimmermann the newts expressed themselves in the language of Corneille; not, of course, for any chauvinistic reason but because that is simply part of any good education;

As the poet puts it, 'Trust no-one in the whole wide world, we have no friends out there'.

the extreme left objected that the newts should be designated as enemies of the working class because they work too hard in the service of capitalism, work for almost nothing, and thus they endanger the working man's standard of living;

mainly because the newts themselves never asked for any civil rights from anyone.

"Do these vermin think they've got something to teach us?"

they should pursue all the educations known on the dry land with all their efforts, even including football, flirting, fascism and sexual perversions;

and the English prime-minister had, for the fourth time in the history of the world, interrupted his Saturday evening and hurried back to London, there were those who thought the incident must be of extremely serious international importance.

The German press took this Baltic newt as its own, and enthusiastically stressed that it was because of its German environment that this newt had developed into a different and superior sub-species, indisputably above the level of any other salamander.

It was only on German soil that newts could return to their pure and highest form, such as it had been found by the great Johannes Jakob Scheuchzer from the impression in the quarry at Öhningen.

anyone who failed to join in with the rise of salamandrism before it was too late felt bitterly that he had missed his time, and he would take his revenge by making calls for the purity of mankind, a return to the values of the people and nature and other reactionary slogans.

In this way we human beings are already comparable with the newts: we live more by night than by day.

in this way they have ignored all that makes man human, adopting only that which is purely practical, technical and utilisable.

What are we supposed to do; quite likely the world will collapse and disappear under water; but at least that will happen for political and economic reasons we can all understand, at least it will happen with the help of science technology and public opinion, with human ingenuity of all sorts! Not some cosmic catastrophe but just the same old reasons to do with the struggle for power and money and so on. There's nothing we can do about that.

Do you know who it is that's working feverishly in all the laboratories, trying to find even more effective machines and materials for sweeping the world out of existence? Do you know who it is who's lending the newts money, who it is who's financing the end of the world, this new Flood? "Yes, I know. All the factories. All the banks. All the countries in the world."