War with the Newts

by Karel Čapek

Čapek was no more illusioned than his compatriot about mankind’s capacity for folly and cruelty, but the darkness of his vision is tempered with a sardonic but humane wisdom and a lightness of touch.

In one sense, then, Čapek’s Newts and Robots are externalisations of the same symbolic form: work. Both War with the Newts and R.U.R. tap into the twentieth-century experience that new forms of technology, and new efficiencies in labour (particularly Fordism and the production line) simultaneously generated enormous new prosperity and created alarming new potentials for exploitation and destruction.

But the main portion of the novel, relating the discovery and spread of the Newts around the world, tropes this growth as war. Čapek’s point is that when two parties make actual war upon one another it is always the end-result of a lengthy, largely hidden process.

man who lives there – not counting, of course, those lousy Bataks

Voice

If anybody thinks that he can still find something that he can make money out of, then good luck to him, sir! For thirty years I’ve been around in these parts of the world, and now these fellers want me to discover something here!’

Foreshadow

‘These are just negro superstitions,’ explained the captain with the breezy superiority of an educated man. ‘Scientifically it’s pure nonsense. A devil can’t live in water, can he? What would he do there? You mustn’t believe the natives’ tales, my lad. Somebody called that bay Devil Bay, and ever since then the Bataks have been scared of it. That’s it,’

Dismissal of local Knowledge and perspectives

As is well known, the greater the man the less he has written on the plate on his door.

There was a shindy, I tell you; they said I kicked one of those brutes. Begorra, I did, and with a will, man; till I broke its back.

Mr Dingle spent those twelve francs on drink at Le Havre, and on top of that instead of going to Ireland he went to Jibuti: in fact the mass has not yet been said, and consequently no higher power has interfered with the natural course of events.

and whatever else she had been called before her seventeenth year

(Li oughtn’t to drink so many cocktails, then she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.) (For instance, today, this afternoon, she needn’t have done …) (I mean when she and Judy fell out about which of them had the nicest legs. Of course, Li has, I know that.) (And Fred needn’t have had that silly idea that we should compare them to see who had the nicest legs. That’s all right somewhere on Palm Beach, but not in private company. And the girls perhaps needn’t have lifted their skirts so high. But that wasn’t just legs only. At least, Li needn’t have done it. And just in front of Fred! And a rich girl like Judy needn’t have done it either.)

Two dead salamanders were left on the shore, and one with a broken spine which emitted a strange sound like ‘ogod, ogod, ogod.’

Obviously this is merely a matter of primitive legend and superstition based on nothing but the repulsive appearance and the erect, somewhat human gait of big but harmless salamanders.

There is no need to overrate its intelligence, for in no respect does it exceed the intelligence of an average man of the present time.

As one can see, fame demoralizes even the newts.

Now it was standing on its hind legs, and with its front paws it was leaning on the edge of the tub. The gills behind its head were twitching convulsively and the black snout gasped for breath. Its skin, which had rubbed raw, was too loose and studded with warts, and it had round frog-like eyes which at times were somehow painfully closed with its membraneous lower lids.

And besides, such a learned discussion isn’t suitable for the papers. As a consequence the article on the evolution and future of the newts was never published at

Sources opened up two or three years ago appear to some extent to be exhausted.

Up to that time it had been an inflexible rule that there should be no mention of the details of the methods by which the collection of the pearls was being carried out. He drew attention to it because it was on those grounds that an unobtrusive title was chosen for the Pacific Export Association.

He called attention, however, to the fact that the captain whose decease they all lamented had pampered those Newts too much.

There was no necessity to feed them so expensively. It might be possible to cut down expenses connected with the maintenance of the Newts very considerably and by that means increase the profits of their enterprise. (Loud applause.)

Curt von Frisch enquired if it would not be possible to employ the Newts in other and possibly more profitable directions than in fishing for pearls.

K. von Frisch enquired if the Newts were edible. J. Gilbert: ‘No. And their skin is not suitable for anything either.’

We know they can talk

regard it as a completed chapter in our concern; it had, I might say, its exotic charm, but it was not in accord with modern conditions. Gentlemen, pearls can never be the chief product of a huge, horizontal, and vertical trust.

‘Well, then, sir, please take a pencil and write down. Six million. Have you got that? Multiply it by fifty. That makes three hundred million. Multiply that again by fifty. That makes fifteen milliards, doesn’t it? And now, gentlemen, will you please tell me what we are to do in three years’ time with fifteen milliard Newts.

But fifteen milliard Newts, gentlemen, will completely overwhelm us. The Newts will eat up the Company. That’s it.’

he made the proposal in the name of a group of shareholders that the Newts should be sold as a working force to anyone who wished to carry out operations below water in the sea.

in fact, there had not yet been time to ascertain how long they live.

In all such cases it was a matter of collective action demanding hundreds and thousands of working units, and of undertakings so vast that modern technique would never venture upon them unless it had an extremely cheap labour force at its disposal.’ (‘That’s true. Hear, Hear!’)

Hubka raised the objection that by selling the Newts, which would eventually breed with their new owners, the Company will lose its monopoly. He suggested that working parties of the Newts should only be hired out to contractors carrying out works below the sea, that they should be well trained and qualified, but let out on the condition that any spawn arising would remain the property of the Association.

in fact the Newt farms, gentlemen, which we have been founding in the Pacific Islands are without legal status.’

in a manner that would not offend human feelings.

‘that the capture and transport of the Newts is only entrusted to a trained personnel under proper supervision. Of course we cannot say how contractors who will buy the Newts will treat them.’

Gentlemen, four-fifths of the world’s surface is covered by the sea; beyond question it is too much; the surface of the earth, the map of the seas, and of the continents must be amended.

Gentlemen, our Association is too small to be able single-handed to exploit milliards of Newts; we are not capable of it financially – or politically.

‘No, I can’t do that, Mr Weisberger. Do I know what a Newt is like? What good is that to me? Have I any time to worry about what things look like? I must be glad that we’ve got that Salamander Syndicate fixed up.’

Thus the sexual life of the worthy Andrias appears as if it were a Great Illusion; his erotical frenzy, his marriage and sexual tyranny, his temporary fidelity, his cumbersome and crude ardours are all in fact superfluous, obsolete, almost symbolical acts which accompany, or so to speak adorn, the proper impersonal male act which is the formation of the fertilizing sexual milieu.

Although an animal, Andrias Scheuchzeri is an inventor, and the time perhaps can be envisaged when in technical genius he will excel man himself, and that only in virtue of a natural fact that he has created a pure male solidarity.’

‘Lend me those scissors, Mummy. I ought to cut this out from the paper so that I shall have something left to remember me by.’

As is well known, all collectors are prepared to steal or murder if it is a question of getting another piece for their collection; but this does not lower their moral character in the least.

well, Nature is not and never has been as enterprising and systematic as human industry and commerce.

The purpose of these regulations, Sir Samuel declared, is to ensure the security of the British shores as well as the validity of the old laws and conventions with reference to the abolition of the slave trade. To the enquiry of another Member of Parliament, Mr B. Russell, Sir Samuel added that this decision does not, of course, apply to the Colonies and Dominions.

TRASH, or rubbish (prul, refuse), are inferior, weak, or physically defective Newts which are not sold singly nor in fixed numbers, but collectively by weight, usually in dozens of tons; at present a kilogram live weight costs seven to ten cents. As a matter of fact it’s not known what they are good for, and for what purpose they are bought – perhaps for some light kinds of jobs in the water; in case of misunderstanding, we must remind you that Salamanders are not fit for human consumption. This Trash is almost all bought up in job lots by Chinese commission agents; where they are shipped to has not been ascertained.

besides, the sensitiveness of the Salamanders to pain is poor.

There are people who take the abbreviation S-Trade (Salamander Trade) to stand for Slave-Trade. Well then, as unbiased observers we can say that if the old slave trade had been as well organized, and with regard to hygiene as irreproachably carried through, as the present trade with the Newts, we could only have congratulated the slaves.

Especially the more expensive Salamanders are really treated very decently and with understanding, if only because the wages of the captain and the crew of the boat depend on the well-being of the Newts entrusted to their charge.

I lost that game. It suddenly struck me that every move in chess was old and had already been played by someone. Perhaps our history has already been played too, and we shift our figures with the same moves to the same checks as in times long past. It is quite likely that just such a decent and reserved Bellamy once rounded up Negroes on the Ivory Coast, and shipped them off to Haiti or to Louisiana, letting them peg out in the steerage. He didn’t think anything wrong with it then, that Bellamy. Bellamy never things anything wrong. That’s why he’s incorrigible. “Black has lost,” said Bellamy with satisfaction, and got up to stretch himself.’

the most effective agent for the spread of the Newts was a gigantic wave of scientific idealism which at this time flooded the whole world.

then he described what Andrias does when his organ corresponding to the ear labyrinth is crushed. After this, Professor Rehmann explained in detail how Andrias reacts to electric stimulation.