War with the Newts

by Karel Čapek

Excuse me, I really don’t know what he described; for at that moment I began to rack my brains to think what disturbances might perhaps appear in Professor Devrient if I had removed his right cerebral lobe; how the smiling Dr Okagawa would react if I irritated him with electricity, and how Professor Rehmann would behave if somebody crushed the labyrinth in his ear.

People simply regarded the Newts as something commonplace, like counting machines or other gadgets; no longer did they see in them something mysterious that had emerged from unknown depths, God knows why, and for what. Besides, people never regard what serves them and what is good for them as in any way mysterious, but only what does them harm or threatens them; and because the Newts as it appeared were creatures highly useful in many diverse ways, they were simply accepted as something that belongs as a matter of course to the national and current order of things.

With deep regret we had to put Hans to death, because my experiments on trepanning him made him blind. His meat was dark and spongy, but did not cause any unpleasant effects. It is clear that in case of war Newt flesh could form a welcome and cheap substitute for beef.

‘If civilization is to continue, it must be civilization for everybody. We can’t enjoy in peace the fruits of our civilization or of our culture as long as we are surrounded by millions and millions of unhappy and lowly creatures kept down by force in the animal state.

There, courses, chiefly in music, cookery, and fine needlework (on which Mme Zimmermann insisted chiefly for pedagogical reasons), met with a striking lack of response, if not with an obstinate lack of interest on the part of the youthful Newt lycéennes.

For a number of years it never even occurred to anyone that the Newt problem might have a far-reaching international significance, and that perhaps it would be necessary to deal with the Salamanders, not only as intelligent beings, but as a Newt community or Newt nation.

what else is civilization but the ability to make use of things that somebody else has invented?

‘And France is making her shores bigger at Calais. Now the papers are kicking up a shindy that France will be able to shoot right across the Channel when it gets narrower. That’s what comes of it. They could make their own shores bigger at Dover, and shoot at France.’

But we shall be neutral. After all, somebody has to be neutral to supply arms and things like that to the others.

‘As soon as those brutes begin to defend themselves it will be a bad look-out. This is the first time that they’ve done it … My Gosh, I don’t like the look of it.’

‘I don’t know, but … perhaps, after all, I oughtn’t to have let that captain in to Mr Bondy!’

They drowned them in the water like kittens, and when any of them tried to swim they gave him a whack with a crowbar. I only realized then that my leg was put out, and that I couldn’t go any further.’

Conpare with Bellamy section

‘In this respect Captain James Lindley behaved as is to be expected of a British officer.’)

It was a warning to the Newts. It was not in vain: no other case (it used to be called the Keeling killing) ever happened again, and the regular and illicit trade in the Newts was able to continue and flourish undisturbed and prosperous.

‘The Government accept full responsibility for having armed the Newts on the French coast with guns, water machine-guns, submarine batteries, and torpedoes. But while the French Newts have only light guns of small calibre, the German Salamanders are armed with submarine mortars with a 32-bore; while on an average along the French coast there is only one submarine depot of hand grenades, torpedoes, and explosives to every twenty-four kilometres, on the Italian shores the deep-water depots of war material occur every twenty, and in German waters every eighteen kilometres. France cannot and she will not leave her coasts unprotected. France cannot forgo the practice of arming her Newts.

After that the German Press began to take an eager interest in the Baltic Newt. Special stress was laid on the fact that it was just in response to the German milieu that this Newt had developed into a divergent and higher racial type, indisputably superior to all the other Salamanders.

‘Let us not be misled by feverish enterprising zeal and technical progress; these are only a hectic flush on the cheeks of an organism already marked down for death. Never before has man experienced such opportunities in life as he does today: but show me one man who is happy; one class which is contented, or a nation that does not feel threatened in its very existence. Surrounded by all the gifts of civilization, in the Croesian wealth of spiritual and material goods we all are more and more stricken by the persistent sense of uncertainty, distress, and discomfort.’

Except for insignificant deviations the Newts present themselves as a single, huge, and homogeneous unity; they have not yet developed sharply differentiated races, languages, nations, states, faiths, classes, or casts; among them there are no masters and slaves, free and not free, rich and poor; no doubt differences exist among them which have been imposed by the division of labour, but in itself it is a uniform, compact, and so to speak consistent mass, in all its parts equally primitive, in a biological sense equally poorly equipped by nature, equally subjugated, and existing on an equally low level of life.

Therefore they may one day – yes, any day in the future – achieve without effort that which man has not accomplished: their racial unity throughout the whole world, a world community, in a word universal Salamandrism!

and many millions of copies also spread among the Newts.

In many respects it would then be possible to improve their lot if only they would ask for it, then we might grant them some concessions, and bind them by compensating agreements; at least we should gain a couple of years. But the Newts demand nothing; they only increase their output and their requisitions; today at last we must really ask where for both of us it is going to end. We used to speak once of the yellow, black, or red peril; but those at least were men, and with men we can form a pretty clear opinion of what they

On the other hand, the business columns of the newspapers rightly pointed out that it would be impossible to restrict the supplies to the Newts because that would initiate a great slump in production and a serious crisis in many branches of human industry. Also agriculture to a large extent was dependent on the huge demand for maize, potatoes, and other farm products for Newt fodder; if the number of Salamanders was reduced, a big fall in the prices of edible commodities would follow through which the farming people would find themselves on the brink of ruin.

Climate

‘You needed us. You have spread us about all over the world. Now you have us. We want to be on good terms with you. You will supply us with steel for our drills and pickaxes. You will supply us with explosives. You will work for us.

It took place at Vaduz, because there was no danger from the Newts in the High Alps, and because the majority of the wealthy and socially important people had already withdrawn there from the littoral countries.

‘Don’t be so silly, Frantik! That was in Guatemala, and not here. The conditions are different here, aren’t they?’

Everyone did it. The different countries did it, finance did it. They all wanted to make the most out of those Newts. They all wanted to make money out of them. We used to send them arms, and what not. We are all responsible for it.’

The earth will probably sink and drown; but at least it will be the result of generally acknowledged political and economic ideas, at least it will be accomplished with the help of the science, industry, and public opinion, with the application of all human ingenuity! No cosmic catastrophe, nothing but state, official, economic, and other causes. Nothing can be done to prevent it.’

They will simply work in factories like they do now. They will only have different masters. In the very end perhaps there won’t be even so much change.’

Must Nature always be asked to straighten out the mess that man has made? And so, even you don’t believe now that they could help themselves? So you see, you see; at the end you would again like to rely on someone or something to save you!

‘So you see. If only the Newts were fighting-men, then perhaps something might be done; but men against men – that, my friend, can’t be stopped.’

(‘… Listen, is he really a Newt?’) (‘… No. Chief Salamander is a man. His real name is Andreas Schultze, and during the World War he was a sergeant-major somewhere.’) (‘That’s why!’) (‘Well, yes. So now you’ve got it.)

‘Or in other words they are becoming nations.’