THE WAR WITH THE NEWTS
Karel Čapek
BOOK THREE
THE WAR WITH THE NEWTS
1 - MASSACRE ON
THE COCONUT ISLES
In one thing, Mr. Povondra was
mistaken: the shots exchanged at Kankesanturai were not the first conflict
between people and newts. The first
known skirmish had taken place some years before on the Coconut Isles in the
golden age of pirate raids on the salamanders; but even that was not the oldest
incident of this sort and in the ports of the Pacific Ocean there was much talk
about certain regrettable cases when newts had offered any kind of resistance,
sometimes even to the normal S-Trade; although petty incidents such as these
are not written about in the history books.
On the Coconut Isles, or Keeling
Isles, this is what happened: The Montrose, a raiding ship operated by
Harriman's Pacific Trade Company and under the captaincy of James Lindley,
sailed in for one of its usual newt gathering expeditions of the sort known as
a Macaroni Run. The Coconut Isles were
well known for a bay with a large newt population settled there by Captain van
Toch himself but which, because of its remoteness, was left, as they say, to
its own devices. No-one could accuse
Captain Lindley of any lack of care and attention, not even in that the men who
went on shore were not armed. (At that
time the trade in hunting newts had already taken on a standard form; it is
true, of course, that the pirate ships had earlier used to equip themselves
with machine guns and even light cannons, although they were not intended for
use against the newts but against unfair competition from other pirates. One day however, off the island of Karakelong,
one of Harrimans steamers came up against a Danish ship whose captain
considered the hunting grounds of Karakelong as his territory; so the two sides
settled some old accounts to do with their prestige and some trading disputes
by leaving the newts alone and starting to fire at each other with their rifles
and Hotchkiss guns; on land, victory went to the Danes after their successful
knife attack but the Harriman ship then had its success by firing its cannons
at the Danish ship and sinking it with all hands, including Captain
Nielsen. This became known as the
Karakelong Incident. So then governments
and officials of the relevant countries had to become involved; pirate ships
were from then on forbidden to use cannons, machine guns or hand grenades; the
companies involved also allocated what they called the free hunting ground
among themselves so that any one newt settlement would only ever be visited by
a certain raiding ship; this gentleman's agreement among the great pirates was
adhered to and respected even by the smallest raiding businesses.) But to return to Captain Lindley, he
conducted himself entirely in accordance with commercial and marine practices
of the time when he sent his men out to gather newts armed only with sticks and
oars, and the later official enquiry gave the dead captain full satisfaction in
that respect.
The men who went down to the Coconut
Isles that moonlit night were under the command of Lieutenant Eddie McCarth,
who was already experienced in this sort of newt-gathering expedition. It is true that the herd of newts they found
on the shore was exceptionally large, estimated at between six and seven
hundred strong and fully grown males, whereas Lieutenant McCarth had only
sixteen men at his command; but it cannot be said that he failed to do his
duty, partly because the officers and ratings on the pirate ships were paid, it
was said, according to how many newts they captured. In the ensuing enquiry by the marine
authorities it was found that "although Lieutenant McCarth is responsible
for this unhappy incident it is quite clear that no-one else would have acted
differently under the circumstances".
The unfortunate young officer had, in fact, shown remarkable prudence in
that instead of slowly surrounding the newts, which, given their numbers, could
not have been fully achieved, he ordered a sudden attack with the intention of
cutting the newts off from the sea, forcing them inland and stunning them one
by one with a blow to the head with a club or an oar. Unfortunately, when the attack took place the
sailors were separated from each other and nearly two hundred salamanders
escaped into the water. While the
attacking men were processing those newts which had been prevented from reaching
the sea they began to hear shots behind themselves from shark guns; no-one had
any idea that these wild and natural newts on the Keeling Isles were equipped
with weapons against sharks and no-one ever found out who had given them to
them.
One of the deck hands, Michael
Kelly, who had survived the whole catastrophe, said: "When we heard the
first shots we thought it must be some other ship that had come to hunt for
newts like we had. Lieutenant McCarth
turned round quick and shouted, 'What are you doing, you fools, this is the
crew of the Montrose here!' Then he was
hit in the side, but he still pulled out his revolver and started
shooting. Then he got a second shot in
the neck and he fell. Then we saw for
the first time that it was the newts firing at us and trying to cut us off from
the sea. Then Long Steve raised his oar
and rushed out at the newts shouting Montrose! Montrose! so we all started
shouting Montrose! and thumping at these horrors with oars or whatever we
could. There was about five of us left
lying there, but the rest of us fought our way down to the water. Long Steve jumped in and waded out to the
boat; but when he got there some of the newts grabbed hold of him and pulled
him down under the water. They drowned
Charlie and all; he shouted to us Lads, Jesus Christ lads, don't let them get
me, but there was nothing we could do.
Those vermin were shooting us in the back; Bodkin turned round and he
got it in the belly, all he said was Oh no! and he fell. So we all tried to get back inland to the
interior of the island; wed already broken all our oars and sticks on these
monsters, so all we did was run like rabbits.
By then, there was only the four of us left. We didn't dare go any further away from the
shore in case we couldn't get back on board ship; we hid behind some stones and
bushes and had to look on while the newts finished off our mates. Drowned them in the water like kittens, they
did, and if anyone still tried to swim they gave him one on the head with a
crowbar. It was only then I saw I had a
twisted ankle and couldn't run any further."
Captain James Lindley, who had
remained on board the Montrose, must have heard the gunfire from the island;
whether he thought there was some trouble with the natives or that there were
some other newt traders there, he simply took the cook and two of the stokers
who had stayed on board, had the machine gun (which was clearly hidden on the
ship despite being strictly forbidden) put on the remaining boat, and went out
to help his crewmen. He was careful not
to set foot on the shore; he merely went close in the boat with the machine gun
ready on its prow and stood there with folded arms for all to see. Let us allow Mister Kelly to explain
further.
"We didn't want to call out to
the captain so that the newts wouldn't find us.
Mister Lindley stood in the boat with his arms folded and called out,
What's going on here? Then the newts
turned round to look at him. There was a
couple of hundred of them on the shore, and more and more of them kept swimming
up from the sea and surrounded the boat.
What's going on here? the captain asked, and then a big newt went up
close to him and said, Go back! The
captain just looked at him, he didn't say anything for a while and then he
asked, Are you a newt?
We are newts, said this newt. Now please, go back!
I want to see what you've been doing
with my men, said the old man. You
should not have attacked us, said the newt.
You will now, please, go back to your ship! The captain didn't say anything again for a
while, and then he calmly said,
Alright Jenkins, fire! And Stoker Jenkins started firing at the
newts with the machine gun."
(Later, at the official enquiry, the
affair was described in these words: In this respect, Captain James Lindley did
no more than we are entitled to expect from a British seaman.)
"All the newts were together in
a group," Kelly's testimony continued, "and so they fell like corn in
a field. Some of them shot at Mr.
Lindley with those guns of theirs, but he stood there with his arms folded and
didn't even move. Just then a black newt
came out of the water just behind the boat, and it had something in its paw
something like a tin can, with its other paw it pulled something out of it and
threw it into the water under the boat.
After about five seconds there was a column of water came up and there
was a loud bang, but sort of muffled sounding, and we could feel how it made
the ground shake under our feet."
(From Kelly's description, the
official enquiry concluded that the newts had used an explosive known as W3,
supplied to them for removing rock from under the water at the fortification
works in Singapore, but it remained a mystery how it came into the hands of the
newts on the Coconut Isles. There were
some who surmised that the explosives were given them by people, others
supposed the newts themselves must already have had some long distance
communications. Public opinion clamoured
for a ban on giving the newts such dangerous explosives; however the
appropriate office declared that there was still no other explosive that was as
"highly effective and relatively safe" as W3, and that's how things
were left.)
"The boat flew up into the
air," Kelly's testimony continued," and was ripped to pieces. All the newts, the ones that were still
alive, rushed up to the place. We
couldn't really see whether Mr. Lindley was dead or alive; but all three of my
shipmates - Donovan, Burke and Kennedy - jumped up and went to help him so that
he wouldn't fall into the hands of those newts.
I wanted to run up as well but I had that twisted ankle so I sat where I
was and pulled on my foot with both hands to try and get the bones in the right
place. So I don't know what happened
next, but when I looked up there was Kennedy lying there face down in the sand
and there was no sign at all of Donovan or Burke; there was just still
something going on in the water."
Kelly then escaped deeper into the
island until he found a native village; but the natives behaved strangely
towards him and were unwilling even to offer him shelter; perhaps they were
afraid of the newts. It was only seven
weeks later that the Montrose was found, entirely plundered and abandoned, at
anchor off the Coconut Isles by a fishing boat which rescued Kelly.
Some weeks later, a British gunboat,
HMS Fireball, sailed to the Coconut Isles and spent the night waiting at
anchor. It was once again full moon, and
the newts came out of the sea, took up their places in a circle on the sand and
began their ceremonial dance. Then His
Majesty's Ship fired its first rounds of grapeshot into them. Those newts that weren't cut to pieces
immediately stiffened and then fled into the water; that was when the six
cannons thundered out their terrible salvo and the only newts left were the few
that still crawled towards the water on their broken limbs. Then there was another salvo from the
cannons, and then a third.
When that had ended, HMS Fireball
withdrew to half a mile offshore and began to fire into the water as it slowly
sailed up and down the coast. This
lasted six hours and used about eight hundred rounds of ammunition. Then the Fireball sailed away. Over the following two days, the whole of the
sea around the Keeling Isles was covered with the dismembered remains of
thousands and thousands of newts.
That same night a battleship from
Holland, the Van Dijck, fired three rounds into a colony of newts on the island
of Goenong Api; the Japanese cruiser Hakodate shot three grenades onto the
little newt island of Ailinglaplap; the French gunboat, Bechamel, disrupted the
newts dance on the island of Rawaiwai with three shots. This was a warning to the newts. It was not in vain; there was no further
incident anywhere comparable with the Keeling Killing, and the trade in newts,
both organised and freelance, was able to flourish without disturbance and with
official blessing.
2 - SKIRMISH IN
NORMANDY
A conflict that took place in
Normandy somewhat later had a quite different character. The newts there, most of whom worked in
Cherbourg and lived on the surrounding beaches, had become very fond of
apples. Their employers, though, were
unwilling to provide them with anything but the usual newt food (they said it
would raise construction costs above the projected budget) and so the newts began
to undertake scrumping raids in the nearby orchards. The land owners complained about it to the
prefecture and the newts were strictly forbidden to go anywhere on the beach
outside the designated newt area, but this was of no help; the orchards continued
to suffer steady losses, eggs seemed to disappear from the chicken coops, and
every morning more and more guard dogs were found dead. So the villagers began to guard their
orchards themselves, armed with ancient shotguns, and shot the poaching newts. It would have remained just a local matter;
but the people of Normandy were also annoyed that their taxes had been raised
and the price of ammunition had gone up, so they developed a deadly malice
towards the newts and undertook raids against them in heavily armed gangs. When they had shot a large number of newts
even while they were at work, the newt's employers complained to the prefecture
and the prefect ordered that the villagers should have their rusty old guns
taken away. The villagers of course resisted,
and there were unpleasant conflicts between them and the gendarmes; the
stubborn Normans were no longer just shooting at the newts but also, now, at
the police. Reinforcements were sent out
to Normandy and carried out a house to house search.
It was just about at this time that
there was a very unpleasant incident near Coutances: a group of local lads
attacked a newt who, they claimed, had been acting suspiciously near a hen
coop. They surrounded him with his back
against the wall of a barn and began to throw bricks at him. The injured salamander raised his hand and
threw down something that looked like an egg; there was an explosion which
ripped not only the newt to pieces but also three of the lads: eleven year old
Pierre Cajus, sixteen year old Marcel Bérard and fifteen year old Louis
Kermadec; and there were also five other children seriously injured to varying
degrees. The news quickly spread
throughout the region; about seven hundred people came in buses from all around
and attacked the newt colony in the bay of Basse Coutances, armed with
shotguns, pitchforks and flails. Around
twenty newts were killed before the police were able to subdue the angry
crowd. Sappers called in from Cherbourg
surrounded the bay with barbed wire; but that night the salamanders came out of
the sea, destroyed the barbed wire fences with hand grenades and tried to make
their way inland. Several companies of
soldiers with machine guns were quickly brought in on lorries and a chain of
troops was used to try and keep the newts separate from people. Meanwhile, the people were attacking the
finance offices and police stations and one unpopular tax inspector was hanged
on a lamppost with a placard saying: Away with the Newts! The newspapers, especially those in Germany,
talked about a revolution in Normandy; although the government in Paris issued
vehement denials.
While the bloody skirmishes between
people and newts spread along the coast of Calvados into Picardy and Pas de
Calais, the ageing French cruiser, Jules Flambeau, sailed out of Cherbourg
towards the western coast of Normandy; it was later found that the cruiser was
only intended to calm and reassure the local inhabitants and the newts. The Jules Flambeau dropped anchor a mile and
a half from the bay of Basse Coutances; when night came, in order to create a
stronger impression, the captain order coloured rockets to be set off. This beautiful spectacle was watched by a
large number of people on the shore; suddenly there was a hissing noise and an
enormous column of water rose at the bow of the ship; it keeled over and there
was a terrible explosion. It was clear
that the cruiser was sinking; within a quarter of an hour motor boats had come
out from the nearby ports to offer help but they were not needed; apart from
three men killed in the explosion itself the whole crew was saved and the Jules
Flambeau went down five minutes later, its captain being the last to leave the
ship with the memorable words, "There's nothing we can do".
The official report, issued that
same night, announced that the "ageing cruiser, the Jules Flambeau, which
was anyway to be withdrawn from service within a few weeks from now, hit rocks
while sailing by night and, with its boiler exploding, sank", but the
press were not so easily satisfied; while the government influenced press
maintained that the ship had hit a recently laid German mine, the opposition
and foreign press carried headlines such as:
FRENCH CRUISER
TORPEDOED by newts!
MYSTERIOUS
EVENTS off the coast of Normandy
NEWTS IN
REVOLT!
"We call
to account," wrote one French member of parliament in his paper,
"those who gave arms to the newts that they could use against people; who
put bombs in their paws so that they could kill French villagers and children
as they play; who gave these monstrosities from the sea the most modern
torpedoes so that they could sink French shipping whenever they want. Let us call them to account, I say: let them
be indicted for murder, let them be dragged before a military tribunal for
treason, let them be investigated for us to learn how much they profited from
supplying the rabble of the oceans with the weapons to attack
civilisation!" And so on; there was
simply a general consternation, people gathered on the streets and began to
build barricades; Senegalese riflemen, their guns stacked in pyramids, were
stationed on the boulevards of Paris, and waiting in the suburbs were tanks and
armoured cars. This was when the
minister for marine affairs, Monsieur François Ponceau, stood in parliament,
pale but decisive, and declared: The government accepts the responsibility for
having equipped newts on French territory with guns, underwater machine guns,
and torpedoes. French newts, however,
are equipped only with light, small calibre cannons; German salamanders are
armed with 32cm. underwater mortars. On
French coasts there is only one underwater arsenal of hand grenades, torpedoes
and explosives every twenty-four kilometres on average, on Italian coasts there
are deep-water depots of armaments every twenty kilometres and in German waters
every eighteen kilometres. France cannot
leave her shores unprotected and will not do so. It is not possible for France to simply stop
arming her newts. the minister would
issue instructions for the most thorough investigations possible to discover
who is guilty for the fatal misunderstanding on the Normandy coast; it seems
that the newts saw the coloured rockets as a signal for military action and
wished to defend themselves. The captain
of the Jules Flambeau and the prefect of Cherbourg were both removed from their
positions; a special commission was set up to ascertain how businesses involved
in water works treated their newts with the expectation that that they would
come under strict supervision in future.
The government deeply regretted the loss of human lives; Pierre Cajus, Marcel
Bérard and Louis Kermadec would be decorated as national heroes, buried at
government expense and their parents rewarded with a large sum of money. Substantial changes were made at the highest
level to the way French shipping was managed.
The government put a motion of no-confidence in the National Assembly,
to be settled when more information was available, and the cabinet announced
that it would remain in permanent session.
The newspapers, according to their
political colour, urged punishment, eradication, colonisation or a crusade against
the newts, a general strike, resignation of the government, the arrest of newt
owners, the arrest of communist leaders and agitators and many other protective
measures of this sort. People began
frantically to stockpile food when rumours of the shores and ports being closed
off began to spread, and the prices of goods of every sort soared; riots caused by rising prices broke
out in the industrial cities; the stock exchange was closed for three days. It was simply the more worrying and dangerous
than it had been at any time over the previous three or four months. But this was when the minister for
agriculture, Monsieur Monti, stepped dexterously in. He gave orders that several hundred loads of
apples for the newts should be discharged into the sea twice a week along the
French coasts, at government cost, of course.
This measure was remarkably successful in pacifying both the newts and
the villagers in Normandy and elsewhere.
But Monsieur Monti went even further: there had long been deep and serious
disturbances in the wine-growing regions, resulting from a lack of turnover, so
he ordered that the state should provide each newt with a half litre of white
wine per day. At first the newts did not
know what to do with this wine because it caused them serious diarrhoea and
they poured it into the sea; but with a little time they clearly became used to
it, and it was noticed that from then on the newts would show a lot more
enthusiasm for sex, although with lower fertility rates than before. In this way, problems to do with the newts
and with agriculture were solved in one stroke; fear and tension were assuaged,
and, in short, the next time there was another government crisis, caused by the
financial scandal around Madame Töppler, the clever and well proven Monsieur
Monti became the minister for marine affairs in the new cabinet.
3 - INCIDENT IN
THE ENGLISH CHANNEL
Not long afterwards, a Belgian
ferry, the Oudenbourg, was steaming its way from Ostende to Ramsgate. In the straits of Dover the duty officer
noticed that half a mile south of its usual course there was something going on
in the water. He could not be sure that
there was no-one drowning there and so he ordered a change of course down to
where the perturbance was taking place.
Two hundred passengers on the windward side of the ship were shown a
very strange spectacle: in some places a vertical jet of water shot out from
the surface, and in some of those vertical jets there could be seen something
like a black body thrown up with it; the surface of the sea for one or two
hundred yards all around was tossing and seething wildly while, from the
depths, a loud rattling and humming could be heard. "It was as if there was a small volcano
erupting under the sea." As the
Oudenbourg slowly approached the place an enormous wave rose about ten yards
ahead of it and a terrible noise thundered out like an explosion. The entire ship was lifted violently and the
deck was showered with a rain of water that was nearly boiling hot; and landing
on the deck with the water was a strong black body which writhed and let out a
sharp loud scream; it was a newt that had been injured and burnt. The captain ordered the ship full steam
astern so that the ship would not steam straight into the middle of this
turbulent Hell; but the water all around had also begun to erupt and the
surface of the sea was strewn with pieces of dismembered newts. The ship was finally able to turn around and
it fled northwards as fast as possible.
Then there was a terrible explosion about six hundred yards to the stern
and a gigantic column of water and steam, perhaps a hundred yards high, shot
out of the sea. The Oudenbourg set
course for Harwich and sent out a radio warning in all directions: "Attention
all shipping, attention all shipping!
Severe danger on Ostende-Ramsgate lane.
Underwater explosion. Cause
unknown. All shipping advised avoid
area!" All this time the sea was
thundering and boiling, almost as if military manoeuvres had been taking place
under the water; but apart from the erupting water and steam there was nothing
to see. From both Dover and Calais,
destroyers and torpedo boats set out at full steam and squadrons of military
aircraft flew to the site of the disturbance; but by the time they got there
all they found was that the surface was discoloured with something like a
yellow mud and covered with startled fish and newts that had been torn to
pieces. At first it was thought that a
mine in the channel must have exploded; but once the shores on both sides of
the Straits of Dover had been ringed off with a chain of soldiers 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 papers carried some
highly alarming rumours, but, oddly enough, this time remained far from the
truth; nobody had any idea that Europe, and the whole world with it, stood for
a few days on the brink of a major war.
It was only several years later that a member of the then British
cabinet, Sir Thomas Mulberry, failed to be re-elected in a general election and
published his memoirs setting out just what had actually happened; but by then,
though, nobody was interested.
This, in short, is what happened:
Both England and France had begun constructing underwater fortresses for the
newts in the English Channel. By means
of these fortresses it would have been possible, in case of war, to close it
off to shipping entirely. Then, of
course, both great powers accused the other of having started it first; but in
all probability both sides began fortification at the same time in the fear
that the friendly neighbour across the channel might get there before they did. In short, two enormous concrete
fortresses armed with heavy cannons,
torpedoes, extensive minefields and all that modern weapon technology could
give them, had been growing steadily under the surface of the Straits of Dover;
on the English side this terrible fortress of the deep was operated by two
divisions of heavy newts and around thirty thousand working salamanders, on the
French side there were three divisions of first class warrior newts. It seems that on the critical day, a working
colony of British newts came across French salamanders on the seabed in the
middle of the strait and some kind of misunderstanding developed. The French insisted that their newts had been
working peacefully when they were attacked by the British who wanted to repel
them, that British armed newts had tried to abduct some French newts who, of
course, had defended themselves. At
this, British military salamanders began firing into French labouring newts
with hand grenades and mortars so that the French newts were forced to use
similar weapons. The government of
France felt compelled to require full satisfaction from His Britannic Majesty's
government and complete withdrawal from the disputed area of the seabed in
order to ensure that no similar incident would occur again in the future.
On the other hand, the British
government sent a special note to the government of the French Republic
informing them that French militarised newts had entered the English half of
the channel and were about to lay down mines there. The British newts pointed out that they were
in their working area; at which the French salamanders, armed to the teeth,
responded by throwing hand grenades which killed several working newts on the
British side. It was with regret that
His Majesty's Government felt obliged to require full satisfaction from the
government of the French Republic and the assurance that French military newts
would never again enter the British side of the English Channel.
At this the French government
declared that it could no longer tolerate having a neighbouring state building
underwater fortifications in immediate proximity to the French coast. As far as a misunderstanding on the bed of
the English Channel was concerned the republic suggested that, in accordance
with the London Convention, the dispute be presented to the international court
in The Hague. The British government
replied that it could not and would not subject the security of British coasts
to decisions made by any external body.
As victims of the French attack they once again required, and with all
possible emphasis, an apology, payment for damages and a guarantee for the
future. British shipping stationed at
Malta steamed westward at full speed; the Atlantic fleet was given orders to
assemble at Portsmouth and Yarmouth.
The French government ordered the
mobilisation of its naval reserve.
It now seemed that neither side
could give way; it clearly meant after all nothing less than mastery over the
entire channel. At this critical moment
Sir Thomas Mulberry discovered the surprising fact that there actually were no
working newts or military newts operating on the English side, or at least not
officially, as the British Isles were still bound by Sir Samuel Mandeville's
prohibition on any salamander working on British coasts or surface waters. This meant that the British government could
not officially maintain that French newts had attacked any English newts; the
whole issue therefore was reduced to the question whether French newts,
deliberately or in error, had crossed over into British sovereign waters. French officials promised that they would
investigate the matter; the English government never even suggested that the
matter should be presented to the international court in The Hague. Finally the British admiralty came to an
agreement with the French admiralty that there would be a five kilometre wide
neutral zone between underwater fortifications in the English Channel, and in
this way the exceptional friendliness existing between the two states was confirmed.
4 - THE
NORTHERN NEWT
Not many years after the first newt
colonies had been settled in the North Sea and the Baltic a German scientist,
Dr. Hans Thüring, found that the Baltic newt had certain distinctive physical
features - clearly as a result of its environment; that it was somewhat lighter
in colour, it walked on two legs, and its cranial index indicated a skull that
was longer and narrower than other newts.
This variety was given the name Northern Newt or Noble Newt (Andrias
Scheuchzeri var. nobilis erecta Thüring).
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. Journalists wrote with contempt of the
degenerate newts of the Mediterranean, stunted both physically and mentally, of
the savage newts of the tropics and of the inferior, barbaric and bestial newts
of other nations. The slogan of the day
was From the Great Newt to the German Übernewt.
And what had been the origin of all the latter day newts on German
soil? Had its glorious miocene skull not
been found in Öhningen by the learned German Doctor Johannes Jakob
Scheuchzer? There was therefore not the
slightest doubt that the original Andrias Scheuchzeri had had its origin in the
geological past on German soil; its migration to other seas and climatic zones
was something it had had to pay for with its decline and degeneration; but as soon
as it found itself back on the soil of its homeland it once again became what
it had been in the past: the noble northern Scheuchzer Newt, light in colour,
erect in gait and long in skull. 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.
This was why Germany needed new and longer shores, it needed colonies,
it needed the seas of the world so that a new generation of racially pure,
original German salamanders could develop in German waters. We need new living room for our newts, wrote
the German newspapers; and so that this fact was always present to the German
eyes a grand memorial to Johannes Jakob Scheuchzer was set up in Berlin. The great doctor was depicted with a thick
book in his hand; at his sits the erect and noble Nordic newt, gazing into the
distance towards the boundless shores of the worlds oceans. There was, of course, a celebratory speech
given at the unveiling of this national monument, and it attracted the
attention of newspapers all around the world.
A New Threat from Germany, asserted, in particular, the press in
England. We have become used to this
sort of tone but if, on an official occasion such as this, we are told that
Germany is in need of five thousand kilometres of new coastline within three
years we have to choice but to give a clear response: Just You Try It! See what happens if you encroach on British
shores. We are prepared, and in three
years time we will be even better prepared.
England must have - and will have - a navy as large as the two biggest
continental powers put together; this relation of power cannot ever be changed. Anyone who wishes to unleash an insane arms
race in naval weaponry is welcome to try; no Briton will ever allow his country
to fall a single step behind.
"We accept the challenge laid
down by the Germans," declared the first lord of the admiralty, Sir
Francis Drake, in parliament and speaking on behalf of the government. "Whoever tries to lay a hand on any of
the worlds oceans will have to find himself facing the might of our ships. The British Empire is strong enough to repel
any assault on its outposts or the shores of its colonies and dominions. The construction of new land, island,
fortress or airbase in any sea will be considered an attack of this sort if its
waves wash onto coastline under British dominion, however tiny. Let this be the last warning to anyone who
might wish to change the outline of the world's seas, even if by no more than a
yard." In response, parliament
allowed the construction of new warships at a preliminary cost of half a
million pounds sterling. It was indeed
an impressive response to the construction of the provocative memorial to
Johannes Jakob Scheuchzer in Berlin; this memorial had cost no more than twelve
thousand reichsmark.
The outstanding French publicist,
the Marquis de Sade, who was always well informed, responded to this speech in
this way: The British first lord of the admiralty declares that Great Britain
is ready for any eventuality. That is
all well and good, but is the noble lord aware that Germany has a standing army
of heavily armed newts in the Baltic, currently comprising five million
professional salamander soldiers, who are ready to engage in military action at
any time on land or sea? On top of that
must be considered the seventeen million newts engaged in technical and
supportive functions who act as a reserve and are ready, at any time, to become
an army of occupation? The Baltic
salamander is presently the greatest soldier in the world; trained to the
perfect mentality, it sees war is its proper vocation and the most noble; it
enters every battle with the enthusiasm of a fanatic, with cool technical
planning and the awful discipline of Prussia.
And is the British First Lord of the
Admiralty moreover aware that Germany is frantically building new transport
ships, any one of which can carry a whole brigade of warrior salamanders? Is he aware that hundreds and hundreds of
small submarines are being built with a range of three to five thousand
kilometres and whose crew will consist of Baltic newts? Is he aware that gigantic underwater fuel
depots are being established in various places?
So now, let us ask the question once again: can the British citizen be
certain that his great country really is well prepared for any eventuality?
It is not difficult to imagine, the
Marquis de Sade continued, what a difference could be made to the outcome the
next war by newts blockading the coasts and equipped with underwater howitzers,
mortars and torpedoes; by my faith, this is the first time in history that
no-one need envy the English in their splendid isolation surrounded by water. And while we are addressing these questions:
is the British admiralty aware also that the Baltic newts are equipped with a
new, normally peaceful, apparatus called the pneumatic drill which is capable
of drilling ten metres deep into the best Swedish granite in an hour and can penetrate
fifty or sixty metres deep into English chalk in the same time? (This was ascertained by secret experiments
carried out at night by the German technical expedition on the eleventh,
twelfth and thirteenth of last month on the English coast between Hythe and
Folkestone right under the nose of Dover Castle.) I suggest that our friends across the channel
calculate for themselves how many weeks it would take for Kent or Essex to be
drilled through below sea level like a piece of Swiss cheese. Until now, the Englishman on his island has
always looked anxiously to the horizon as the place from which any harm to his
flourishing cities, his Bank of England or his warm cottage, so cosy in its
evergreen coat of ivy, might come. But now he had better put his ear to the
ground where his children are playing: might he not hear, maybe today, maybe
tomorrow, a digging and a scraping as, step by step, the newts with these
tireless and fearsome drills grind their way deeper to create the paths for
laying hitherto unknown explosives. The
last word of the age we live in is not war in the air, it is war beneath the
water and the land. We have heard the
self confident words from the commanders of proud Albion; the ship of Albion
today is still a vessel of great power, borne on the waves and master of them;
but there might come a day when the waves will close over a vessel that has
been broken and send it down to the depths of the ocean. Would it not be better to face this danger sooner
rather than later? Within three years it
will be too late!
The Marquis de Sade was a brilliant
publicist, and his warning caused great consternation in England; despite all
the denials, people in every part of England were able to hear the newts
drilling into the ground beneath their feet.
Officials in Germany, of course, issued a categorical denial and
repudiated the Marquis' speech, declaring that from start to finish it was no
more than provocation and hostile propaganda; at the same time, however,
combined manoeuvres were taking place in the Baltic involving the German navy,
land forces and warrior newts; squads of sapper newts, in full view of foreign
military attachés, under-drilled and blew up six square kilometres of sand
dunes near Rügenwald. It was said to be
a wonderful spectacle when, with a terrifying roar, the ground rose up and an
enormous wall of steam, sand and tree trunks flew skywards; it became as dark
as night, and the sand that had been thrown up was scattered over a radius of
nearly fifty kilometres, even as far away as Warsaw there was still a sandy
rain falling several days later. This
enormous explosion left so much fine sand and dust suspended in the atmosphere
that all through the rest of that year the sunsets throughout Europe were
exceptionally beautiful, coloured a bloody red, and fiery like never
before. The sea created after this piece
of coast had been blown away was later given the name the Scheuchzer See, and
it was the destination for countless school trips for German children singing
their favourite newt anthem, Solche Erfolche erreichen nur deutsche
Molche.
5 - WOLF
MEYNERT WRITES HIS OEUVRE
It may have been just those
tragically glorious sunsets that inspired the lone philosopher, Wolf Meynert,
to write his monumental work, The Decline and Fall of Man. We can easily imagine him as he ambles along
the shore, his hair loose and his raincoat flapping in the wind, gazing
enthralled at the sky that has turned into a blaze of fire and blood. "Yes," he mutters absent mindedly,
"yes, now is the time to write the afterword to the history of
mankind!" And so he wrote it.
The tragedy of the human race has
reached its final curtain, Wolf Meynert began.
Despite mans lust for enterprise and technical prosperity, all this is
no more than the lurid red on the face of an organism already condemned to
die. Man has never before come face to
face with such an elevated conjuncture in the life of his species than today;
but find me one man who is happy; show me the class that lives in contentment,
the nation that does not fear its existence under threat. In the midst of all the gifts of
civilisation, in the rich luxury of material and spiritual property we are all
of us falling inexorably into doubt, anguish and unease. Thus Wolf Meynert went on, with irrefutable
logic, to analyse the spiritual state of the modern word, this mix of fear and
uncertainty, mistrust and megalomania, cynicism and pettiness: in a word, Wolf
Meynert concluded, desperation. Typical
portents of the end. Moral agony.
So the question
is: When was man ever capable of happiness?
Individuals, yes, just like any other living thing; but mankind,
never. The whole of mans misfortunes
arise because he had to become human, or that he became human too late when he
was already incorrigibly differentiated into nations and races and faiths and
classes and factions and rich and poor and educated and uneducated and lords
and slaves. If you take horses, wolves,
sheep, cats, foxes, deer, bears and goats, and you herd them into one fold and
force them to live in this nonsensical mix-up that you call the Rules of
Society and force them to observe these rules, then the result will be
unhappiness, discontent and death, a society where not even a divine being
could feel at home. That is a more or
less precise depiction of the big and hopeless heterogenous herd that we call
mankind. Nations, classes, factions
cannot all live together in the long term without causing each other worries
and getting in each others way until it becomes unbearable; they can all live
separated from each other - which was only possible for as long as the world
was big enough for them - or they can live against each other, in a struggle of
life and death. Biological entities such
as race, nation and class have only, where people are concerned, one natural
road to take, and that is towards a homogenous and undisturbed bliss; to make a
place for themselves and annihilate the others.
And that is just what the human race failed to do in time. Now it is too late. We have set up too many doctrines and
obligations for ourselves with which we protect these "others"
instead of getting rid of them; we have thought up a code of morals, human
rights, contracts, laws, equality, humanity and all the rest; we have created a
fictitious mankind which includes ourselves and these "others" in
some imaginary higher unit. What a fatal
mistake! We have set our law of morals
above the laws of biology. We have
violated the great natural assumption of all societies; that only a homogenous
society can be a happy society. And this
attainable prosperity is something that we have sacrificed to a great but
impossible dream: the creation of one mankind and one social and moral code for
all people, nations, classes and factions.
Grandiose stupidity. In its way
it was man's only honourable attempt to rise above himself. And now he has to pay for this supreme
idealism with his own inevitable end.
The process by which man tries to
organise himself in society is as old as civilisation itself, as old as the
first laws and the first communities; after all these millennia, all that he
has attained is the deepening of the gulf between races, nations and classes;
world opinions have dug themselves deep and firm in the bottomless pit that we
see today, and we cannot fail to see that mans unfortunate and historic attempt
to make all peoples into one mankind has definitively and tragically
collapsed. We are finally beginning to
realise it; and that is why there are these plans and efforts to unite human
society in a different way, a radical way, the way of making room just for one
nation, just for one class or just for one faith. But who can say how deeply we have already
been infected with the incurable disease of differentiation? Sooner or later, every supposedly homogenous
unit inevitably breaks back down into a disparate jumble of various interests,
parties, classes and so on, who will either persecute each other or will suffer
together in silence. There is no way
out. We are caught in a vicious circle;
but history will not continue going round in circles forever. Nature herself has taken care of that by
creating a place on Earth for the newts.
It is by more than mere chance, Wolf
Meynert went on, that the newts have burgeoned just at the time when mans
chronic disease, this badly assembled and quickly decaying super-organism, will
progress into agony. With few
insignificant exceptions, the newts are the only homogenous and large-scale
unit; they have so far failed to create any deep distinctions of race,
language, nation, state, faith class or caste; there are no masters and slaves
among them, no freemen and serfs, no rich and poor; differences have been
imposed upon them by their type of work, but for their own perceptions they are
of one family, a monolith, of one seed, in all their parts they have the same
primitive biology, the same poor natural endowments, the same burdens, and the
same low living standard. The last
Negroes and Eskimos have incomparably higher living conditions, enjoy
infinitely richer property both materially and culturally, than these billions
of civilised newts. And there is not
even any indication of suffering among the newts. On the contrary. What we see is that they have no need of any
of the things with which man seeks escape and relief from the worries of his
life or the horrors of his metaphysics; they survive adequately without
philosophy, without life after death and without art; they do not know what are
fantasy, humour, mysticism, game-playing or dreams; they go through life simply
as realists. They are as remote from man
as ants or herrings; and they distinguish themselves from ants and herrings
only by having moved over into the environment of another species, the
civilisation of man. There they have
settled themselves just as dogs have settled into mans shelter; they cannot
live without it, but they do not cease to be what they are; a very primitive
and little differentiated type of animal.
All they wish to do is live and multiply; they might even be happy, for
there is no sense of inequality to disturb them. They are simply homogenous. For this reason they might one day, indeed
one day very soon, find no difficulty in doing that which has escaped the
efforts of man: to disperse their species with its unity intact all around the
globe, a single global community, in a word, universal newtdom. This day will see the end of millennia of
agony for the human genus. Our planet
will not have enough room for two faction, both of which strive to dominate the
whole world. One of them must give
way. We know already which that will
be.
Distributed around the globe today
are around twenty thousand million civilised newts, which is about ten times
more than all people put together; it is both a matter of historical logic and
biological necessity that the newts that man has subjugated will some day free
themselves; that being homogenous they will unite; and that thus having become
the greatest power the world has ever seen they will take over. Could anyone be such a fool as to think they
would then spare mankind? Could anyone
think they will repeat the mistake, made again and again throughout history, of
exploiting the defeated nations and classes instead of just annihilating
them? Would it be in their interest to
keep establishing new differences between men so that then, simply through
generosity and idealism, they would try to overcome them? No, this is a historic error that the newts
will not commit, declared Wolf Meynert, if only because they will have been
warned in this book! They will be the
inheritors of the whole of human civilisation; all that we have done or attempted
to do in our efforts to shape the world will simply fall into their laps; but if they tried to include ourselves with
this legacy, they would be acting against their own interests. They must rid themselves of mankind if they
wish to maintain their own uniformity.
If they failed to act thus they would they would create, sooner or
later, their own destructive tendency among themselves: they would create
differences and they would have to endure them.
But this is something of which we should have no fear; there is today no
creature that will continue the history of mankind that would repeat his
suicidal madness.
There is no doubt that the world of
the newts will be happier than that of mankind; it will be unified, homogenous
and governed everywhere in the same spirit.
Newt will not be distinct from newt by language, opinion, faith or his
requisites for life. There will be no
differences among them of culture or class, merely the allocation of
tasks. No-one will be master or slave,
as all will serve just one Great Newt Whole which will be god, government,
employer and spiritual leader. There
will be just one nation and just one class.
The world will be better and more perfect than ours will have been. This is the only possible Brave New
World. Let us therefore make room for
it; man is facing his expiry, and there is no more that he can do than to
hasten his end with tragic beauty, that is, if it is not too late even for
that.
Now lets express the views of Wolf
Meynert in a way that is more accessible: we are aware that in this way it will
lose a lot of its force and its depth, which was so fascinating for the whole
of Europe in its time. The young were
especially fascinated and adopted a faith in the decline and annihilation of
mankind with great enthusiasm. The
German Reich banned the teaching of the great pessimist for a number of
political reasons and Wolf Meynert had to flee into Switzerland, but the whole
of the educated world was nonetheless content to adopt Meynert's theories about
the end of mankind; his book, 632 pages long, was published in all the
languages of the world and many millions of copies were distributed, even among
the newts.
6 - X GIVES HIS
WARNING
It may have been as a result of this
prophetic book that the literary and artistic avant garde in all the cultural centres
declared, After Us, the Salamanders!, The Future belongs to the Newts, Newts
Mean Cultural Revolution. Even if they
don't have their own art (they explained) at least they are not burdened with
idiotic ideals, dried up traditions and all the rigid and boring things taught
in schools and given the name of poetry, music, architecture, philosophy and
culture in any of its forms. The word
culture is senile and it makes us sick.
Human art has been with us for too long and is worn-out and if the newts
have never fallen for it we will make a new art for them. We, the young, will blaze the path for a new
world of salamandrism: we wish to be the
first newts, we are the salamanders of tomorrow! And so the young poetic movement of
salamandrism was born, triton - or tritone - music was composed and pelagic
painting, inspired by the shape world of jellyfish, fish and corals, made its
appearance. There were also the water
regulating structures made by the newts themselves which were discovered as a
new source of beauty and dignity. We've
had enough of nature, the slogans went; bring on the smooth, concrete shores
instead of the old and ragged cliffs!
Romanticism is dead; the continents of the future will be outlined with
clean straight lines and re-shaped into conic sections and rhombuses; the old
geological must be replaced with a world of geometry. In short, there was once again a new trend
that was to be the thing of the future, a new aesthetic sensation and new cultural
manifestoes; 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. A concert of tritone music was booed off the
stage in Vienna, at the Salon des Indépendents in Paris a pelagic painting
called Capriccio en Bleu was slashed by an unidentified perpetrator;
salamandrism was simply victorious, and its rise was unstoppable.
Needless to say, there was no
shortage of those who were opposed to this change and stood against
"newtmania" as it was called.
The most fundamentalist piece of opposition came in the form of an
anonymous pamphlet that came out in England under the title X Gives his
Warning. The leaflet enjoyed wide
circulation, but the identity of its author was never established; there were
many who thought it must have been written by some high official in the church,
swayed by the observation that X is an abbreviation for Christ.
In the first chapter the author
tried to use statistics about the newts, apologising at the same time for the
inaccuracy of the figures he was using.
The estimated total number of salamanders at this time ranged between
seven and twenty times the total number of people on the Earth. It was just as uncertain how many factories,
oil wells, weed plantations, and eel farms the newts had under the sea making
use of water power and other natural sources of energy; there were not even any
estimates of the newts industrial manufacturing capacity; least of all did
anyone know how well armed the newts were.
We knew that the salamanders were dependent on people for their metals,
engineering parts, explosives and many types of chemical, but not only did
every state keep strictly secret how much weaponry and other products their
supplied to their newts, but we also knew remarkably little about what the
newts did with the materials they bought from people once they were down in the
depths of the sea. One thing that was
certain was that the newts did not want people to know these things; over the
previous few years so many divers sent down to the seabed had been drowned that
it could not possibly be seen as mere chance.
It hardly need be said how worrying this was, both from the industrial
point of view and the military. It is
obviously very difficult to imagine, X continued in the following paragraphs,
what the newts might want of people, or how much they could simply take. They cannot live on dry land and there is no
way for us to dictate to them what they do under the water. Our respective living environments are
completely and unchangeably separate. We
require a certain amount of work from them, but in return we give them plenty
of food and provide them with raw materials and products such as metals that,
without us, they would not have at all.
But even if there is no practical reason for any animosity between
ourselves and the newts there is, I would say, metaphysical reason: contrasted
with creatures of the surface we see creatures of the deep abyss; creatures of
the night with creatures of the day; dark ponds of water with bright, dry
land. The boundary between water and
land has somehow become sharper than it used to be: our land borders on their
water. We could live perfectly well
separate from each other, exchanging no more than certain goods and services,
indefinitely; but it is hard to rid ourselves of the fear that that is not how
things will turn out. And why not? I am not able to give you any precise
reasons; but this fear is nonetheless with us; it seems like some kind of
intuition that one day the sea itself will turn against the land to settle the
question of who lives with whom.
I have to admit that this anxiety is
somewhat irrational, X went on; but it would seem like a great relief if the
newts came out against mankind with some kind of demands. We would at least then have the chance to
negotiate with them, we would be able to make various concessions, contracts
and compromises with them; but this silence of theirs is a thing of horror.
This incomprehensible reticence makes me afraid. They might, for instance, wish to ask for
certain political advantages for themselves; legislation about the newts is, to
put it bluntly, outdated in every state of the world and is not worthy of the
dignity of a creature as civilised as the newts nor of a creature so strong in
numbers. There is a need to work out new
rights and responsibilities for the newts, and to do so in the way that will be
of most advantage to them; their working conditions must be improved and they
must be better rewarded for the amount of work they do. There are many ways in which their
circumstances could be improved if only they would ask for it. Then we would be in a position to make
certain concessions and bind ourselves to proper contracts with proper pay; at
the very least this would buy time for a number of years. However, the newts ask for nothing; all they
do is raise their output and order more supplies; now is the time when we need
to ask where, on both sides, this will all come to an end. We used formerly to talk about the yellow
peril, or black or red; but they were at least people, and we can at least have
some idea of what it is that people will want.
But even if we still have no idea how to defend ourselves or even whom
we are to defend ourselves against there is one thing that is quite clear: that
if the newts stand on one side then the whole of mankind will be on the other.
People against newts! The time has come when it needs to be
formulated thus. It must be said frankly
that the normal person has an instinctive hatred of the salamanders, he loathes
them - and he is afraid of them. There
is something like a chill veil of horror that has fallen over the whole of
mankind. How else are we to explain this
frenetic worldliness, this insatiable thirst for fun and debauchery, this
orgiastic abandon that has taken control of peoples minds? There has never been a comparable collapse of
morals since the time when the Roman Empire collapsed under the onslaught of
the barbarians. This is more than the
fruit of unprecedented material prosperity, it is the desperation born of
suppressed fear and anguish at the thought of our own overturn and
annihilation. Drink deep the last
goblet, for tomorrow we die! What a
disgrace, what a punishment! It seems
that God, in His terrible mercy, wishes to allow nations and classes to perish
if once they have begun to rush down the road to destruction. Are we to read mene tekel in fiery letters at
the feast of mankind? Look at the words
written in light shining all through the hours of darkness on the walls of our
debauched and dissolute cities! In this
way we human beings are already comparable with the newts: we live more by
night than by day.
If only these salamanders were not
so horribly mediocre, exclaimed X in his anxiety. It is true that they are, to some extent,
educated, but this has the effect of limiting them further as all that they
have taken from human civilisation is that which is the most commonplace and
useful, things that are mechanical and repeatable. They stand at the side of man like Wagner at
the side of Faust; they learn from these books like the human Faust but with
this difference, that this is all they want and suffer from no doubts or
questions. The most horrifying thing is
that this type of civilised mediocrity, educable but dull and complacent,
exists on such a large scale; millions and thousands of millions of individuals
all the same; or rather, perhaps I am mistaken, and the most horrifying thing
of all is that they have been so successful.
They have taught themselves to use machines and numbers, and they have
shown that that is all that is needed to become masters of the world. All parts of human civilisation that are
without purpose, that are playful, fantastic or antiquated, they have ignored;
in this way they have ignored all that makes man human, adopting only that
which is purely practical, technical and utilisable. And this pitiful caricature of human
civilisation has achieved awesome things; it builds wonders of technology,
renovates our old planet and is even a source of fascination of people
themselves. From Wagner, his apprentice
and servant, Faust learned the secret of success and of mediocrity. Mankind has either to engage in an
epoch-making conflict of life and death with the newts or he will become like
the newts, never to regain his humanness.
As far as I am concerned, X concluded sadly, I would rather see the
former.
X now gives you his warning, the
unknown author continued. It is still
possible to shake off this cold and slimey ring that is wrapped around us
all. We must rid ourselves of the
salamanders. There are already too many
of them; they are armed, we know almost
nothing about the power of their weapons and they could well turn them against
us; but a danger for us more horrible than mere strength and numbers is the
success, nay triumph, achieved by their lack of self worth. We do not know what it is that we are to fear
more; the technology they have taken from human beings, or their sinister, cold
and bestial cruelty; but the two of them together create something
inconceivably terrifying and almost diabolic.
In the name of culture, in the name of Christianity and mankind we must
free ourselves from these newts. And
here he called on an unnamed apostle:
You madmen, stop feeding the
newts! Stop employing them, eschew their
services, let them move away somewhere else where they will feed themselves
just like any other sea creature! Nature
herself has already created order in her copious bounty; but only if people -
human civilisation and human history - will stop working for the salamanders!
And stop providing the newts with
weapons, end their supply of metals and explosives, send them no more of the
machinery and equipment made by man! We
do not give the tiger his teeth or venom to the snake; we do not stoke the
fires of volcanoes or undermine our dams.
Let us ban supplies to any of the seas of the world, let us place the
newts outside the law, let them be cursed and banished from our world, let
there be a League of Nations to unite us against the newts! The whole of mankind must be prepared to
defend its existence with sword in hand; let the king of Sweden, the Pope
of Rome or a union of nations call a
world conference to unite all the civilised states of the world, let us create
a united world - or at least a union of all Christian nations - wherewith to
oppose the salamanders! We are today at
a turning point. Under the terrible
pressure of the salamander threat, it is possible for man to behave responsibly
and create a United States of the World to avoid a world war with all its
countless victims. May God will it! If it is His will, then the newts will not
have come in vain and will have been the instrument of God.
This pathetic pamphlet excited wide
support among the general public. Old
women, in particular, agreed that there had been an unprecedented decline in
moral values. On the other hand, the
business pages of the newspapers pointed out it would not be possible to reduce
the goods supplied to the newts without causing a serious decline in human
industrial output and a crisis in many other areas. Agriculture had come to depend on an enormous
demand for maize, potatoes and other crops used for newt fodder; if the number
of salamanders was reduced there would be a sharp decline in the market price
of foodstuffs which would bring farmers to the brink of ruin. The trades unions suspected Mr. X was just a
reactionary and declared that they would not allow anything that would impede the supply of goods to the newts; the
working man had only just achieved full employment and a proper wage and now
Mr. X was wanting to snatch the bread from their hands; the working class is in
sympathy with the newts and rejects any attempt to lower their standard of
living or deliver them, poor and defenceless, into the hands of
capitalism. As far as any League of
Nations against the newts was concerned, they denied that there could be any
serious political circumstances when it could be needed; there were indeed both
the Society of Nations and the London Convention in which sea-going states
bound themselves not to equip their newts with heavy weaponry. Needless to say, it is not easy to persuade
any state to disarm if it cannot be sure that no other seagoing power is not
arming its newts in secret and thereby raising its military power at the
expense of its neighbours. Likewise, no
state or continent is able to force its newts to move somewhere else, simply
because that would have the undesirable effect of raising the industrial and
agricultural output, not to mention the military power, of other states and
continents. And objections of this sort,
which any thinking person would have to acknowledge, were raised
everywhere.
Despite all this, the pamphlet, X
Gives his Warning, had far reaching effects. Movements to oppose the newts spread to
almost every country in the world and a variety of organisations such as The
Association for the Elimination of the Newts, The Anti-Salamander Club, The
Committee for Human Protection were established everywhere. Newt delegates at the thirteenth session of
the Commission for the Study of Newt Affairs in Geneva were insulted when they
tried to take part. The boards that fenced off the coastline were daubed with
threatening graffiti such as Death to the Newts, Salamanders Go Home etc. Many newts had stones thrown at them; no
salamander now dared to raise his head above water in daylight. But, despite all of this, there was no sign
whatever from them of protest or attempt at retaliation. They were simply invisible, by day at least;
and the people who peered through the barriers saw no more than the endless and
wearily soughing waves. "Just look
at these monstrosities," they said with hatred, "they won't even show
themselves!"
And it was this tense silence that
was suddenly broken by the thunder of the Louisiana Earthquake.
7 -
THE LOUISIANA EARTHQUAKE
On that day, on the 11th. November
at one o'clock in the morning, there was a powerful earth tremor felt in New
Orleans; some of the buildings in the black areas collapsed; people ran out
onto the street in panic, but there was no second tremor; there was only a
short, howling cyclone that struck with a sudden furious onslaught, smashing
windows and blowing the rooves off the houses where the negroes lived; a few
dozen people were killed; and then there was a heavy downpour of mud.
As the New Orleans firemen went out
to help in the worst affected areas, telegrams were tapped out from Morgan
City, Plaquemine, Baton Rouge and Lafayette: SOS! Send help! City half
destroyed by earthquake and cyclone; Mississippi dam at risk of breaking; send
searchers, ambulances, all able-bodied men immediately! - From Fort Livingston
there was only this laconic question: Hello, anything happening there? It was followed by a message from Lafayette:
Attention! Attention! Worst affected New
Iberia. Connection between Iberia and
Morgan City seems broken. Send help
there! - Morgan City telephoned in reply: No communications with New
Iberia. Roads and railroads seem
destroyed. Send ships and airplanes to
Vermillion Bay! We need nothing. Have around thirty dead and hundred injured.
- Then a telegram came from Baton Rouge: Received news, worst affected New
Iberia. Concentrate resources New
Iberia. Here need only workers, urgent,
dam in danger of breaking. Doing all
possible. And then: Hello, hello,
Shreveport, Natchitoches, Alexandria sending trains with help to New
Iberia. Hello, hello, Memphis, Winana,
Jackson sending trains via Orleans. All
vehicles heading dam Baton Rouge. - Hello, Pascagoula here. Some dead here. Need help?
By now fire engines, ambulances and
trainfuls of helpers and supplies were on their way to Morgan city - Patterson
- Franklin. It was not until after four
in the morning that the first accurate news arrived: Railroad closed by floods
between Franklin and New Iberia, five miles west of Franklin; seems deep fissure
opened by earthquake, connects with Vermillion Bay and flooded with
seawater. As far as ascertained, fissure
extends from Vermillion Bay east-northeast, near Franklin turns northwards,
opens into Grand Lake, continues northwards until line Plaquemine - Lafayette,
ending in former lake; second branch fissure connects Grand Lake westwards with
Napoleonville Lake. Fissure around fifty
miles total length, width one to seven miles.
Epicenter apparently here. Seems
amazing luck fissure missed all major towns.
Loss of life nonetheless substantial.
In Franklin twenty-four inches rain of mud, in Patterson eighteen
inches. Reports from Atchafalaya Bay,
sea retreated two miles at time of earthquake, then hundred foot tidal
wave. Feared many dead on coast. Still no communication with New Iberia.
Meanwhile a train carrying supplies
from Natchitoches entered New Iberia from the west; the first reports, sent by
a roundabout route via Lafayette and Baton Rouge, were awful. The train had not been able to get closer
than a few miles from New Iberia because the track had been swept away by the
mud. As people fled from the disaster
they reported that a volcano of mud had erupted a couple of miles to the east
of the town and instantly drenched the area with a thin, cold rain of it; New
Iberia, they said, had disappeared under an onslaught of mud. All work was made extremely difficult by the
dark and the continuing rain of mud.
There was still no direct connection with New Iberia.
At the same time, news arrived from
Baton Rouge:
thousands
of men working on mississippi dam stop if only rain would stop stop need picks
shovels trucks workers stop sending help to plaquemine
Dispatch
from Fort Jackson:
one
thirty morning sea wave destroyed thirty houses don't know what it was
approximately seventy people swept to sea only now repaired equipment post
office destroyed hello wire saying what happened urgent telegrapher fred dalton
hello please tell minnie im ok apart from broken hand and loss of clothes but
at least equipment ok fred
The
report from Port Eads was somewhat shorter:
some
dead burywood swept entirely to sea
By
about eight in the morning the first aircraft sent to help the affected areas
had returned. The whole of the coast
from Port Arthur (Texas) to Mobile (Alabama) had been hit by a tidal wave;
ruined or damaged buildings were everywhere.
The south-eastern part of Louisiana (from the road between Lake Charles
and Alexandria to Natchez) and the south of Mississippi (as far as the line
Jackson - Hattiesburg - Pascagoula) were swamped with mud. A new bay stretched inland from Vermillion
Bay, two to eight miles wide and reaching in on a zig-zag line almost as far as
Plaquemine like a long fjord. New Iberia
seemed to have been seriously damaged but many people could be seen digging the
mud away from roads and houses.
Impossible to land. The most
serious loss of life likely to have been on the coast. A steamer, clearly from Mexico, sunk off Point
au Fer. Sea around Chandeleur Islands
covered in debris. Rain easing off over
the entire area. Visibility good.
The first special issue of the New
Orleans paper went out at just after four in the morning; as the day went on
more issues were published and the details accumulated; at eight in the morning
appeared the first photographs of the affected areas with maps of the new
inlets from the sea. At half past eight
they printed an interview with the celebrated seismologist from Memphis
University, Dr. Wilbur R. Bownell, about the cause of the earthquake in
Louisiana. It's still too early to come
to any firm conclusions, the famous scientist declared, but it seems that these
tremors have nothing to do with the volcanic activity, which has been so active
up till now, in the volcano belt of central Mexico which lies directly across
from the affected area. Today's
earthquake seems rather to be of tectonic origin, that's to say it was caused
by the weight and pressure of mountains: one the one side there are the Rocky
Mountains and the Sierra Madre, and on the other side there are Appalachian
Hills on the extensive lowlands of the Gulf of Mexico which continue down to
the mouth of the Mississippi. The chasm
that now runs up from Vermillion Bay is only small and insignificant compared
with the geological collapse that has already created the Gulf of Mexico and
the Caribbean Sea, along with the ring of islands that make up the Greater and
Lesser Antilles, which were once a range of mountains. There is no doubt whatsoever that this
subsidence in central America will continue with new tremors, new faults and
new chasms appearing; it is even possible that the fault running up from
Vermilion Bay is no more than a prelude to the reactivation of the tectonic
process with its center in the Gulf of Mexico; and if that is the case we might
well be witnesses to an enormous geological catastrophe in which nearly a fifth
of the United States might end up as seabed.
But if that really is the case there is a certain likelihood that the
ocean bed in the region of the Antilles will start to rise, or it could be
somewhat further east where, according to the ancient legends, we might hope to
find the sunken city of Atlantis.
On the other hand, the scientist
continued more reassuringly, we need not take seriously any fear of volcanic
activity in the affected areas; these craters hurling mud into the air are
nothing more than eruptions of natural gas which must have been under the
Vermilion fault. It wouldn't be at all
surprising to find gigantic caverns of gas underneath the Mississippi Delta
area, and these caverns of natural gas can explode when they come into contact
with the air, hurling hundreds of thousands of tons of water and mud into the
air as they do so. But of course, before
we can come to any definitive conclusions, Dr. W.R. Brownell repeated, we will
need to obtain more data.
While Dr. Brownell's geological
observations on the catastrophe went to press, the governor of the state of
Louisiana received this telegram from Fort Jackson:
regret
loss of human life stop tried to miss your cities but didn't expect retreat of
seawater and tidal wave after explosion stop found three hundred forty six
human victims along entire coast stop offer condolences stop chief salamander
stop hello fred dalton here fort jackson post office three newts just left who
came in office ten minutes ago sent telegram holding pistol to my head but gone
now vile monsters paid and ran back in water only doctors dog chased them
shouldn't let those creatures free in city no other news send love to minnie
lacoste fred dalton telegrapher
The
governor of the state of Louisiana pored long over this telegram. Some kind of joker, this Fred Dalton, I
reckon, he finally said. Best not to
give this to the papers.
8 -
CHIEF SALAMANDER MAKES HIS DEMANDS
Three days after the earthquake in
Louisiana there was another geological catastrophe announced, this time in
China. The coast of the province of
Kiangsu, north of Nanking, about half way between the mouth of the Yangtse and
the old bed of the Hwangho, was ripped apart in a powerful, thunderous
earthquake; the sea gushed into this fissure and joined up with the great lakes
of Pan Yoon and Hungtsu between the cities of Hwaingan and Fugyang. Apparently as a result of the earthquake, the
Yangtse left its course below Nanking and flowed down towards Lake Tai and on
to Hang-Cho. Loss of human life cannot,
so far, even be estimated. Hundred of
thousands of refugees are fleeing into the provinces to the north and
south. Japanese warships have been given
orders to sail to the affected area.
Although the earthquake in Kiangsu
was far more extensive than the disaster in Louisiana it attracted little
attention in the world press because
everyone was used to catastrophes happening in China and the loss of some
million lives did not seem very important; and besides, it was scientifically
clear that it was only a tectonic earthquake to do with the deep sea trench
near the Riukiu and Philippine archipelagoes.
But three days later, seismographs in Europe registered new tremors
centred somewhere near the Cape Verde Islands.
More detailed reports stated that the coast of Senegambia, south of St.
Louis, had been hit by a serious earthquake.
A deep fissure appeared between Lampul and Mboro, allowing the sea to
gush in through the Merinagh and as far as Wadi Dimar. Eyewitnesses said that a column of fire and
steam had erupted from the ground with a terrible noise, hurling sand and
stones for miles around; and then there was the sound of the sea as it rushed
into the gulf that had been opened up.
There was no significant loss of life.
This third earthquake stirred up
something akin to panic. Were all the
Earths volcanoes becoming active? the
papers asked. The Earths crust is
starting to break up, the popular press declared. Specialists gave their opinion that the
Senegambian gulley may have been no more than the result of a granite eruption
by Mount Pico on the Cape Verde island of Fogo; this volcano had erupted as
recently as 1847 but since then had been considered extinct. In this case, the west African earthquake had
nothing to do with seismic events in Louisiana and Kiangsu which were clearly
tectonic in origin. But nobody seemed to
care whether the Earth was breaking up for tectonic reasons or volcanic. The fact was that all the churches were
filled to capacity that day and in some areas they had to stay open all
night.
At one in the morning on the 20th.
November, radio hams over most of Europe suffered serious interference to their
reception, as if a new and exceptionally strong broadcaster was operating. They located the interference at two hundred
and three metres; it sounded something like the noise of machinery or rushing
water; then the continuous, unchanging noise was suddenly interrupted by a
horrible, rasping noise (everyone described it in the same way: a hollow,
nasal, almost synthetic sounding voice, made all the more so by the electronic
apparatus); and this frog-like voice called excitedly, "Hello, hello,
hello! Chief Salamander speaking. Hello, chief Salamander speaking. Stop all broadcasting, you men! Stop your broadcasting! Hello, Chief Salamander speaking!" And then another, strangely hollow voice
asked: "Ready?" "Ready." There was a click as if the broadcast were
being transferred to another speaker; and then another, unnaturally staccato
voice called: "Attention! Attention!
Attention!"
"Hello!"
"Now!"
A voice was heard in the quiet of
the night; it was rasping and tired-sounding but still had the air of
authority. "Hello you people! This is Louisiana. This is Kiangsu. This is Senegambia. We regret the loss of human life. We have no wish to cause you unnecessary
harm. We wish only that you evacuate
those areas of coast which we will notify you of in advance. If you do as we say you will avoid anything
regrettable. In future we will give you
at least fourteen days notice of the places where we wish to extend our
sea. Incidents so far have been no more
than technical experiments. Your
explosives have proved their worth.
Thank you for them.
"Hello you people! Remain calm. We wish you no harm. We merely need more water, more coastline, more shallows