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 in which to live. There are too many of us. Your coastlines are already too limited for
our needs. For this reason we need to
demolish your continents. We will
convert them into bays and islands. In
this way, the length of coastline can be increased five-fold. We will construct new shallows. We cannot live in deep ocean. We will need your continents as materials to
fill in the deep waters. We wish you no
harm, but there are too many of us. You
will be free to migrate inland. You will
not be prevented from fleeing to the hills.
The hills will be the last to be demolished.
"We are here because you wanted
us. You have distributed us over the
entire world. Now you have us. We wish that you collaborate with us. You will provide us with steel for our picks
and drills. you will provide us with
explosives. You will provide us with
torpedoes. You will work for us. Without you we will not be able to remove the
old continents. Hello you people, Chief
Salamander, in the name of all newts everywhere, offers collaboration with
you. You will collaborate with us in the
demolition of your world. Thank
you."
The tired, rasping voice became
silent, and all that was heard was the constant noise resembling machinery or
the sea. "Hello, hello, you
people," the grating voice began again, "we will now entertain you
with music from your gramophone records.
Here, for your pleasure, is the March of the Tritons from the film,
Poseidon."
The press, of course, said this
nocturnal broadcast was just a "crude joke", some illicit sender; but
there were nonetheless millions of listeners waiting at their receivers the
following night to find out whether the horrible, earnest and rasping voice
would speak again. It was heard at
precisely one o'clock to the accompaniment of a broad howling and hissing like
the sound of the sea. "Good
evening, you people," the voice quacked gaily. "To start tonight's broadcast, we would
like to play you a gramophone recording of the Salamander Dance from your
operetta, Galatea." Once the
shameless clamour of the music had come to its end the voice once more began
its vile and somehow cheerful croaking.
"Hello you people! The
British gunboat, Erebus, has just been torpedoed and sunk in the Atlantic Ocean
after it had attempted to destroy our broadcasting equipment. The entire crew was drowned. Hello, we urge the British government to
issue a statement by radio. The
Amenhotep, registered in Port Said, was reluctant to deliver a cargo of
explosives we had ordered to our port of Makallaha, apparently on the grounds
that orders had been given to refuse any further provisions of explosives. The ship was, of course, sunk. We advise the government of the United
Kingdom to revoke this order by noon tomorrow.
Failure to do so will result in the sinking of the Winnipeg, Manitoba,
Ontario and Quebec, presently underway in the North Atlantic with cargoes of
grain from Canada to Liverpool. Hello,
we urge the French government to issue a statement by radio. You are to call back the cruisers presently
underway to Senegambia. Work to widen
the newly created bay there is still in progress. Chief Salamander has given orders that these
two governments should be reassured of his unshakeable friendship towards
them. End of message. We will now, for your pleasure, play you
gramophone records of Salamandria, valse érotique."
The following afternoon the Manitoba,
Winnipeg, Ontario and Quebec were sunk south-west of Mizen Head. The world was overcome with a wave of
horror. That evening the BBC stated that
His Majesty's Government had prohibited any further supplies of food, chemical
products, machinery, weapons or metals to the newts. At one o'clock that night an excited voice
rasped out from the radio: "Hello, hello, hello, Chief Salamander
speaking! Hello, Chief Salamander is
going to speak!" And then the
tired, croaking and angry voice was heard: "Hello you people! Hello you people! Do you believe we would allow you to starve
us? Do not be so foolish! Whatever you do will be turned against
you! In the name of all newts of the
world I call on Great Britain. With
immediate effect, we declare a total blockade of the British Isles with the
exception of the Irish Free State. The
English Channel will be closed off. The
Suez Canal will be closed off. The
Straits of Gibraltar will be closed to all shipping. All British ports will be closed. All British shipping in whatever part of the
world will be torpedoed. Hello, calling
Germany. Orders of explosives are
increased ten-fold. They are to be made
available immediately at the main depot on the Skagerrak. Hello, calling France. Orders of torpedoes are to be met forthwith
and supplied to underwater forts C3, BFF and Quest 5. Hello you people! You have been warned. If any attempt is made to limit our supplies
of foodstuffs they will be taken from your ships by force. You have been warned." The tired voice declined to a scarcely
comprehensible croaking. "Hello,
calling Italy. You are to prepare for
the evacuation of the territories around Venice, Padova and Udine. You people have been warned, and warned for
the last time. Any more nonsense from
you will not be tolerated." There
was a long pause while nothing was heard but the hissing of the radio like a
cold, black sea. And the gay and
quacking voice was heard once more: "And now we will entertain you with
gramophone records of one of your latest hits, the Triton Trot."
9 -
CONFERENCE IN VADUZ
It was an odd sort of war, if indeed
it could be called a war at all; as there was no newt state nor any
acknowledged newt government which could be officially held responsible for the
hostilities. The first country to find
itself in a state of war with the salamanders was Great Britain. Within the first few hours the newts had sunk
almost all British ships at anchor in harbour; there was nothing that they
could have done about that. A number of
ships on the open sea were, for the time being, comparatively safe, mainly
because they were over deep ocean; in this way part of the Royal Navy was saved
and was able then to break through the newt blockade of Malta and gather over
the depths of the Ionian Sea; but even these units were soon sought out by the
newts in their mini-submarines and sunk one by one. Within six weeks the United Kingdom had lost
four fifths of its total tonnage. John
Bull was given another moment in history to display his famous doggedness. His Majesty's Government refused to negotiate
with the newts and did not call off its ban on giving them any supplies. "An Englishman," declared the prime
minister on behalf of the entire nation, "will protect animals but will
not haggle with them." Just a few
weeks later there was a desperate shortage of foodstuffs in the British
Isles. The last few scraps of bread and
last few spoonfuls of tea or milk were reserved for the children to consume
each day; the British nation bore it with exemplary dignity, despite having
sunk so low that they had even eaten all their racehorses. The Prince of Wales dug the first furrow in
the greens of the Royal Golf Club with his own hand so that carrots could be
grown there for the orphans in London.
Wimbledon tennis courts were turned over to the cultivation of potatoes,
and wheat was sown over the race course at Ascot. "We can endure the greatest of
sacrifices, " the leader of the Conservative Party declared in parliament,
"but British honour is something we will never give up."
The blockade of British coasts was
total, and so England was left with only one way of obtaining supplies and
maintaining communications, and that was by air. "We need a hundred thousand
aircraft," the minister for aviation declared, and all forces were applied
to fulfilling this edict; but then the governments of other European powers
raised bitter protests that this would disturb the balance of power in the
skies; the government of the United Kingdom would have to abandon its plans and
promise never to build more than twenty thousand aircraft and even that not
within the next five years. They would
simply have to remain hungry or pay horrifying prices for foodstuffs supplied
by the aircraft of other states; a loaf of bread cost ten shillings, a rat
sausage one guinea, a box of caviar twenty-five pounds sterling. This was simply a golden age for business,
industry and agriculture on the continent.
All military shipping had been removed at the very start of hostilities,
and so the war against the newts had to be carried out on dry land and from the
air. Armies fired into the water with
their cannons and machine guns but without, it seemed, doing the newts any
serious harm; although the bombs dropped into the sea from aircraft seemed
somewhat more successful. The newts
responded by firing on British ports from their underwater cannons, reducing
them to piles of rubble. They even fired
on London from the Thames Estuary; then the chiefs of staff tried to attack the
salamanders with harmful bacteria, petroleum and acid poured into the Thames
and several other bays and estuaries.
The newts responded by releasing a cloak of poisonous gas over a hundred
miles of British coastline. It was no
more than a demonstration, but it was enough; for the first time in history the
British government was forced to call on foreign powers to intervene on its
behalf, citing the ban on the use of poisonous gas in warfare.
That night, the rasping, angry and
heavy voice of Chief Salamander was heard once again on the airwaves: "Hello you people! England must stop its foolishness! If you poison our water we will poison your
air. We use no more than your own
weapons. We are not barbarians. We have no wish to wage war with people. All we wish is to be allowed to live. We offer you peace. You will supply us with your products and
sell us your land. We are willing to pay
you well. We offer you more than
peace. We offer you trade. We offer you gold for your land. Hello, calling the government of Great
Britain. Tell me your price for the
southern part of Lincolnshire around The Wash.
You have three days to consider the matter. For this period I will suspend all
hostilities apart from the blockades."
At that moment the rumbling of
underwater cannons off the coasts of England ceased. The land cannons were also silent. There was a strange, almost eerie quiet. The British government declared in parliament
that it had no intention of negotiating with animals. The residents of south Lincolnshire were warned
that there was clear danger of a major attack by the newts and that they should
evacuate coastal areas and move inland; the trains, cars and buses provided,
however, carried only children and some women.
All the men remained where they were; it simply did not enter their
heads that an Englishman might lose the land he lives on. One minute after the three-day truce had
expired the shooting began; these were shots from English cannons fired by the
Loyal North Lancashire Regiment to the sound of the regimental march, The Red
Rose. There was then the thunder of an
enormous explosion. The mouth of the
River Nene was flooded up as far as Wisbech and the whole of the area around
The Wash was inundated by the sea. A
number of notable sites collapsed into the water, including the famous Wisbech
Abbey, Holland Castle and the George and Dragon.
The following day the British
government answered questions in parliament: all military measures for the
protection of British coasts had been taken; the possibility of further and
much more extensive attacks on British soil could not be excluded; that His
Majesty's Government was nonetheless unable to negotiate with an enemy which
was unwilling even to spare civilians and women. (Agreement)
This was a time that would not merely determine the fate of England, but
of the entire civilised world. The
United Kingdom would be willing to enter into international agreements which
would limit these terrible and barbaric attacks which threaten the future of
mankind itself.
Some weeks later, the nations of the
world met together in Vaduz.
The conference took place in Vaduz
because in the height of the Alps there was no danger from the newts and
because most of the world's most powerful and socially important people had already
fled there from coastal areas. It was
generally agreed that the conference progressed quickly to reach solutions to
all the worlds' current problems. Every
country (with the exceptions of Switzerland, Afghanistan, Bolivia and some
other land-locked countries) agreed emphatically not to recognise the newts as
an independent military power, mainly because they would then have to
acknowledge their own newts as members of a salamander state; it was even
possible that a salamander state of this sort would want to exercise its
sovereignty over all the shores and waters occupied by newts. For this reason it was legally and
practically impossible to declare war against the newts or put any other sort
of international pressure on them; each state would have the right to take
measures only against its own newts; it would be a purely internal matter. This meant that it was impossible to speak of
any collective diplomatic or military campaign against the newts. Any state that came under attack from the
salamanders could receive international aid only in the form of overseas loans
for them to help defend themselves.
At this, England put forward the
proposal that every state should at least bind itself to stop supplying the
newts with weapons or explosives. After
full consideration the proposal was turned down, mainly because those
obligations were already contained in the London Convention; secondly because
it would not be possible to prevent any state from providing its newts with
equipment and weaponry to defend its own shores "according to its
needs"; and thirdly, seafaring nations would "understandably wish to
maintain good relations with residents of the sea", so that it was deemed
appropriate "not to be precipitate in taking any measure that the newts might
feel to be repressive"; every state was nonetheless willing to promise to
supply weaponry and explosives to any state under attack from the newts.
A suggestion put forward by the
Colombian delegates in private session, that at least unofficial negotiations
with the newts should take place, was accepted.
Chief Salamander was to be invited to send his representatives to the
conference. Great Britain protested
loudly at this and refused outright to sit at the same table with the newts;
but in the end the British delegation had to be content to depart, temporarily,
to Engadin, for reasons of health. That
night, all seafaring powers sent out an invitation to His Excellency Chief
Salamander to name his representatives and send them to Vaduz. The answer was a rasping "Yes; this time
we will come to meet you; next time we will expect your delegates to come into
the water to meet me." The official
announcement followed: "The accredited newt representatives will arrive in
two days time at Buchs station by the Orient Express."
Every preparation for the arrival of
the newts was made with all haste; the most luxurious bathrooms in the city
were prepared for them and a special train was chartered to bring cisterns of
sea water for the newt delegates to bathe in.
The reception for them that evening at the railway station in Vaduz had
been meant to be unofficial, but it was still attended by many of the
delegates' secretaries, representatives of government offices and around two
hundred journalists, photographers and film makers. At exactly twenty-five minutes past six the
Orient Express arrived at the station and came to a halt beside the red
carpet. From the saloon car emerged
three tall and elegant gentlemen with a number of sophisticated-looking
secretaries carrying heavy briefcases.
"Where are the newts, then?" somebody muttered. Two or three officials went forward
uncertainly to meet the three gentlemen; but the first of the gentlemen had
already begun, quickly and quietly, to say, "We are the newt delegation. I'm Professor van Dott from The Hague. Maître Rosso Castelli, avocat de Paris. Doctor Manoel Carvalho, avocado of
Lisbon." The officials bowed and
introduced themselves.
"So
you are not newts, then," the French secretary said with a sigh.
"Of
course we are not newts," said Dr. Castelli. We are their lawyers. Excuse me, but I think these gentlemen might
want to take some photographs." And
then the photographers and newsreel makers took a great many pictures of the
smiling newt delegation. The secretaries
of the legatees already present also showed their pleasure. It was, after all, only reasonable and proper
that the newts should send human beings to represent them. Human beings were easier to deal with. And most of all, it would avoid certain
social unpleasantnesses. The first
discussions with the newts' delegates took place that same night, addressing
the question of how to renew peace with the United Kingdom as soon as possible. Professor van Dott asserted that there was no
question that the newts had come under attack from Great Britain; the British
gunboat, Erebus, had fired on the newts radio ship on the open sea; the British
admiralty had broken peaceful trading with the newts by preventing the
Amenhotep from unloading the cargo of explosives they had ordered; thirdly, the
British government had instigated a blockade against the newts by its ban on
their receiving any supplies of any sort.
The newts were unable to make a complaint about these hostile acts
either at The Hague, because the London Convention denied them the right to
make any complaint, or in Geneva, because the newts were not a member of the
United Nations; they were therefore left with no alternative but to defend
themselves. Chief Salamander was
nonetheless willing to end hostilities under, of course, the following
conditions: 1. The United Kingdom was to apologise for the offences cited
above; 2. All restrictions on supplies to the newts were to be lifted; 3. As
compensation, the newts were to be ceded the lowland areas of the Punjab where
they would create new bays and shorelines.
The chairman of the conference stated that he would pass these
conditions on to his honourable friend, the representative of the United
Kingdom, who was currently unable to attend; however he made no secret of his
fear that Britain would find these conditions difficult to accept; but we could
all hope that they might be the starting point for further negotiations.
Next on the agenda was the complaint
by France about the newts having caused explosions on the coast of Sengambia,
thus interfering in a French colonial dependency. This was answered by the famous Parisian
lawyer, Dr. Julien Rosso Castelli.
"Prove it!" he said.
Seismographs around the world indicate that the earthquake in Senegambia
was of volcanic origin and was connected with volcanic activity in Mount Pico
on the island of Fogo. "Here in
this dossier," he declared as he slapped his hand against it, "are
all the scientific proofs you need. If,
on the other hand, you have any proof that the earthquake in Senegambia was
caused by any activity of my clients, then we await them with interest."
BELGIAN
DELEGATE, CREUX: Your Chief Salamander declared himself that it was done by the
newts"
PROFESSOR
VAN DOTT: His speech was not official.
M.
ROSSO CASTELLI: We are authorised by our clients to deny the contents of that
speech. I request that expert witnesses
be heard on whether the technology is available to create a fissure in the
Earths crust sixty-seven kilometres long.
I suggest they should try the experiment of creating such a
fissure. Unless, gentlemen, you have
proof of the opposite, then we will be forced to talk of volcanic
activity. Nevertheless, the bay created
in Senegambia would be suitable for settlement by a population of newts and
Chief Salamander is willing to purchase it from the government of France. We are authorised by our clients to negotiate
a price.
FRENCH
DELEGATE, MINISTER DEVAL: If this is understood to be an offer of compensation
for the damage caused, then we are willing to discuss the matter.
M.
ROSSO CASTELLI: Very well. Although the newt government does request that the
contract of purchase cover also the territory of the Landes, extending from the
mouth of the Gironde as far as Bayonne, an area covering six thousand seven
hundred square kilometres. In other
words, the newt government is willing to buy this piece of land in southern
France.
MINISTER
DEVAL (native of Bayonne, member of parliament for Bayonne): So that these
salamanders of yours turn part of France into seabed? Never!
Never!
DR.
ROSSO CASTELLI: France will come to regret these words of yours, monsieur. Today we have still been talking of
purchase.
At
this, the session was brought to an end.
The
subject of the next meeting was a substantial international offer made to the
newts: to cause damage to established and densely populated was unacceptable,
but they would be able to build new shores and islands for themselves; in which
case they could be assured of substantial loans to cover the costs; the new
lands and island would then be recognised as their independent and sovereign
territory.
DR.
MANOEL CARVALHO, renowned lawyer from Lisbon, offered his thanks for this
proposal which he would convey to the newts; but any child could understand, he
said, that building new land would take much longer and cost far more than
demolishing old land. Our clients are in
need of new bays and shorelines as soon as possible; it is for them a matter of
life and death. It would be better for
mankind to accept Chief Salamander's generous offer of buying the world from
the human beings instead of taking it by force.
Our clients have found a way of extracting the gold contained in
seawater; so that they have almost unlimited means; they would be able to pay
for your world very well, very well indeed.
You would do well to bear in mind that, from their point of view, the
price of the world will become lower with time, especially if - as might well
be expected - any further volcanic or tectonic disasters take place which might
well be far larger than anything we have been witness to so far, and these
might well substantially reduce the size of the continents. Today you still have the opportunity to sell
the world while it is still its present size; when there is nothing left above
water but the ruins of a few mountains no-one will want to pay you a penny for
it. I am here as representative and
legal advisor for the newts, and it is my duty to defend their interests; but I
am also a human being just like yourselves, gentlemen, and the well-being of
mankind is just as close to my heart as it is to yours. This is why I advise you, indeed I implore
you: Sell the continents before it is too late!
You can sell them as a whole or sell them country by country. Everyone now is aware of Chief Salamander's
generosity and modernity; he gives his assurance that in the course of these
unavoidable changes to be made to the surface of the Earth everything possible
will be done to protect human life; the continents will be flooded in stages
and in a way that will avoid any panic or unnecessary catastrophe. We have been authorised to negotiate either
with the this illustrious world conference as a whole or with individual
states. The presence of such outstanding
lawyers such as Professor van Dott and Maître Julien Rosso Castelli is your assurance that
we are concerned not only to defend the legitimate interests of our clients but
will also co-operate closely with yourselves to protect those things that are
dearest to us all; human culture and the
good of all mankind.
The atmosphere of the conference had
become somewhat tense when another proposal was put forward: that the
salamander should be allowed to flood and occupy central China; in return for
which the newts would bind themselves in perpetuity to stay away from the
shores of Europe and its population.
DR.
ROSSO CASTELLI: In perpetuity, that is rather a long time. Let us say for a period of twenty years.
PROFESSOR
VAN DOTT: Central China is not a very large area. Let us say the provinces of Nganhuei, Honan,
Kiangsu, Chi-li and Fung-tien.
The Japanese representative
protested at the ceding of Fung-tien which lay in the Japanese sphere of
interest. The Chinese delegate said something,
but nobody, unfortunately, was able to understand him. There was an air of growing anxiety in the
negotiating chamber; it was already one o'clock in the morning.
Just then the secretary to the
Italian delegation came into the room and whispered something into the ear of
the Italian representative, Count Tosti.
The count turned pale, stood up, and although the Chinese delegate, Dr.
Ti, was still speaking, he called out hoarsely: "Mister Chairman, may I
say something. Reports have just come through
that the newts have flooded part of the region of Venice near
Portogruaro."
There was a chill silence, broken
only by the Chinese delegate who was still speaking.
"Chief Salamander did warn you
of this long ago," grumbled Dr. Carvalho.
Professor van Dott turned
impatiently and raised his hand.
"Mister Chairman, may we return to the subject at hand. We were discussing the province of Fung-tien. We have been authorised to offer the Japanese
government compensation for it in the form of gold. The question following on from that is what
our clients would receive from the states concerned for the task of evacuating
China."
At that moment, radio hams were
listening to the newts broadcast.
"You have just been listening to the barcarolle from The Tales of
Hoffmann on gramophone records," the announcer rasped. "Hello, hello, we are now transferring
you to Venice."
And then, all that could be heard
was a black and fathomless soughing, like the sound of rising water.
10
- MR. POVONDRA BLAMES HIMSELF
Who would have thought so much time
had flowed by? Our Mr. Povondra isn't
even the doorman any more at G.H. Bondy's house; now, you might say, he is a
venerable old man who can enjoy the fruits of his old and industrious life in
peace as a pensioner; although his pension doesn't go very far these times of
high wartime prices! He still goes out
now and then to do some fishing; sitting in his boat with his fishing rod and
watching how the water flows by day after day and all the things that go by
with it! Sometimes he hooks a dace,
sometimes a bass; there seem to be more of them nowadays, maybe because all the
rivers are so much shorter. Mind you,
there's nothing wrong with a nice bass;
It's a bit boney sometimes, but the flesh is nice, tastes a bit like
almonds. And mother knows just how to
cook it. What Mr. Povondra doesn't know,
though, is that mother usually uses those newspaper cuttings that he used to
collect and arrange for the fire to cook the bass. He didn't keep up his collection, though, not
went he started taking his pension; he got himself an fish tank instead where
he keeps some goldfish; and he keeps some little newts in there too; sits there
for hours, he does, watching them as they lay in the water without moving, or
climbing out onto the little bank he made them with some gravel; then hell turn
round and say: "Who'd have thought it, mother?" But you've got to do more than just sit there
and watch, that's why Mr. Povondra took up keeping fish. Keep yourself busy, you've always got to keep
yourself busy, thought Mother Povondra contentedly. Better than if he went out drinking or got
involved in politics.
A lot of water, truly a lot of water
had flowed under the bridges on the Vltava.
Even little Frank isn't at school learning about geography any more,
he's not even a young man tearing his socks as he rushes after the silly things
young men rush after. He's getting older
himself, young Frank; he's got himself a good job at the post office, he has,
so it's turned out quite useful that he did learn all that geography. He's starting to get a bit of sense too,
thought Mr. Povondra as he guided his boat out onto the water by one of the
bridges. Hell be coming round, today;
it's Sunday and he won't be working.
I'll take him out in the boat and we can go upstream up to the tip of
Střelecký Island; the fish bite better up there; and Frank can tell me all
about what's in the papers. Then we can
go back home to his wife and the two nippers - it wasn't long since Mr.
Povondra had relaxed into the quiet joy of being a grandfather. Mind you, it was already a year now since
little Marie had started school, she likes school; and there was little Frank,
his grandson, nearly weighs five stone already, he does. Mr. Povondra had a strong and deep feeling
that everything was right with the world.
But there was Frank waiting on the
bank waving to him, and Mr. Povondra rowed over. "Glad you've come, mind you it's no more
than you should do," he added.
"Mind you don't fall in the water now."
"Are they biting?" his son
asked.
"Not really," the old man
grumbled. "Lets go upstream a bit,
shall we?"
It was a pleasant Sunday afternoon;
still not time when those madmen and layabouts all come out from their football
matches or whatever else they do. Prague
was empty and quiet; the few people who wandered along the sides of the river
and over the bridges weren't in any hurry as they ambled along decently and
with dignity. They were decent
reasonable people, not like those crowds who gather and laugh at the fishermen
on the Vltava. Once again, Father
Povondra had that nice deep feeling that all was well with the world.
"What's in the papers then,
Son?" he asked with the curtness of a father.
"Nothing much, Dad," his
son answered. "I saw that those newts have got up as far as Dresden,
though."
"Germanys had it then,"
Mr. Povondra asserted. "They're funny people you know, those Germans. They're well educated, but they're
funny. I knew a German once, chauffeur
he was for some factory; and he wasn't half coarse, this German. Mind you, he kept the car in good condition,
I'll say that for him. And now look,
Germanys disappearing from the map of the world," Mr. Povondra
ruminated. "And all that fuss they
used to make! Terrible, it was:
everything for the army and everything for the soldiers. But not even they were any match for these
newts. And I know about these newts, you
know that, don't you. Remember when I
took you out to show you one of them when you were only so high?"
"Watch out, Dad," said his
son, "you've got a bite."
"That's only a tiddler,"
the old man grumbled as he twitched on his rod.
Even Germany now, he thought to himself.
No-one even bats an eyelid at it these days. What a song and dance they used to make at
first whenever these newts flooded anywhere!
Even if it was only Mesopotamia or China, the papers were full of
it. Not like that now, Mr. Povondra
contemplated sadly, staring out at his rod.
You get used to anything, I suppose.
At least they're not here, though; but I wish the prices weren't so
high! Think what they charge for coffee
these days! I suppose that's what you
have to expect if they go and flood Brazil.
If part of the world disappears underwater it has its effect in the
shops.
The float on Mr. Povondra's line
danced about on the ripples of the water.
How much of the world is it they've flooded so far then?, the old man
considered. There's Egypt and India and
China - they've even gone into Russia; and that was a big country, that was,
Russia! When you think, all the way up from the Black Sea as
far the Arctic Circle - all water! You
can't say they haven't taken a lot of our land from us! And their only going slowly ..
"Up as far as Dresden then, you
say?" the old man spoke up.
"Ten miles short of
Dresden. That means almost the whole of
Saxony will soon be under water."
"I went there once with Mr.
Bondy," Father Povondra told him.
"Ever so rich, they were there, Frank. The food wasn't much good though. Nice people, though. Much better than the Prussians. No comparison."
"Prussia's gone now as well,
though."
"I'm not surprised," the
old man said regretfully. "I don't
like those Prussians. It's good for the
French, though, if Germanys in trouble.
Give them a chance for some peace, now."
"I don't think so, Dad,"
Frank objected. "They were saying
in the papers not long ago how a good third of France is under water
now." Mr. Povondra sighed deeply.
"There was a Frenchman working
for us at Mr. Bondy's, a servant, Jean his name was. And he was a one for the ladies, ruddy
disgrace it was. See, it always comes
back to you if you're not responsible, like that."
"But they say the newts are
within ten miles of Paris," his son, Frank, told him. "They had tunnels everywhere and then
blew the whole place up. They
slaughtered two army divisions, they say."
"They make good soldiers, the
French," said Mr. Povondra with the air of an expert. "That Jean never used to put up with
anything either. I don't what made him like
that. Smelt just like a perfume shop,
but if he got into a fight he really would fight. But two divisions in the newts' army - that's
not much really. When you think about
it," the old man considered, "people were better off when they were
fighting with other people. And it
didn't take them all this time either.
It's twenty years it's been going on with the newts, now, and still
nothing's happened, they're still making preparations for getting the best
positions. But when I think of when I
was a young man, now those were battles!
Three million people there were on one side and three million on the
other," and the old man gesticulated and made the boat rock, "and
then it was a Hell of a battle when they got together - but they can't even get
themselves a proper war these days.
They've always got the same concrete embankments up and never even come
together with bayonets. Not a bit of
it!"
"But newts and people can't go
into battle like that, Dad," said
Povondra junior in defence of the modern
style of warfare. "You just can't
make a bayonet charge underwater."
"You're quite right,"
grumbled Mr. Povondra with contempt.
"They just can't get together properly. But put an army of people against an army of
people, and then you'll see what they can do.
And what do you know about war, anyway?"
"I just hope they don't come
here," said Frank, rather unexpectedly.
"When you've got kids, you know ..."
"What do you mean, come
here," asked the startled Mr. Povondra senior. "What, here, all the way to Prague, you
mean?"
"Not just Prague, anywhere in
the country," the worried Povondra junior replied. "If the newts have already got as far as
Dresden then I think ..."
"You think too much, you
do," Mr. Povondra reprimanded him.
"How would they get here? What,
across all these mountains surrounding the country?"
"They could come up the Elbe
and from there up into the Vltava."
At this idea, Father Povondra
snorted in disgust. "Don't talk
rubbish! Up the Elbe? They might get some of the way up but not all
the way. It's all rocks and mountains in
the way. I've been there, I've seen
them. Not a bit of it, the newts won't
get here, well be alright. And
Switzerland too, they'll be alright too.
It's cause we haven't got any coastline, see, big advantage that
is. It's if your country borders on the
sea, that's when your in trouble."
"But there's sea now as close
as Dresden ..."
"That's Germany, that is,"
the old man retorted. "That's their
business. But the newts can't get as far
as us, it stands to reason. They'd have
to get all the mountains out the way first; and I don't think you've got much
idea how much work that'd be!"
"Well that's nothing for
them," young Mr. Povondra objected gloomily. "They do that sort of thing all the
time! Think of Guatemala; they flooded a
whole range of mountains there."
"Down there it's
different," said the old man confidently.
"Don't talk such rubbish, Frank!
That was down in Guatemala, not here in Europe. Things are different here." Young Mr. Povondra sighed.
"As you say, Dad. But when you think that those horrors have
already flooded about a fifth of all the land .."
"Only where it's next to the
sea, you daft ha'p'orth, not anywhere else.
You just don't understand about politics. It's those countries that are next to the
sea, they're the ones that have been at war with the newts, not us. Were neutral, we are, and that's why they
can't do anything against us. That's
just how it is. And now keep quiet for a
bit, else we won't catch anything."
Over the water was peace and
quiet. The trees on Střelecký
Island already cast long and delicate shadows on the surface of the
Vltava. Trams jangled over the bridge,
nannies pushing prams ambled along the banks, the people out on this Sunday
afternoon were gay and friendly ...
"Dad?" exclaimed young
Povondra, almost like a child.
"What is it?"
"Is that a catfish there?"
"Where?" Out of the river, just by the National
Theatre, there protruded a large black head moving slowly upstream.
"Is that a catfish,"
Povondra junior said again. The old man
put down his fishing rod.
"That there?" he
exclaimed, pointing at it with a shaking finger. "That?" The black head disappeared under the
water. "That wasn't a catfish,
Frank," explained the old man in a voice that hardly seemed his own. "We might as well go home, now. We've all had it."
"Had what?"
"A newt. That was a newt, they're here. Lets go home," he repeated as he fumbled
to put his rod away. "We've all had
it."
"You're shaking," said
Frank anxiously. "What's
wrong?"
"Lets just go home," the
old man stuttered crossly as his chin quivered.
"I'm cold. I'm cold. That's all we needed! We've had it.
They're here now. Oh Christ it's
cold! I want to go home."
Young Mr. Povondra glanced at him
quizzically and took hold of the oars.
"I'll take there you, Dad," he said in a worried voice and
drove the boat to the island with a few strong strokes of the oars. "Just leave it, I'll tie the boat
up."
"Whys it so cold?" the old
man wondered as his teeth chattered.
"I'll keep hold of you,
Dad. Just come with me," he urged
as he took him by the arm. "I think
you must have caught a cold on the water.
It was just a piece of wood, that's all." The old man was shaking like a leaf.
"Piece of wood? Don't give me that! I know what I saw! It was a newt! Let go of me!" Mr. Povondra junior did something he had
never done in his life before; he hailed a taxi and pushed his father in as he
told the driver where to go.
"I'll take you, Dad, it's
getting late."
"It's already too late,"
his father raved. "It's much too
late. We've all had it, Frank. That wasn't a piece of wood. That was them!" When they got home, young Mr. Povondra almost
had to carry his father up the stairs.
"Get the bed ready, Mum,"
he whispered quickly at the door.
"We've got to put Dad to bed, he's been taken ill all of a
sudden."
So there was Father Povondra lying
under the bedclothes; his nose peeking strangely out from his face and his lips
murmuring and mumbling something that could not be understood; how old he
looked, how old! Then he became a little
calmer ...
"Are you feeling better now,
Dad?" At the foot of the bed was
Mother Povondra, her hand to her mouth and weeping into her apron; their daughter
in law was tending the stove and the children, Frank and Marie, gazed wide-eyed
at their grandfather as if they hardly knew him. "Are you sure you don't want a doctor,
Dad?" Father Povondra looked at the
children and whispered something; then his eyes suddenly filled with
tears. "Is there anything you need,
Dad?"
"Yes, yes there is
something," the old man whispered.
"Something you ought to know.
It's all my fault. If only I'd
never let that sea captain in to see Mr. Bondy, if I'd never let him in, all
this would never have happened ..."
"It's alright, nothing's
happened, Dad," young Povondra tried to soothe him.
"You don't understand these
things," the old man gasped.
"We've all had it, don't you see that? It's the end of the world. It's going to be all sea even here, even here
now that the newts are here. And it's
all my fault; I should never have let that sea captain in to see Mr.
Bondy. Everyone ought to know, they
ought to know whose fault it all is."
"Nonsense," his son
replied sharply. "You shouldn't be
thinking like this, Dad. It's everyone's
fault. It's governments' fault, it's big business's fault. Everyone wanted to have all the newts they
could get. We all wanted to get as much
out of the newts as we could. That's why
we sent them all those weapons and all that - it's all our faults."
Mr. Povondra looked up crossly. "It always used to be nothing but sea,
and that's how it's going to be again.
It's the end of the world.
Somebody told me once that even Prague was seabed once. I think it must have been the newts that did
it then as well. I should never have let
that sea captain in to see Mr. Bondy.
There was something that kept telling me, don't do it, and then I
thought to myself, perhaps I'll get a tip from this sea captain. And then, he never did. That's how you destroy the whole world you
see, all for nothing ..." The old
man gulped back something like a tear.
"I know, I know full well, we've all had it. It's the end of the world, and it's all my
fault ..."
"Grandfather, wouldn't you like
to have some tea?" asked the young Mrs. Povondra sympathetically.
"All I want," the old man
sighed, "all I want is for these children to forgive me."
11
- THE AUTHOR TALKS TO HIMSELF
"Well you can't just leave it
like that, can you!" the authors internal voice declared.
Well, why not? asked the author,
rather unsure of himself.
"You mean you're going to let
Mr. Povondra die like that?"
Well I don't want to do it like that
but, well, Mr. Povondra's an old man after all, he must be well over seventy
...
"And you're going to leave him
to die in a state of mental torture like that?
Can't you even say something like But
Grandad, it's not as bad as all that, the newts won't destroy the world,
mankind will save itself, just you wait and see? Surely there's something you can do for
him!"
I suppose I could get a doctor for
him, the author suggested. Suppose the
old man has had an attack of nerves; or at that age he could have had a lung
inflammation, which, thanks be to God, he survives; and he could still sit
little Marie on his knee and ask what she's been learning in school. All the joys of old age, I could let the old
man have all the joys of old age.
"Fine sort of joys of old age
that is," the internal voice sneered.
"Hell hug the child with his ancient hands and all the time hell be
thinking - thinking with horror - that one day shell be fleeing from the rush
of water inexorably flooding the whole world; hell wrinkle his bushy brow and
whisper in a voice of dread: That's what I did, Marie, that's what I did. Listen, do you really want to have the whole
of mankind destroyed?"
The author frowned. Don't ask me what I want. Do you think I wanted to see the continents
where people live reduced to rubble, do you think I wanted it to end like
this? That was just the logical course
of events; what could I have done to stop that?
I did everything I could; I gave people enough warning; what about that
X, that was partly me. I warned them,
don't give the newts weapons and explosives, stop this vile trading in
salamanders, and so on - and you saw how it all turned out. They all had a thousand good economic and
political reasons why they couldn't stop.
I'm not a politician or a businessman; how am I supposed to persuade
them about these things. What are we
supposed to do; quite likely the world will collapse and disappear under water;
but at least that will happen for political and economic reasons we can all
understand, at least it will happen with the help of science technology and
public opinion, with human ingenuity of all sorts! Not some cosmic catastrophe but just the same
old reasons to do with the struggle for power and money and so on. There's nothing we can do about that.
The internal voice was quiet for a
while. "And don't you feel sorry
for mankind?"
Hold on, not so fast!
Nobody's saying the whole of mankind has to be destroyed. All the newts want is more shoreline where
they can live and lay their eggs. Maybe
what they'll do is turn the continents into lots of long strings so that
there's as much shoreline as possible.
What if there are still some people surviving on these strips of
land? And there they can work metal and
other things for the salamanders. As the
newts can't work with fire themselves, can they.
"So mankind will be put into
the service of the newts."
Yes, if that's what you want to call
it. They'll simply be working in
factories like they do now. They'll just
have different masters, that's all. So
that means it might not be so different after all ...
"And don't you feel sorry for
mankind?"
Oh, just leave me alone, for Gods
sake! What am I supposed to do about
it? It is what the people wanted, don't
forget; they all wanted to have newts, they wanted commerce, industry and
technology; civil authorities and military authorities, they all wanted it;
even Povondra junior said so: it's all
of our faults. How do you think I could
not feel sorry for mankind, anyway? And
most of all, I felt sorry for them when I saw how, of their own free will and
whatever the cost, how they were hurtling to their own perdition. It'd be enough to make anyone scream. He'd shout and raise his hands as if he'd
seen a train going down the wrong track.
And now it can't be stopped. The
newts are going to keep on multiplying on and on and on and they'll go on
demolishing the old continents on and on.
Think what it was that Wolf Meynert said about the newts: that people would have to make way for them;
and it would only be the salamanders that would create a world that was happy,
unified and uniform ...
"Oh come on, now! Wolf Meynert?
Wolf Meynert was an intellectual.
You think up something as vile and murderous and nonsensical as this and
you think Wolf Meynert is going to save the world? Never mind, leave it. What do you think Marie might be doing
now?"
Marie? I suppose she's out playing somewhere. Don't make a noise, they told her, Grandad's
asleep. But she doesn't know what's
happening and it's a very long time before ...
"And what's she actually
doing?"
Don't know. Maybe she's trying to touch her nose with the
tip of her tongue.
"There, you see? And you'd let something like a new Great
Flood come along."
Just stop it, will you. I can't work miracles. What has to happen will happen! Things run along their inevitable course. And even that's reassuring in its way: that
everything that happens has its own necessity and follows certain rules.
"Couldn't the newts be stopped
in some way?"
No.
There are too many of them.
They've got to have room to live in.
"What about if they all died
out in some way? Something like some
kind of epidemic or degeneration..."
No, that's too cheap and easy. Why should nature have to put right what's
been done by man? See? - not even you
think they could do anything to save themselves now. You basically think something will come along
from somewhere else. I'll tell you
something: do you know who it is that still - even now when a fifth of Europe
is already underwater - is still providing the newts with explosives and
torpedoes and drills? Do you know who it
is that's working feverishly in all the laboratories, trying to find even more
effective machines and materials for sweeping the world out of existence? Do you know who it is who's lending the newts
money, who it is who's financing the end of the world, this new Flood?
"Yes, I know. All the factories. All the banks. All the countries in the world."
Well then! If it was just newts against people it might
be possible to do something; but when it's people against people then there's
no way of stopping it, is there.
"Hold on, people against
people! I've just thought of
something. What if it was newts against
newts?"
Newts against newts. How do you mean?
"Well what if for instance ...
if there are too many newts they might start squabbling about some tiny stretch
of coast or some bay or something; then they can start fighting about bigger
and bigger lengths of coast until they get into a big struggle about all the
coastlines in the world, eh? Newts
against newts! How's that, wouldn't that
follow the natural course of events?"
Er, no, that wouldn't work. You can't have newts fighting with
newts. That wouldn't be natural. The newts are just one species.
"Well people are just one
species too, aren't they. And it's never
stopped them fighting with each other; all the same species and think of all
the excuses for war they've used! It
hasn't had to be about space to live in, it's been about power, prestige,
influence, fame, resources and I don't know what else! Why couldn't the newts start fighting among
themselves about something like prestige?"
Why would they do that? What do you think they'd get out of it?
"Nothing, except that some of
them would get more coast to live on for a short time and a bit more power than
the others. And then after a while it'd
be the other way round."
And why would some have more power
than the others? They're all the same,
after all, they're all newts; they've all got the same skeleton, they're all as
ugly as each other and all as mediocre as each other. What would make them start killing each
other? Just tell me what you think it is
that they might start fighting over.
"Just leave them to it and
they'll soon find something. If there's
one group living on the western shore and another on the eastern, they'll
probably start to despise each other in the name of West against East. And, here you've got the European salamanders
while down there there are the African; it'd be strange if one lot didn't want
to be better than the others! So they
can go and teach the others a lesson in the name of civilisation, or
expansionism or I don't know what: they're bound to think of some kind of ideal
or political reason which means that newts on one shore will have to go and
beat up the newts on the other shore.
The salamanders are as civilised as we are, don't forget; they won't be
short of arguments to do with power or commercial interests or legal rights or
culture of some such."
And they've got plenty of
weapons. Don't forget they're
fantastically well armed.
"Yep, they've got plenty of
weapons. And they could learn how it is
that history's made from the example given by people, couldn't they!"
Hold on a sec., hold on. (The author jumps up and starts to pace
excitedly around his study.) You're
right, it would be strange if they didn't do it! I can see it now. You only need to look at the map of the world
- where's that map, I've got one here somewhere, where is it?
"There it is."
Right. So here's the Atlantic, there's the
Mediterranean, the North Sea. Europe
here, America there - so this here is the cradle of culture and modern
civilisation. And somewhere there is the
sunken city of Atlantis ...
"And now that's where the newts
are flooding Atlantis all over again."
That's it. And here is ... the Pacific, the Indian
Ocean. The ancient and mysterious
Orient. The cradle of civilisation, as
they say. And somewhere here, somewhere
to the east of Africa, is the mythical island of Lemuria that was flooded. Sumatra, and a bit to the east of Sumatra ...
"The little island of Tana
Masa. The cradle of the newts."
Exactly. And that's where King Salamander, the
spiritual leader of all the newts, has his court. Captain van Toch's tapa-boys still live
there, the original newts in the Pacific, and still half wild. So this is their Orient. The whole area is called Lemuria now, while
the other area, the civilised, Europeanised or Americanised area where they use
all the modern technology, that's Atlantis.
So Chief Salamander rules there as a dictator, the great conqueror,
soldier and inventor, the Genghis Khan of the newts and destroyer of dry
land. Now he will be a magnificent
figure.
("... but, do you think he's
really a newt?")
(... No. Chief Salamander is human. His real name is Andreas Schultze, and he
took part in the Great War as an NCO somewhere)
("So that's it!")
(Yes, that's it, now you've got
it.) So there's Atlantis here, Lemuria
there. They form two different groups
because of geography, administration, cultural differences ..
"... and national
differences. Don't forget about national
differences. The Lemurian salamanders
speak Pidgin English, whereas the Atlantic ones speak Basic English."
Yes, alright. As time goes by, the Atlantic newts go
through the old Suez Canal into the Indian Ocean ..
"Naturally, the classic way to
the East."
Right. And at the same time, the Lemurian newts
press on around the Cape of Good Hope to the western coast of what had been
Africa, asserting that the whole of Africa is part of Lemuria.
"Naturally."
They use slogans such as, Lemuria
for Lemurians, Out with the Foreigners, and so on. A gulf of mistrust develops between Atlanta
and Lemuria and old enmities are revived.
Their hatred becomes a matter of life and death.
"Or else they develop into
different nations."
Yes.
The Atlantians despise the Lemurians and call them filthy savages; the Lemurians have a fanatical hatred for the
Atlantian newts and see them as imperialists, western devils, and corruptors of
the ancient purity of newtdom. Chief
Salamander forces the Lemurians to grant concessions on their shores,
supposedly in the interests of trade and civilisation. King Salamander, the noble patriarch of the Lemurians,
has to grant these concessions against his will because they have less
weapons. Things flare up in the mouth of
the Tigris, not far from where Baghdad used to be: the native Lemurians attack
the Atlantian colonists, killing two of their officers, supposedly because of
some insult to their nation. And as a
result of that ...
".. it leads to war. Naturally."
Yes, there's a world war of newts
against newts.
"In the name of culture and
decency."
And in the name of True
Newtdom. In the name of Glory and
Greatness. Their slogan is, It's us or
them! The Lemurians, armed with Malay kukries
and daggers cut down the Atlantian intruders without mercy; but the Atlantian
newts have been educated by Europeans and are more advanced and release
poisonous chemicals and specially cultured bacteria into the Lemurian Sea and
these weapons are so effective they poison all the oceans of the world. The sea is infected with artificially
cultivated plague. And that's it. All the newts die.
"All of them?"
All of them. Down to the very last one. They'll become an extinct species. All that'll be left of them will be the old
fossil of Andrias Scheuchzeri in Öhningen.
"And what about the
people?"
The people? Oh, yes, the people. Well, bit by bit they start to come back down
from the hills back down to the coasts of what's left of the continents; but
the ocean will still be full of the stench of decomposing newts. The continents slowly grow back because of
the silt deposited by rivers; the sea is pushed back bit by bit, and everything
will be almost the same as it was before.
There's a new legend about a Great Flood sent by God to punish man for
his sins. And there will be new legends
about lands that disappeared under the water, and these lands will have been
the cradle of human civilisation; and there will myths and legends about places
like England and France and Germany ...
"And then?"
... and then, I don't really know.
| Translated by David Wyllie Translations into English from Czech, German or French Dandelion |