by Karel Čapek
By contrast, the Newts exhibit considerable sensitivity to chemical factors: in experiments with greatly diluted alkali, industrial effluent, tanning agents, etc., their skin peeled off in strips and the experimental animals died of some kind of gangrene of the gills. This means that the Newts are not in fact suited to our rivers.
In a further series of experiments we succeeded in determining how long a Newt can survive without food. They can go hungry for three weeks and more without showing any signs other than a certain lethargy. I let one experimental Newt starve for six months; for the final three months it slept incessantly and motionlessly; when I finally threw chopped liver into his tank it was so weakened that it failed to react at all and had to be artificially fed. After a few days it ate normally and was suitable for further experiments.
The final set of experiments was concerned with the Newts’ powers of regeneration. If a Newt has its tail cut off it will grow a new one within a fortnight; with one Newt we repeated this experiment seven times with the same result. Likewise it will grow any severed legs again. In the case of one experimental animal we amputated all its four extremities and its tail; within thirty days it was again complete. If a Newt’s femur or shoulder-blade is broken its whole limb drops off and a new one grows in its place. The same is true if one of its eyes is removed or its tongue cut out; it is a matter of some interest that a Newt whose tongue we removed forgot how to talk and had to be taught afresh. If a Newt’s head is cut off or its body severed between its neck and pelvic bone the animal dies. On the other hand it is possible to remove its stomach, part of its intestines, two-thirds of its liver and other organs without damage to its vital functions; it can therefore be stated that an all but eviscerated Newt is still capable of life. No other animal has such resistance to all sorts of injury as a Newt. In that respect it would make a first-rate, almost indestructible, warfare animal; unfortunately its peacefulness and defencelessness militate against such use.
Alongside these experiments my assistant Dr Walter Hinkel investigated the Newt’s value in terms of useful raw materials. He established in particular that the Newts’ bodies contain an exceptionally high proportion of iodine and phosphorus; it is not impossible that in case of need these important elements could be extracted industrially. The skin of Newts, inferior in itself, can be ground up and fed into powerful presses to produce an artificial leather that is light, reasonably strong and could serve as a substitute for ox-hide. Their fat is unfit for human consumption because of its revolting flavour but it is suitable as an industrial lubricant on account of its very low solidification point. Their flesh has also been considered to be unfit for consumption and indeed poisonous; when eaten raw it causes acute pain, vomiting and sensual hallucinations. Dr Hinkel established after numerous experiments conducted on himself that these harmful effects disappear if the cut meat is scalded with hot water (as in the case of some toadstools) and after thorough rinsing is pickled for twenty-four hours in a weak permanganate solution. After that it can be boiled or steamed, and will taste like inferior beef. In this way we consumed a Newt we used to call Hans; it was an educated and clever animal with a special talent for scientific work; it used to be employed in Dr Hinkel’s department as his laboratory assistant and it could be trusted with the most exacting chemical analyses. We used to have long chats with it in the evenings, amused by its insatiable thirst for knowledge. We were sorry to lose our Hans but he had lost his sight in the course of my trepanation experiments. His meat was dark and spongy but there were no unpleasant after effects. There is no doubt that in the event of war Newt meat might make a welcome and cheap substitute for beef.
Besides, it was only natural that the Newts should have ceased to be a sensation once there were some 6 million of them in the world; the public interest they had aroused while they were still a novelty was echoed for a while in cartoon films (Sally and Andy, the Good Salamanders) and in cabaret, where singers and crooners endowed with particularly poor voices appeared in the roles of croaking and semi-grammatical Newts. The moment the Newts had become a mass-scale and commonplace phenomenon the whole question of the Newts, if we may so call it, underwent a change.9 The simple truth is that the great Newt sensation gave way to something different and, in a way, rather more solid: the Newt problem. The protagonist of the Newt problem - as so often before in the history of human progress - was, of course, Woman. It was Mme Louise Zimmermann, the directrice of a young ladies’ finishing school in Lausanne, who, with quite unusual energy and unflagging enthusiasm, propagated all over the world her noble slogan: A proper education for the Newts! For a long time she met with a lack of understanding from the public when she unceasingly pointed, on the one hand, to the Newts’ inborn capacity for learning and, on the other, to the danger that might arise to human civilisation if the salamanders were not given a careful moral and intellectual education. ‘Just as the Roman civilisation collapsed with the invasion of the Barbarians, so our own learning would be extinguished if it remained just an island amidst a sea of spiritually oppressed creatures who are precluded from sharing in the highest ideals of present-day humanity,’ she exclaimed prophetically at the 6,300 lectures she gave to women’s clubs throughout Europe and America, as well as in Japan, China, Turkey and elsewhere. ‘If our civilisation is to survive it must be the learning of all. We cannot peacefully enjoy the gifts of our civilisation or the fruits of our culture while all around us there are millions and millions of wretched lower creatures deliberately kept in an animal state. Just as the slogan of the nineteenth century was the emancipation of women, so the slogan of our age must be: PROPER SCHOOLS FOR THE NEWTS!’ And so on. Thanks to her eloquence and incredible zeal Mme Louise Zimmermann mobilised women throughout the world and drummed up sufficient financial funds to endow the First Grammar School for Newts at Beaulieu (near Nice), where the young fry of salamanders working at Marseilles and Toulon were taught French language and literature, rhetoric, social deportment, mathematics and the history of civilisation.10 Rather less successful was a Girls’ School for Newts in Menton, where the syllabus consisted mainly of music, dietary cookery and fine needlework (subjects on which Mme Zimmermann insisted mainly on paedagogical grounds); these encountered a striking lack of enthusiasm if not indeed a stubborn lack of interest on the part of the young female Newt students. By way of contrast, the first public examinations for Young Newts proved such an astonishing success that a Naval Polytechnic for Newts was immediately set up in Cannes and a Newt University in Marseilles (both at the expense of the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals); it was at the latter institution that the first Newt was subsequently to be awarded the degree of Doctor of Law.
The issue of Newt education now began to develop rapidly and along predictable lines. Those teachers who were more progressive raised a number of serious objections to the exemplary Écoles Zimmermann: it was argued in particular that the outdated classical grammar school education for human pupils was inappropriate for young Newts. Teaching of literature and history was emphatically rejected and it was recommended instead that the greatest possible scope and time should be devoted to practical and modern subjects, such as the natural sciences, workshop practice, the technological training of the Newts, physical education, and so on. This so-called Reformed School was in turn passionately attacked by the adherents of classical learning: they argued that the only way to bring the Newts closer to human cultural values was through a grounding in Latin, and that it was not enough merely to teach them to speak unless they were also taught to recite poetry and declaim with Ciceronian eloquence. It was a long and rather heated dispute, and it was eventually solved by the salamander schools being taken over by the state and the schools for young humans being reformed with a view to bringing them as near as possible in line with the Reformed School for Newts.
Naturally the call for regularised and compulsory education for the Newts under state supervision was now also raised in other countries. This was effected step by step in al
l maritime countries (with the exception, of course, of Great Britain), and because these Newt schools were not burdened with the old classical traditions of the human schools and were able, therefore, to utilise the most up to date methods of psychotechnical instruction, premilitary training and all the latest achievements of educational research generally, they soon became the most modern and scientifically advanced educational establishments in the world and objects of the justified envy of human pedagogues and pupils.
Hand in hand with Newt education the language question emerged. Which of the world languages should the salamanders learn first? The original Newts from the Pacific islands, of course, expressed themselves in pidgin English, as they had picked it up from natives and sailors; many spoke Malay or some local dialect. Newts bred for the Singapore market were taught to speak Basic English, that scientifically simplified form of English which managed with a vocabulary of a few hundred words and dispensed with obsolete grammatical fuss; thus reformed standard English came to be known as Salamander English. At the exemplary Écoles Zimmermann the Newts expressed themselves in the language of Corneille - not out of nationalistic motives but because it was part of a higher education. At the Reformed Schools, on the other hand, Esperanto was taught as a means of communication. In fact, some five or six new Universal Languages came into being just then, designed to supplant the Babylonian confusion of human tongues and provide the whole world with one common mother tongue. There was a lot of argument about which of these International Languages was the most efficient, the most melodious and the most universal. In the event, what happened was that a different Universal Language was championed in each country.11
With the nationalisation of Newt education the whole business was simplified: Newts in each country were simply taught in the national language. Although the salamanders picked up foreign languages rather quickly, and with enthusiasm, their linguistic skill exhibited some peculiar shortcomings, due, on the one hand, to the configuration of their vocal organs and, on the other, to what one might call psychological reasons. They had difficulties, for instance, with the pronunciation of long polysyllabic words and tried to shorten them to one syllable which they then uttered in a brief and rather croaky manner. They said ‘l’ instead of ‘r’ and tended to lisp their sibillants. They dispensed with grammatical endings, never learned to differentiate between ‘I’ and ‘we’, and they could not care less whether a word was of feminine or masculine gender (maybe this reflected their sexual frigidity outside mating time). In short, every language was characteristically transformed in their mouths and somehow economically reduced to its simplest and most rudimentary form. It is worth noting that their neologisms, their pronunciation and their primitive grammar were rapidly being adopted by the dregs of dockside humanity, on the one hand, and by what is known as society, on the other. From there this manner of expression spread to the newspapers and soon became general. Even among humans grammatical gender often disappeared, endings were dropped, inflexion became extinct. The jeunesse doree suppressed the ‘r’ and attempted a lisp; hardly any educated person was still able to say what indeterminism or transcendentalism meant, simply because these words had become too long and unpronounceable for humans too.
In short, whether well or badly, the Newts were able to speak languages of virtually anywhere in the world, according to what coast they inhabited. About that time an article appeared in our press (I believe in the Right-wing Ndrodni Listy), questioning with some asperity why the Newts should not also learn Czech, considering that there were already some salamanders who spoke Portuguese, Dutch or languages of other small nations. True, the article conceded, our nation lacked a marine coastline and we therefore had no marine Newts; but just because we had no sea of our own this did not imply that we did not possess a culture equal, and in many respects superior, to that of many nations whose language was being learned by thousands of Newts. It would be no more than fair to allow the Newts to acquaint themselves with our spiritual life also: but how could they do this if there was not one among them who had command of our language? Why should we wait for someone in the outside world to acknowledge that cultural debt and set up a chair of Czech language and Czechoslovak literature at some Newt educational establishment? As the poet says, ‘Mistrust the world from end to end, for nowhere do we have a friend.’ Let us ourselves provide the remedy, the article appealed. Whatever we have achieved in this world we have achieved through our own efforts! It is our right as well as our duty to win friends also among the Newts. Our Ministry of Foreign Affairs, however, does not appear to be greatly interested in ensuring appropriate publicity for our name and our manufactures among the Newts, yet many other and often smaller nations are spending millions on opening up their cultural treasures to the Newts and, at the same time, arousing their interest in their industrial manufactures. The article caused considerable attention mainly among the Federation of Industries and at least resulted in the publication of a small manual, Czech for Newts, complete with examples of Czechoslovak belles-lettres. It may sound incredible, but over seven thousand copies of that little book were actually sold; all in all, therefore, it was a remarkable success.12
The question of the Newts’ education and language was only one aspect of the general Newt problem, a problem that, as it were, grew under people’s hands. One question that emerged rather early on was how the Newts should be treated in, if one may so put it, social terms. In the early years, almost the prehistoric years, of the Newt Age it was chiefly Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals that saw to it that the Newts were not cruelly or inhumanly treated; it is due to their efforts that police and veterinary regulations applicable to other farm animals were upheld with regard to the Newts. Conscientious objectors to vivisection also signed a lot of protests and petitions urging the banning of scientific experiments on live Newts. In a number of states such a law was in fact enacted.13 But with the rising educational level of the salamanders there was increasing embarrassment at simply bracketing the Newts with other animals; for some (not entirely clear) reasons this seemed rather inappropriate. It was then that an international League for the Protection of Salamanders was founded under the patronage of the Duchess of Huddersfield. This League, with over 200,000 members mainly in England, did important and praiseworthy work for the salamanders. Above all else it ensured that special Newt recreation areas were set up for them on sea coasts, where, undisturbed by curious spectators, they might hold their ‘meetings and sporting events’ (meaning presumably the secret Moon Dance); that students at all schools (and even at Oxford University) were enjoined not to throw stones at Newts; that measures were taken to ensure, up to a point, that young tadpoles were not overworked at school; and finally that Newt work camps and hutments were surrounded by tall wooden fences to protect the Newts against all kinds of molestation, but mainly to ensure that the world of the salamanders was sufficiently segregated from the human world.14
Soon, however, these praiseworthy private initiatives to regulate the relations between human society and the Newts in a respectable and humane manner proved insufficient. Although it was easy enough to fit the salamanders into, as it was called, the production process, it was far more complicated and difficult to fit them, somehow or other, into the existing social order. The more conservative of the population denied the existence of any legal or public problems: the Newts were simply the property of their employers who were responsible for them and who were liable for any damage that might be caused by the Newts. In spite of their undeniable intelligence (these people argued) the salamanders were no more than a legal object, a chattel or an item of property, and any special legislative arrangement concerning the Newts would be interference with the sacred rights of private ownership. The opposite view was held by those who objected that the Newts, as intelligent and, to a considerable degree, responsible creatures, were capable of deliberately (and in a great variety of ways) infringing the existing law. Was it reasonable to hold the owner of Newts
responsible for a possible offence committed by his salamanders? Such a liability would surely undermine private initiative in the field of Newt operations. There were no fences in the sea, it was argued; you can’t shut the Newts in to keep them under surveillance. That was why it was necessary to take legislative measures to make it incumbent upon the Newts themselves to respect the human legal system and observe the regulations which would be issued for them.15
As far as is known, the first laws for salamanders were enacted in France. Article One laid down the duties of the Newts in the event of mobilisation and war; the second law (called Lex Deval) stipulated that Newts could settle only in those seashore localities that were assigned to them by their owner or local administrative authority; the third stated that Newts Were unconditionally obliged to obey all police instructions; in the event of their failure to do so the police were entitled to punish them by detention in a dry and well-lit place or even by depriving them of work for a lengthy period. Thereupon the Left-wing parties tabled a motion in the Assembly that a social welfare law be drafted for salamanders: this would define their working duties and place certain obligations on their employers in dealing with working Newts (such as granting a fortnight’s leave during the spring mating period); the extreme Left, by contrast, demanded that the Newts be altogether expelled as enemies of the working people: in the service of capitalism they were working too hard and for virtually nothing, thereby threatening the living standards of the working class. To lend weight to that demand a strike was declared at Brest and major demonstrations took place in Paris; there were a large number of wounded and the Deval Ministry was forced to resign. In Italy, the Newts were placed under a special Newt Corporation, composed of employers and the authorities; in Holland, they were administered by the Ministry of Hydro-Engineering. In short, each country tackled its Newt problem in its own particular way; yet a lot of official decrees governing the public duties of the Newts, and suitably curtailing the animal freedom of the Newts, were virtually identical everywhere.