A few years after the establishment of the first Newt colonies in the North Sea and the Baltic the German researcher, Dr Hans Thüring, ascertained that the Baltic Newt -undoubtedly in response to its environment - exhibited a number of divergent physical characteristics. It was said to be somewhat paler, to walk more erect, and to have a cranial index suggesting a longer and narrower skull than that of other Newts. This variety was named der Nordmolch or der Edelmolch (Andrias Scheuchzeri var. nobilis erecta Thüring).
After that the German press began to show an intense interest in the Baltic Newt. Special importance was attached to the fact that it was just in response to the German environment that this Newt developed into a different and higher racial type, indisputably superior to all other salamanders. With contempt the papers referred to the degenerate Mediterranean Newts, stunted both physically and morally, and to the savage Newts of the tropics, and the altogether low, barbarian and bestial salamanders of other nations. From the Giant Newt to the German Super-Newt was the slogan of the day. After all, was not the prime origin of all modern Newts on German territory? Did their cradle not stand at Oeningen, where the German scientist Dr Johannes Jakob Scheuchzer had discovered their glorious imprint dating back to the Miocene? There cannot therefore be the slightest doubt that the original Andrias Scheuchzeri was born geological ages ago on Germanic soil; subsequently it migrated to other seas and zones and dearly paid for it by its evolutionary descent and degeneration. As soon, however, as it settled once more in its primeval homeland it became what it had originally been: Scheuchzer’s noble Nordic Newt, fair, erect and dolichocephalic. Only on German soil, therefore, could the Newts revert to their pure and highest form, as had been found in the Oeningen quarry imprint by the great Johannes Jakob Scheuchzer. Germany therefore needed new and longer coastlines, she needed colonies, she needed oceans, so that new generations of racially pure original German salamanders could develop in German waters everywhere. We need new space for our Newts, the German papers clamoured; and to ensure that this fact was permanendy before the German nation’s eyes a splendid monument was erected in Berlin to Johannes Jakob Scheuchzer. It showed the great doctor with a fat book in his hand; by his feet, sitting erect, was a noble Nordic Newt, gazing into the distance, towards the infinite coasts of the world ocean.
Needless to say, festive speeches were made at the unveiling of this national monument, and these aroused exceptional interest in the international press. New German Threat was the reaction especially in England. Accustomed as we are to this kind of tone, if an official occasion is used for statements to the effect that Germany needs 5,000 kilometres of new sea coasts within the next three years, then we are bound to reply very clearly: All right, try and get them! You’ll smash your teeth on the British shores. We are prepared now, and we shall be even better prepared in three years’ time. Britain will and must have as many naval units as the two greatest Continental powers together; this ratio is inviolable for all time. If you wish to unleash a mad naval armaments race, so be it; no Briton will permit us to remain behind by as much as a single step.
‘We accept the German challenge,’ Sir Francis Drake, First Lord of the Admiralty, declared in the Commons on behalf of the government. ‘Whosoever lays his hands on any sea will encounter the armour of our ships. Great Britain is strong enough to repel any attack on her headlands or on the coasts of her dominions or colonies. We shall view as such an attack also the construction of new continents, islands, fortifications or air bases in any ocean whose waves wash even the smallest stretch of a British coast. Let this be a final warning to anyone who would try to shift a sea coast by as much as a yard.’ Parliament thereupon approved the building of new warships at a preliminary cost of half a billion pounds sterling. It was a truly impressive reply to the construction of the provocative Johannes Jakob Scheuchzer monument. That monument, admittedly, cost only 12,000 Reichmarks.
A reply to these statements came from the brilliant French journalist, the Marquis de Sade, a man usually extremely well informed. Britain’s First Lord of the Admiralty (he said) had declared Great Britain to be prepared for all eventualities. Very good. But is the noble lord aware that Germany has in her Baltic Newts a permanent and very well-equipped army already numbering 5 million regular combat Newts who can be employed at a moment’s notice in the sea or on shore? Add to them some 17 million Newts in the technical and supply services, ready to operate at any time as a reserve or an army of occupation. Today the Baltic Newt is the best soldier in the world; psychologically perfectly brain-washed, he sees his true and supreme mission in war; he will go into any battle with the enthusiasm of the fanatic, with the cool reasoning of the technician and with the terrifying discipline of a true Prussian Newt.
Is Britain’s First Lord of the Admiralty further aware that Germany is feverishly building transport vessels capable of carrying a whole brigade of combat salamanders at a time? Is he aware that she is building hundreds and hundreds of small submarines with an operational range of 3,000 to 5,000 kilometres, crewed solely by Baltic Newts? Is he aware that she is setting up huge underwater fuel tanks in various parts of the ocean? Well, let us ask again: is the British citizen sure that his country is really well prepared for all eventualities?
It is not difficult, the Marquis de Sade continued, to visualise the importance of the Newts in any future war: equipped with underwater Big Berthas, mortars and torpedoes for blockading any coasts. God knows, for the first time in world history no one need envy Britain her splendid island situation. But while we are on the subject, is the British Admiralty aware that the Baltic Newts are equipped with a normally very peaceful instrument known as the pneumatic drill? And that this drill can cut ten metres deep into the best Swedish granite in an hour, or to a depth of fifty to sixty metres in English chalk? (This was proved by trial borings secretly conducted by a German technical expedition during the nights of the 11th, 12th and 13th of last month on the English coast between Hythe and Folkestone, right under the nose of the fortifications at Dover.) We would advise our friends across the Channel to work out for themselves how many weeks it would take for Kent or Essex to become riddled with holes below sea level like a chunk of cheese. Hitherto the British islander has been anxiously watching the skies, the only direction from where he thought disaster might come to his flourishing cities, to his Bank of England or to his peaceful cottages, snug under their perpetual green cover of ivy. Let him now press his ear to the ground instead, the ground on which his children are playing: will he not hear, if not today then tomorrow, the grinding sound, the crunching progress, inch by inch, of the tireless and terrible cutting head of the Newts’ drills, boring holes for as yet unheard-of explosive charges? No longer the war in the air but a war under water and underground is the latest marvel of our age. We heard some self-assured words from the captain’s bridge of proud Albion: yes, she still is a mighty ship riding the waves and ruling them; yet one day these waves might close over a ship blown to smithereens and sinking to the depths of the sea. Would it not be wiser to oppose this danger in time? Three years from now it will be too late!
This warning by the brilliant French commentator caused tremendous excitement in England. In spite of all denials people in the most diverse parts of England heard the crunch of the Newts’ drills underground. German official quarters, of course, emphatically repudiated and refuted the article quoted, describing it as sheer incitement and enemy propaganda from start to finish; simultaneously, however, major combined exercises were taking place in the Baltic between the German Navy, land forces and combat salamanders. As part of these exercises a Newt sapper platoon, before the eyes of foreign military attaches, blew up a strip of undermined sand dunes near Riigenwalde, an area of six square kilometres. It was said to have been a magnificent spectacle when, with a dreadful rumbling, the earth rose up ‘like a cracked ice-floe’, to break up a moment later into a gigantic wall of smoke, sand and boulders. The sky grew dark, almost as though it were night, and the raised sand fell over a radius of nearly a hundred kilometres, indeed after a few days it fell as a sandy rain as far away as Warsaw. After that magnificent explosion so much freely suspended fine sand and dust remained in the earth’s atmosphere that throughout Europe the sunsets were exceptionally beautiful right to the end of the year - blood-red and fiery as never before.
The sea which flooded the shattered stretch of coast was later named the Scheuchzer-See and became the goal of countless school outings and excursions of German children who sang the popular Newt anthem: Solche Erfolche erreichen nur deutsche Molche.