The Wilmington morning star., 1944-08-24
Fair Enough

editor. Note: The Star and the News accept no
responsibility fer the personal views Of MIR. Ppgler
and often disagree with them much many Of
his readers His articles the good purpose Of
making people think.
BY WESTBROOK PEGLER
NEW YORK, The word robot which we
have applied to that German flying bomb is
not pronounced roebot as so many of us
think. Nor roe-boe as though it might be
French, but rubbut. 1t was introduced to this
country in the early 1905 by the theater
guild in a play presented at the Old Garrick,
which has since burned down, called r. U. R.
meaning Rossums Universal Robots.
The author was Karel Capek pronounced
Chapek of Prague, who later surpassed R. U.
R. with another called variously, The World
We Live In and The Insect Play, in which
the whole disgusting human race, reduced to
the scale OF insects went to war because the
red ants and the black ants got into dispute
over the pathway between two blades of grass.
Capek. being himself Czech, or anyway a
citizen of Czechoslovakia, lived right in that
very pathway but when I suggested this to
him, during 4 call at his office, in a newspa-
per shop IN Prague in the winter of 1886, he
patronized my alarms in lofty way. I believe
he figured that Russia and France would pre-
vent the Nazis from overrunning his country
Anyway, it was his good luck to die of natural
causes before it happened.
R.. u R. was little scant on logic but so
noisy and exciting that it took few days for
our intelligentsia to get over their shudders and
detect the little flaws.
Miss Theresa Helburn, the administrative
director of the Guild, has filled me in with
some off-hand recollections OF the story and
with her own stab at the moral which Capek
was trying to make. The scene was an island
the Cn M nf1 1rir
soulless, sub-human, hesh-and-blood creature
roughly in the form of man and, generally
very dumb, docile and durable, to take over
the laborious tasks of the human race Miss
Helburn's idea of the moral is that Capek
wanted to say that labor is necessary for the
well-being of man. This seems inconsistent to
me, however, if am correct in my belief that
Capek was, if not communist, then anyway
great friend of their philosophy which con-
stantly promises world of longer and longer
vacations shorter working hours and increas-
ing luxury. The ultimate goal would be life
of effortless ease never interrupted by toll
And here, II Miss Helburn is right, Capek was
warning the human race that man would de-
generate and destroy himself if he quit work
The robots were great success. They were
shipped all over the world to relieve the
human race of physical work but Helena the
heroine of the piece, there on the island where
she married the manager of the robot factory
felt sorry for them and wanted to give them
souls. Her father president of the COM
pany, incidentally.
Encouraged by Helena scientist in the
plant continued to improve the robots who
then began to have ambition and to resent
their status in the world. However, the human
beings were over-confident and slow to take
alarm because about the nearest thing to an
expression of emotion of which robot was
capable was kind of fit. And when robot
got too temperamental the practice was to
send him to the stamping mill and pulp him,
SO to speak, we melt down the scrap metal
OF an old car, and use the material over
again. The girl thought this a very unprepos-
sessing practice.
In the end there was awful uprising, with
blood all over the sky and the people on the
island wiped out, all but an old gardener. AT
his age, and, in the absence of any human
mate he was in no position to get the human
race off to a fresh start but, thanks to the
scientists experiments couple of very tasty
young robots, male and female, appeared who
actually were human and he sent them forth
at the close of the show, saying go man, 60
woman something very close to that
They might have found another human race,
but, as l said the logic loose like an old
union suit They and their progeny wouldn't
stand much chance in a world of robots and
the secret formula for the creation of the SUI
perior robot with soul had been burned in
the revolution.
It is Miss Helburn's recollection that robot
was word that Capek just made up but it
just happens that asked him about that and
was told that it was Russian word meaning,
approximately, very low grade of serf with
no rights whatever strong back and weak
mind, if any
We have had robot pilot automatic fly
ing device which relieves the human pilot Of
much of his strain and now this flying bomb
also called robot. But you will see, the
name is only roughly appropriate in either
=, case.
Anyway, the pronunciation is not roe-bot MOI
roe-boe This is official. 1t is rubbut.
-V
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