E. G.

“ Throughout the novel, however, Capek intermixes very skilfully the twin interests of human nature and new horizons in science, and Prokop’s emotional outbursts relieve the tension of his alarming researches into a world of unknown forces. The Princess herself is an explosive of the most dangerous kind, and very clever is the scene of her last appearance, where the feminine fuse, so to say, is withdrawn from the live masculine shell. ”

“ Prokop, the plebeian hero, a scientist concentrated on his astonishing discoveries about the disintegration of matter, is the first man to “overcome the coefficient of compressibility.” He has learned how to “accelerate the speed of detonation,” which, after a certain speed, increases the power of explosion terrifically. He has invented Krakatit, a few ounces of which, sprinkled about, can blow up whole towns or whole armies. As Daimon the Anarchist puts it, “with Krakatit and the wireless station you can checkmate the world. ”

“ On the contrary, he becomes terrified not by his discoveries but by the use men will make of them, and he refuses to surrender the secret of his formula to the rival emissaries of States, militarists, great capitalists, and others who, having got wind of it, come swarming round him. Prokop is a dogged, determined man, but innocent of worldly wiles, and one of the many clever things in the book is the way his honest figure shows up against the machinations of certain “highly born” personages and their agents, who kidnap him and keep him prisoner in the Castle of Balttin. ”