SOURCE: "Karel Čapek: Short Tales and Fantasias," in Essays and Addresses, Longmans, Green & Co., 1939, pp. 151-90.

In the following excerpt, Elton provides a laudatory overview of öapek's short stories.

Čapek earned his European fame, justly enough, by R. U.R., The Insect Play, The White Sickness (translated as Power and Glory), and other dramas. They satirize the social order and depict, often in symbolic form, the perils that threaten it with shipwreck. Their wealth of ideas, their strength of purpose, and their pertinence to-day, must be recognized. And yet, considered as works of art, they have perils of their own. They are full of faults and fissures which will hardly stand close analysis and which are easily passed over in the theatre; and in any case, they cannot compare with the best of Čapek's stories. Most of these, though not all, have been translated; but to an Englishman...