Chapter II: Part 2

"But what them boys did in the way of blowing up munitions plants and sinking passenger-steamers was because they loved the Kaiser so much, and instead of arresting Bernstorff for the money he spent, Abe, I bet yer the Kaiser made him a thirty-second degree passed assistant _Geheimrat_ or something," Morris declared.

"Well, there's no accounting for tastes, Mawruss," Abe said, "and if these here Germans is willing to slaughter, rob, and burn because they are in love with a feller which to me has a personality as attractive as the framed insides of the entrance to a safe deposit vault, y'understand, all I can say is that I don't give them no more credit for it than I would to a bookkeeper who committed forgery because he was in love with the third lady from the end in the second row of the original Bowery Burlesquers."

"The wonder to me is that the Kaiser don't see it that way, too," Morris commented.

"That's because when it comes right down _to_ it, Mawruss, the third lady from the end ain't no more stuck on herself than the Kaiser is on _him_self," Abe said. "Them third ladies from the end figure that the poor suckers always _did_ like 'em, and that therefore they are always _going_ to like 'em, so they go ahead and treat their admirers like dawgs and take everything they give 'em, y'understand, and the end of it is that either a third lady becomes so careless that from a perfect thirty-six she comes to be an imperfect fifty-four and has to work for a living, or else she gets pinched for receiving the property which them poor buffaloed admirers of hers handed over to her, and that'll be the end of the Kaiser, too."

"And how soon do you think _that_ will happen?" Morris asked.

"That depends on how soon the Kaiser's admirers gets through with him," Abe said.

"Maybe the Kaiser will quit first," Morris concluded, "because you take them third ladies from the end, Abe, and sooner or later they grow terrible tired of this here--now--fast life."

V

POTASH AND PERLMUTTER DISCUSS ON THE FRONT PAGE AND OFF

What war done ain't a marker on what peace is going to do to a great
many of these here front-page propositions which is nowadays
accustomed to being continued on page two, column five, y'understand.

"Yes, Mawruss," Abe said, as he thrust aside the sporting section one Sunday in October, "a people at war is like a man with a sick wife. Nothing else interests him, which here it stands an account from how them loafers out in Chicago plays baseball for the world's record yet, and for all the effect it has on me, Mawruss, it might just so well be something which catches my eye for the first time in the old newspaper padding which my wife pulls out from under the carpet when she is house-cleaning in the spring of nineteen twenty."

"Well," Morris said, "I must got to confess that when I seen it yesterday how this here Fleisch shoots a home run there in the fifth innings, I--"

"What are you talking nonsense--a home run in the fifth innings!" Abe exclaimed. "The home run was made in the fourth innings. The White Sox didn't make no score in the fifth innings. It was the Giants which made their only run in the fifth. McCarty knocked a three-bagger and Sallee singled and brought him home. _You_ tell _me_ what innings Fleisch shot a home run in!"

"All right, Abe," Morris said, "I wouldn't argue with you, but all I got to say is you're lucky that on account of the war you ain't interested in auction pinochle the way you ain't interested in baseball, otherwise you might get quite a reputation as a gambler."

"I am just so much worried about this war as you are, Mawruss," Abe protested, "but if I couldn't take my mind off of it long enough to find out which ball team is winning the world series I would be a whole lot more worried about myself as I would be about the war, which it don't make no difference how much a man loves his wife, y'understand, if she's only sick on him long enough, Mawruss, he's going to get sufficiently used to it to take in now and then a good show occasionally. In fact, Mawruss, it's a relief to read once in a while in the newspapers something which ain't about the war, like a murder, y'understand, the only drawback being that along about the third day after the discovery of the body, and just when you are getting interested in the thing, General Haig advances another mile on a couple of thousand kilowatt front, y'understand, and for all you can find anything in the newspaper about your murder, y'understand me, the feller needn't have troubled himself to commit it at all."

"Murderers ain't the only people which got swamped by the war," Morris said. "Take William J. Bryan, for example, and up to within a year or so, Abe, the newspaper publicity which William J. Bryan got free, y'understand, William J. Douglas would of paid a quarter of a million dollars for. Take also this here Hobson which sunk the _Merrimac_ and Lindsey M. Garrison, who by resigning from the War Department come within an ace and a couple of pinochle decks thrown in of ruining Mr. Wilson's future prospects, Abe, and there was two fellers which used to get into the newspapers as regularly as Harry K. Thaw and Peruna, and yet, Abe, if any time during the past six months William J. Bryan, Lindsey M. Garrison, and this here Hobson would of been out riding together, and the automobile was to run over a cliff a hundred feet high onto a railroad track and be struck by the cannon-ball express, understand me, the most they could expect to see about it in the papers would be:

NEWS IN BRIEF

An automobile rolled over an embankment at Van Benschoten Avenue and
456th Street, the Bronx, landing in a railroad cut. Its four
occupants are in Lincoln Hospital. One of them, George K. Smith, a
chauffeur, suffered a fracture of the skull.

More than fifty pawn tickets were found on Peter Krasnick, who was
caught in Brooklyn after a chase over a rear fire-escape. He is
charged with burglary.

* * * * *

World Wants Work Wonders

And if at the last moment before the reporters goes home for the night word comes that the Germans made another strong attack on Hill Six-sixty-six B, y'understand, they strike out everything except 'World Wants Work Wonders' and let it go at that."

"Referendum and Recall is something else which you used to see a whole lot about in the papers," Abe said, "and while I always ducked 'em myself, at the same time there must be a whole lot of people which is wondering what ever become of 'em since the war started."

"The chances is," Morris declared, "if they was to come across the names Referendum and Recall in the papers to-day, Abe, they would say it's a miracle they escaped as long as they did, because they've got a hazy impression they read it somewheres that the Recollection, the Resurrection, and the Reproduction of the same line was sunk by U-boats about the time they torpedoed the Minnieboska, the Minnietoba, and all them other Minnies."

"Prize-fighting is also got a black eye in the way of newspaper publicity since we went into the war, Mawruss," Abe continued, "and it ain't remarkable, neither, when you look back and think of the pages and pages the newspapers used to print about a couple of loafers trying to hurt each other with gloves on their hands, which, believe me, Mawruss, a green shipping-clerk could give himself worse _Makkas_ nailing up one case of goods than them boys could do to each other in a whole season already."

"I bet yer," Morris said, "and for such a picnic Jeff Willard used to get over a hundred thousand dollars yet."

"Can you imagine how much money one of them aviators over in the old country ought to draw under such a wage scale?" Abe asked. "I read an account of what an aviator has got to do when he goes up in an airyoplane, Mawruss, and at one and the same time while he is balancing himself five thousand feet in the air he takes photographs, shoots off guns, drops bombs, sends wireless telegraphs, and also runs and steers an engine which is so powerful, y'understand, that if you would be running it on dry land, Mawruss, you wouldn't be able to take your mind off of it long enough to think about the high cost of camera supplies, let alone taking pictures yet."

"I wonder if such a young feller has got also a knowledge of bookkeeping and stenography," Morris speculated.

"What difference does that make?" Abe asked.

"Because, Abe, if after the war we could get him to come to work in our place it would pay us to give him a hundred dollars a week even," Morris replied, "on account it would be a cinch, after what he's been used to in his last position, for such a young feller to operate an electric rotary cutting-machine with his left hand and press garments with his right, and he has still got both legs and his head left to keep the books, answer the telephone, run a typewriter and an adding-machine, and fix up a new card index for our credit system."

"At that he would probably throw up the job on account he didn't have enough to do to keep him busy, Mawruss," Abe commented, "and also it's going to be pretty hard for them fellers to settle down after the war gets through, considering all the excitement they've had with their names in the papers and everything."

"Say!" Morris exclaimed. "The fact that a feller like Hindenberg is now getting his name in the paper the way it used to was a few years ago with Hannah Elias and Cassie Chadwick ain't no criterion to judge by, Abe, because what war done to make the newspapers forget their old friends Bryan and Evelyn Nesbut ain't a marker on what peace is going to do to a great many of these here front-page propositions which is nowadays accustomed to being continued on page two, column five, y'understand. Why, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if in about five or six years from now, Abe, you are going to take up the paper some morning and read an item like this:

OBITUARY NOTES

Max K. Hindenberg, 83 years old, a clothing merchant, member of the
firm of Hindenberg & Levy, and recording secretary of Sigmund Meyer
Post No. 97 Veterans of the War of 1914-1918, died early yesterday at
his home, 2076 East 8th Street, Potsdam, Germany, yesterday. Deceased
was a native of East Prussia.

And the chances is that ninety-nine out of a hundred people ain't even going to say to themselves, 'Where did I hear that name before?'"

"That's where you make a big mistake, Mawruss," Abe said. "Hindenberg is a very popular feller in Germany, and I bet yer that on every map filed in the county clerks' offices of Prussian real-estate developments during the past three years there's a Hindenberg Street or a Hindenberg Avenue, to say nothing of the babies which has been born over there and named Max Hindenberg Goldsticker or Max Hindenberg Schwartz."

"Sure I know," Morris said, "and you can take my word for it, Abe, along about nineteen hundred and thirty-five there's going to be a whole lot of lawyers over in Deutschland making from twenty-five to fifty marks a throw for putting through motions in the Court of Common Pleas for the City and County of Berlin that the name of the said applicant, Max H. Goldsticker or Max H. Schwartz, as the case may or may not be, be and the same hereby is changed to Frank Pershing Goldsticker or Woodrow W. Schwartz. Also, Abe, if ever they open up Charlottenberg Heights overlooking beautiful Lake Hundekehlen as per plat filed in the office of the register of Brandenburg County, y'understand, there'll be a Helfferich Place, a Liebknecht Avenue, and even a Bebel Terrace maybe, but in twenty years from now a German real-estater wouldn't be able even to give away lots free for nothing on any Hindenberg Street or Hindenberg Avenue, not if he was to throw in a two-family house with portable garage complete."

"Well, you could say the same thing about this country, too," Abe declared, "which twenty years from now, people wouldn't know whether the word _viereck_ was a fish or a cheese; and as for all them college professors which got fired recently because they made the mistake of thinking that a college professor gets paid to fool away his time making speeches against the government the same like a United States Senator, y'understand, I couldn't even remember their names to-day yet, so you can imagine how they're going to go down in history, Mawruss: compared to them fellers, there are a few thousand notary publics whose names will be household words already."

"Any man who thinks he is going to make a name for himself by talking or writing against his country is due to get badly fooled, I don't care if he would be a college professor, a United States Senator, or an editor, Abe," Morris said, "because the most he could hope for is the thing what usually happens him. He gets fired, Abe, and the only reputation a feller gets by getting fired is the reputation for getting fired, and that ain't much of a recommendation when he comes to look for another job."

"The people I am sorry for is the wives of these here professors," Abe said, "which even when a college professor has got steady work his wife 'ain't got no bed of roses to make both ends meet, neither, and I bet yer more than one of them ladies will got to do a little plain sewing for a living on account her husband became so hot-headed over this here pacifism."

"That's the trouble with them pacifists," Morris concluded. "If they would only take some of the heat out of their heads and put it into their feet, Abe, they could hold onto their jobs and their wives wouldn't got to go to work at all. Am I right or wrong?"

VI

POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON HOOVERIZING THE OVERHEAD

When a feller reckons the overhead on the goods he manufactures he
figures in one-twelfth of his telephone number, one-twelfth of the
year he was born, and one-twelfth of every other number he can
remember from his automobile to his street number.

"Of course, Mawruss, I don't claim that Mr. Hoover don't know his business nor nothing like that," Abe Potash said as he finished reading a circular mailed to him by the Food Conservation Director, "but at the same time if I would be permitted to make a suggestion, Mawruss, I would suggest that in addition to following out all the DON'TS in this here food-conservation circular--and also in the interests of being strictly economical, y'understand--the women of the country should learn it genwine Southern cooking, the kind they've got it in two-dollars-a-day American-plan Southern hotels, Mawruss, and not only would people eat much less than they eat at present, but the chances is it would fix some people so they wouldn't eat at all."

"Why _Southern_ cooking?" Morris Perlmutter asked. "For that matter, two-dollar-a-day American-plan Eastern cooking wouldn't make you eat yourself red in the face, neither, which the last time I was in New Bedford they gave me for lunch some fried schrod, and I give you my word, Abe, I'd as lieve eat a pair of feet-proof socks, including the guarantee and the price ticket. But that ain't neither here or there, Abe. Nobody could pin medals on himself for being a small eater in a hotel, Abe, _aber_ the test comes when you arrive home from the store at half past seven and your wife sets before you a plate of _gedampfte Kalbfleisch_ which if a chef in Delmonico's would cook such a thing like that, Abe, the Ritz-Carlton would pay John G. Stanchfield a retainer of one hundred thousand dollars to advise them how the fellow's contract could be broken with Delmonico's so they could get him to come to work for them. And that's why I am telling you, Abe, when you get such a plate of _gedampfte Kalbfleisch_ in front of you, which the steam comes up from it like roses, y'understand, and when you put a piece of it in your mouth it's like--"

"Say, listen," Abe protested, "let me alone, will you? It's only eleven o'clock, and I couldn't go out to lunch for another hour yet."

"That only goes to show what for a stomach patriot you are, Abe," Morris commented. "Even when we are only _talking_ about food you couldn't restrain yourself, so what must it be like when you've got the food actually on the table? I bet yer you don't remember that such a feller as Hoover ever existed at all, let alone what he says about eating reasonable."

"That's all right, Mawruss," Abe said. "Mr. Hoover could talk that way, because maybe his wife ain't such a crank about her cooking like my Rosie is, y'understand, _aber_ if Mr. Hoover would be me, Mawruss, and there comes on the table some _gestoffte Miltz_ which Mrs. Hoover has been breaking her back standing over the stove all the afternoon seeing that it don't stick to the bottom of the kettle, y'understand, and Mr. Hoover takes only a couple slices of it on account of the war, y'understand, what is going to happen then?

"'So,' Mrs. Hoover says, 'you had one of them sixty-cent table-d'hote lunches to-day again, and now of course you 'ain't got no appetite. How many times did I tell you you shouldn't eat that poison?'

"'So sure as I am sitting here, mommer,' Hoover says, 'all I had for my lunch was a Swiss-cheese rye-bread sandwich and a cup coffee.'

"'Then what's the matter you ain't eating?' Mrs. Hoover says. 'Ain't it cooked right?'

"'Certainly it's cooked right,' Hoover says. 'But two pieces is a plenty on account of the war.'

"'On account of the war! I could work my fingers to the bone fixing good food for that man, and he wouldn't eat it on account of the war, _sagt er_,' says Mrs. Hoover.

"'But, listen, mommer--' Hoover tries to tell her.

"'Never mind, any excuse is better than none,' Mrs. Hoover says. 'Turns up his nose at my cooking yet! _Gestoffte Miltz_ ain't good _enough_ for him. I suppose you would like me to give you every day roast duck on twenty dollars a week housekeeping money. Did you ever hear the like? Couldn't eat _gestoffte Miltz_ no more, so tony he gets all of a sudden!'

"'_Aber_ mommer, listen to me for a moment,' Hoover says, but it ain't a bit of use because Mrs. Hoover goes into the bedroom and locks the door on him, and by the time he has got her to be on speaking terms again he has violated the don't-eat-no-sugar DON'T to the extent of four dollars and fifty cents for a five-pound box of mixed chocolates and bum-bums, understand me. Also just to show that she forgives him they take in a show mit afterward a supper in which Mr. Hoover violates not only all the other DON'TS in the food-conservation circulars, but also makes himself liable to go to jail for giving a couple of dollars to a German head waiter under the Trading with the Enemy law."

"At that, the way some of our best hotels conservates food nowadays is setting a good example to the women of the country," Morris declared.

"What do you mean--nowadays?" Abe retorted. "They always conservated food, the only difference being, Mawruss, that in former times, when them crooks used to get ten portions of chicken _a la_ King out of a two-pound cold-storage chicken and charged you a dollar and a quarter a portion for it, y'understand, they was a bunch of crooks--ain't it?--whereas nowadays when them crooks get eleven portions out of the same chicken and charge you a dollar and a half a portion for it, y'understand, they're a bunch of patriots, understand me, which if the coal-dealer and the retail grocer and butcher would short-weight you and overcharge you the way some of them patriotic New York hotel proprietors does, it would be hard to find many patriots in New York City outside of Blackwells Island _oder_ the Tombs prison."

"And yet, Abe, if you would go to work and figure out the overhead on a chicken which is used for eleven portions of chicken _a la_ King," Morris said, "you would find that the hotel-keeper gets his profit only from the neck which he uses for chicken consomme."

"Well, say!" Abe exclaimed. "A profit of six cups of chicken consomme at forty cents a cup ain't to be sneezed at, neither, and even then you are taking the hotel-keeper's word for the overhead, which I don't care if a feller would be ordinarily a regular George Washington, y'understand, and wouldn't even lie to his wife about how he come out in his weekly Saturday-night pinochle game, understand me, but when such a feller reckons the overhead on the goods he manufactures it don't make no difference if it would be locomotive engines or pants, in addition to the legitimate cost of every one-twelfth dozen articles, he figures in as overhead one-twelfth of his telephone number, one-twelfth of the year he was born, one-twelfth of how old his grandfather _olav hasholom_ was when he married for the fourth time, and one-twelfth of every other number he can remember, from his automobile number to his street number, and usually such a crook lives in the last house from the city limits."

"I tell yer, Abe," Morris said, "the feller which invented poison gas was some _Rosher_, and the feller which invented T.M.T. also, but the feller which invented the overhead is in a class by himself just behind the Kaiser. I don't know what his name is, but he is the feller what fixed things so that a ten-cent loaf of bread has not only got into it the air-holes which is caused by the yeast, but also the air-holes which is caused by the lawyer's bill that the baking company paid at the time they issued their five-million-dollar consolidated and refunding four-per-cent. first-mortgage bonds, y'understand, and there's just as much nourishment in that kind of air-hole for a truck-driver's family of growing children as there is in any other kind of air-hole."

"Well, the bakers 'ain't got nothing on the farmers when it comes to cost bookkeeping, Mawruss," Abe said. "I was reading where the milk-raisers' _Verein_ claims the price of feed is so high that they've got to sell milk at ten cents a quart wholesale, but for all them farmers figure that the same feed goes to fatten the cow for the market, Mawruss, you might suppose that there was a big institution somewheres up state called the Ezra B. Cornell Home for Aged and Indignant Cows, y'understand, and that so soon as a cow gets through giving milk, y'understand, instead of slaughtering it the farmer takes it to the home in his automobile and contributes five dollars a week toward its support until it dies of hardening of the arteries at the age of eighty-two."

"Take it from me, Abe," Morris said, "them farmers ain't such farmers as people think they are. It's going to be so, pretty soon, that people will be paying two dollars and a half for an orchestra seat and pretty near break their hearts while the poor old second-mortgage shark is being turned out of his little home by the farmer."

"And on the opening night, Mawruss, the front rows will be filled with milk agents," Abe said, "and after the show you will see them sitting around Rector's and Churchill's and getting terrible noisy over a magnum of Sheffield Farms nineteen sixteen."

"Of course nobody is going to be the worser for making a joke about such things, Abe," Morris interrupted, "but last winter when these fellers which gets off mommerlogs in vaudeville shows was talking about somebody being immensely wealthy on account his breath smelt from onions, y'understand, there wasn't many people raising a family on less than twenty-five dollars a week whose breath smelt from onions at that."

"Did I say they did?" Abe asked.

"And it is the same way with potatoes and fruit, not to say fish and poultry and all the other foods which Mr. Hoover says we should eat in order to save beef, sugar, and flour for the soldiers," Morris continued. "When a woman buys nowadays flounder at twenty-five cents a pound, she is paying ten cents for fish and fifteen cents toward the fish-dealer's wife's diamonds or his six-cylinder automobile, so if I would be Mr. Hoover, before I issued bread and meat cards to the consumer I would hand out automobile and diamond cards to the fish-dealer and the vegetable-dealer and maybe it would help to stop them fellers from loading their prices with what it costs 'em to keep up their expensive habits."

"A fish-dealer is entitled to expensive habits the same like anybody else," Abe said, "which if Mr. Hoover stops him from buying his wife once in a while diamonds, sooner or later Mr. Hoover will stop him from buying his wife furs and it will work down right along the line till Mr. Hoover hits the garment business, Mawruss, which, while I ain't got no particular sympathy for a fish-dealer, y'understand, his money is just so good as the next one's, so I ask you, as a garment-manufacturer, what are you going to do about it?"

"Let him buy Liberty Bonds."

"But in that case, how many Liberty Bonds could the diamond merchant, the automobile-manufacturer, or the furrier buy?"

"Say, looky here," Morris said, "let me alone, will you? This is something which is up to Mr. Hoover, not me."

"I know it is," Abe concluded, "and I've got a great deal of sympathy for him, too, because before Mr. Hoover gets through he would not only make a bunch of enemies, Mawruss, but he is going to use up a whole lot of headache medicine, and don't you forget it."

VII

POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS

The hopeless part of it is that there's no way of putting a nation of
ninety million people in a lunatic asylum, even if there was an
asylum big enough to hold them, which there ain't.

"I see where the French President is going to lose his Prime Minister again," Abe Potash said, "which the way that feller is always changing Prime Ministers, Mawruss, he must be a terrible hard man to work for."

"Say," Morris Perlmutter replied, "I've got enough to think about keeping track of what happens here in this country without I should worry my head over political _Meises_ in France."

"Well, you are the same like a whole lot of Americans," Abe said, "which for all they read about what is going on over in Europe the Edison Manufacturing Company might just so well never have invented the telegraph at all."

"I don't _got_ to read it with such a statesman like you around here," Morris retorted, "so go ahead and tell me: what did the French Prime Minister done _now_ that he gets fired for it?"

"That only goes to show what you know from Prime Ministers!" Abe declared. "A Prime Minister never gets fired, Mawruss--he resigns, and while I admit that nine times out of ten when the French President has had a Prime Minister resign on him, it's probably been a case of the stenographer tipping the Prime Minister off that before the boss went to lunch he said, 'If that grafter's still here when I come back there'll be another Prime Minister going around on crutches,' y'understand, yet at the same time this here last Prime Minister has been right on the job, and the French President has been quite worried for fear he's going to quit."

"Well, let him get along _without_ a Prime Minister for a while," Morris said. "With the money the French people is spending for war supplies it won't do him no harm to cut down his pay-roll, and, besides, what does he want a Prime Minister for, _anyway_? Has President Wilson got a Prime Minister? Them people come over here a couple of months ago and cashed in a hard-luck story for a matter of a few hundred million dollars, y'understand, and like a lot of come-ons that we are, understand me, it never even occurred to us but what them boys was living right up close to the cushion."

"How much do you think a Prime Minister draws, Mawruss--a million a week?" Abe asked.

"It ain't how much he draws," Morris said. "It's the idea of the thing which I don't care if he only gets five dollars a day and commissions, Abe, if President Wilson would got a Prime Minister working for him instead of attending to the business himself, which is what President Wilson gets paid for, y'understand, there's many a time when the President has been out late at the theayter or when he is feeling under the weather, understand me, where he would say: 'Why should I kill myself slaving day in, day out, like a slave, y'understand. What have I got a Prime Minister for, anyway?' And that's how I bet yer the French President has passed over to the Prime Minister a whole lot of important stuff which the poor _nebich_ was bound to slip up on, because, after all, a Prime Minister is only a Prime Minister."

"Maybe you're right," Abe admitted, "but at the same time there's some pretty smart Prime Ministers, too, which you take this here Prime Minister Lord George, over in England, and that feller practically runs the country. In fact, as I understand it, King George leaves the entire management to him, so much confidence he's got in the feller."

"Perhaps it's because this here Lord George and King George is related maybe," Morris suggested.

"I don't think so," Abe replied. "The names is only a quincidence, which even before Lord George was ever heard of at all the Prime Minister always run things in England while the King put in his whole time opening charity bazars and laying corner-stones. First and last I suppose that feller has laid more corner-stones than all the heads of all the fraternal orders in the United States put together, and if there's such a disease as grand master's thumb, like smoker's heart and housemaid's knee, Mawruss, I'll bet that King George has got it."

"Well an English king can afford to spend his time that way," Morris said, "because them English Prime Ministers is really prime, y'understand, whereas you take the Prime Ministers which the Czar _nebich_, the King of Greece, and even the King of Sweden had it, and instead of them Prime Ministers being prime, understand me, they ranged all the way from sirloin to chuck, as they would say in the meat business."

"Some of the English Prime Ministers wasn't so awful prime, neither," Abe said. "Take the feller which was holding down the job of Prime Minister around July fourth, seventeen seventy-six, and the way that boy let half a continent slip through his fingers was enough to make King Schmooel the Second, or whatever the English king's name was in them days, swear off laying corner-stones for the rest of his life. Also the English Prime Minister which engineered the real-estate deal where Germany got ahold of the island of Heligoland wasn't what Mr. P.B. Armour would call first cut exactly, which, if England would now own Heligoland instead of Germany, Mawruss, such a serial number as U Fifty-three for a German submarine would never have been heard of. They would have stopped short at U Two or U Two B."

"Well, anybody's liable to get stuck in a swap with vacant lots, Abe," Morris said, "and the chances is the poor feller figured that with this here Heligoland, the only person who would have the nerve to call such real estate _real estate_, y'understand, would be a real-estater with a first-class imagination when the tide was out."

"That's what Germany figured, too," Abe said, "and the consequence is she went to work and improved them vacant lots with fortifications which lay so low in the water, Mawruss, that from two miles out at sea no one would dream of such things--least of all an admiral."

"So how could you blame a Prime Minister if he didn't suspect what Germany was up to when she bought that sand-bank?" Morris asked.

"Of course that was a long time before the war, Mawruss," Abe said. "Nowadays the dumbest Prime Minister knows enough to know that coming from a German diplomat a simple remark like, 'Good morning, ain't it an elegant weather we are having?' is subject to one of several constructions, none of which is exactly what you could call _kosher_, y'understand."

"And supposing he finds such a remark in a letter from a German diplomat to the Kaiser, Abe?" Morris asked. "What does it mean then?"

"That depends on where it is written from," Abe said, "which if the Minister of Foreign Affairs down in Paraguay or Peru finds out that a German ambassador has written home to the effect that he is feeling quite well again and hopes this letter finds you the same, y'understand, the Foreign Minister hustles over to the War Department and wants to know if they are going to allow him to be insulted in that way by a dirty crook like that. On the other hand, if the chief of the United States Secret Service gets ahold of a letter from any one of them honorary German diplomats who is practically holding down the job of Imperial German Consul to the Bronx while drawing the salary of--we would say, for example--a New York Supreme Court justice, Mawruss, and if the letter says, 'Accept my best wishes for a prosperous and happy new year in which my wife joins and remain,' y'understand, that means the copper was shipped in pasteboard containers marked:

PRUNES USE NO HOOKS."

"The German Secret Service certainly fixes up some wonderful cipher codes, Abe," Morris said. "Sometimes as much as two hours and a quarter passes before a United States Secret Service man gets the right dope on one of them code letters."

"Sure, I know," Abe said. "But most times he don't have no more trouble over it than the average business man would with a baseball column, which the way every government secret service knows every other government's secret service's secrets, Mawruss, it's a wonder to me that they don't call the whole thing off by mutual consent, because the only difference between government secret services is that some secret services is louder than others. Take, for instance, the German Secret Service, and there was months and months when this here Dr. Heinrich Albert, Captain von Papen and his boy Ed got as much newspaper publicity as one of them rotten shows which received such a good notice from the cricket of the _Cloak and Suit Gazette_ that the manager thinks it may have a chance, y'understand. Why, there wasn't a district messenger-boy which couldn't direct you to number Eleven Broadway, where that secret service had its head offices, and I would be very much surprised if they didn't ship their bombs from number Eleven Broadway, to the steamboat docks in covered automobile delivery-wagons with signs painted on 'em:

Telephone Battery 2222

GERMAN SECRET SERVICE 'WE LEAD--OTHERS FOLLOW' 11 Broadway

Ask about our Special Service plan for furnishing explosives by the month

AT LOW RATES."

"At the same time, Abe," Morris remarked, "the Germans make things pretty secret when they want to, otherwise how could the Kaiser have kept that mutiny under his chest for over a couple of months?"

"And you could take it from me, Mawruss," Abe said, "before Michaelis let it out in the Reichstag, he might just so well have stopped in at the _Lokal Anzeiger_ office on his way down-town and inserted a couple of lines or so under the head of 'Situations Wanted Males.'"

"Why, I thought you said a Prime Minister never gets fired," Morris said.

"Prime Ministers is one thing and Chancellors another, Mawruss," Abe told him.

"Then I imagine this here Michaelis must be putting in a lot of time nowadays going over his contract to see if he's got any come-back against the party of the first part in case that crook fires him," Morris said.

"Well, he can keep on looking till he finds another job," Abe replied, "because the Kaiser is like a lot of other highwaymen in the cutting-up trade, Mawruss. To them fellers the first and most important thing about a contract is the loopholes, y'understand, and after that's fixed they don't care what goes into it, which you take that contract of Michaelis's and I bet yer that a police-court lawyer could drive an armored tank through them paragraphs which is supposed to hold the Kaiser, y'understand, whereas if _Michaelis_ wanted to get out of it, Mawruss, he could go to work and hire Messrs. Hughes, Brandeis, Stanchfield, Hughes & Stanchfield, supposing there was _Gott soll huten_ such a firm of lawyers, and they wouldn't be able to find so much as a comma out of place for him."

"And as a good German, Abe, Michaelis would be awful disappointed if they did," Morris said, "because that's the way the Germans feel toward the Kaiser. He robs 'em, he murders 'em, and he starves their wives and children to death, just so him and his family could run the country, and them poor Heinies says to one another: 'That's the kind of a kaiser to have! A big strong man which he don't give a nickel for nobody! He's a wonder, all right, and if we didn't have a feller like that at the head of the country I don't know how we would be able to stand all the trouble that cutthroat and his crook family is causing us--Heaven bless them.'"

"The hopeless part of it is," Abe commented, "that there's no way of putting a nation of ninety million people in a lunatic asylum, even if there was an asylum big enough to hold them, which there ain't, Mawruss."

"And as much as you sympathize with a lunatic, you can't have him going around loose, Abe," Morris said, "so what are we going to do about it?"

"Well, we're trying hard to shut 'em up in Germany again," Abe declared, "and after we've got them there, Mawruss, I am willing to stand my share of the expense that the war should go on long enough to give them lunatics a little home treatment, y'understand, and by home treatment, Mawruss, I mean not only treating the lunatics themselves, but also treating their homes," Abe continued, growing red in the face at the thought of it, "which I only hope that I live long enough to see a moving picture of German homes the same like I seen moving pictures of French homes and Belgian homes, and if that don't sweat the Kaiser-mania out of their systems they are crazy for keeps."

VIII

POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON LORDNORTHCLIFFING VERSUS COLONELHOUSING

While Lord Northcliff is colonelhousing over here, Colonel House is
lordnorthcliffing over in England, and the main point about their
being where they are is that they ain't where the people are which
sent them there.

"Well, I see where President Wilson says that women should have the right to vote the same like shipping-clerks and bartenders, Mawruss," Abe said, "which it's a funny thing to me the way some people claims they never could see that two and two make four till the war comes along and gives them a brand-new point of view."

"At that, you've got to give President Wilson credit that it only took a war like this here European war to bring him to his senses," Morris Perlmutter said, "whereas with Eli U. Root, Abe, it's got to happen yet another war twice as big as this one, three more revolutions in Russland, and a couple of earthquakes _doch_; before he is even going to say, 'Maybe you're right, but that's my opinion and I stick _to_ it.'"

"In a way, Mawruss, Eli U. Root ain't as unreasonable as he looks," Abe said. "He says that if the women gets the vote, y'understand, they would--"

"Listen, Abe," Morris interrupted, "I don't want to hear what this here Root has got to say about _if_ women voted in America, y'understand, because over four million women does vote in America, and some of them has been voting for years already, and when it comes to talking about _ifs_, Abe, _if_ Eli U. Root 'ain't noticed that four million women vote in this country where Eli U. Root is supposed to understand the language as well as speak it, understand me, what did Mr. Root notice over in Russland, where he neither spoke Russian nor understood it, neither?"

"Don't kid yourself, Mawruss," Abe said. "That feller knows just so good as you do that there's four million women voting in America; also he knows that the women of Colorado, where women vote, don't act no different from the women of Pennsylvania, where women don't vote, but that's an argument in favor of women voting, whereas Root is arguing against it."

"That ain't an argument," Morris protested; "it's a fact."

Abe shrugged his shoulders despairingly.

"What does a first-class A-number-one lawyer like Root care about facts if they ain't in his favor?" he asked. "Also, Mawruss, if Mr. Root now comes out in favor of women voting, y'understand, that would be a case of changing his mind, and you know as well as I do, Mawruss, the real brainy fellers of the world never changes their mind."

"Not even when the facts is against them?" Morris asked.

"They don't pay no attention to the facts," Abe said. "You take this here Morris Hillkowitz or Hillquit which he is running for mayor of New York on the Socialistic ticket, and for years already that feller went around saying that it was the people which lived in the two-thousand-a-year apartments and owned expensive automobiles which was squashing the protelariat, y'understand, and now when it comes out in the papers that he is living in a thousand-dollar-a-year apartment and running an expensive automobile, Mawruss, does he turn around and say that it's all a mistake and that in reality it's the protelariat which is squashing the feller with the two-thousand-dollar-a-year apartment and expensive automobile? _Oser a Stueck!_"

"Well, it only goes to show that a feller can even make money by being a Socialist if he only sticks to it long enough," Morris said.

"At that, he's probably got more sympathy mit the protelariat than he ever did, Mawruss, because before he owned an automobile he only _suspected_ what them fellers was missing by being poor. Now he _knows_."

"And I suppose by the time he is running for President on the Socialistic ticket," Morris said, "he'll be owning a steam-yacht and the wrongs of the working classes will be pretty near breaking his heart."

"Even so, Mawruss, he won't be changing his mind, and I don't know but what he'll be acting wise, too," Abe said, "because when a politician gets a reputation for carrying a certain line of stable opinions his customers naturally expects that he is going to continue to carry 'em, and when he drops that line and lays in a stock of new stuff in the way of political ideas, y'understand, his customers leave him and he's got to build up his trade over again; and that's no way for a feller to get into the steam-yacht class--I don't care if he would be a politician or a garment-manufacturer."

"Well, of course, if a feller's opinions is his living, you couldn't blame him for not changing 'em," Morris said, "_aber_ this here Root is already retired from business, and the chances is that, the way he's got his money invested, it wouldn't make no difference _how_ liberal-minded he was, the corporations would have to pay the coupons, anyway."

"I know they would," Abe agreed, "but you take some of these Senators and Congressmen which they started out before we was at war with Germany to show an attractive line of pro-German ideas--that is to say, attractive to their regular customers out in Wisconsin and Saint Louis, understand me, and people don't figure that them poor fellers has got mortgages falling due on 'em next year and boys to put through college. For all people knows, Mawruss, this here McLemon which used to make a speciality of speeches warning Americans off of ocean steamships was supporting half his wife's family and widowed sister that way. The chances is that he sees now what a rotten line of argument that was, and he would like to switch over and display some snappy nineteen-seventeen-model speeches about the freedom of the seas for American sitsons, understand me, but you know yourself how it is when your wife has got a large family, Mawruss: if one of her sisters ain't having an emergency operation on you, it's a case of doing something quick to keep her youngest brother out of jail, and either way you are stuck a couple of hundred dollars, so you couldn't blame a Congressman who refuses to change his mind and risk losing his territory, even if all the rest of the country _is_ calling him a regular Benedictine Arnold, y'understand."

"Well, sooner or later some of these big _Machers_ has got to change their minds, otherwise the war will never be over," Morris said. "The Kaiser has said over and over again that, once having put on her shiny armor, y'understand, the Fatherland would never let the sword out of its hand till England was finally crushed and _Gott mit uns_, and Lord George and Lord Northcliff has said the same thing about Germany excepting _Gott mit uns_. Also France in this great hour would never lay down the sword, and _we_ would never lay down the sword. Furthermore to hear Austria talk, and Kerensky, Venizelos, and the King of Rumania, there would be such a continuous demand for swords that it would pay Charles N. Schwab and this here Judge Gary to organize the Consolidated Sword Company or the United States Sword Corporation with a plant covering sixteen acres and an issue of one hundred million dollars preferred stock and two hundred and fifty million dollars common stock and let the cannon and torpedo business go."

"Sure, I know," Abe said. "But when the Kaiser says that Germany would never stop fighting till her enemies is in the dust, speaking of Germany as a she-Fatherland, or till its enemies is in the dust, speaking of Germany as an it-Fatherland, Mawruss, if you was a mind-reader, Mawruss, you would see 'way back in the rear of his brain one of them railroad time-table signs: _(GG) Will stop daily after January first, nineteen-nineteen_."

"I hope you are right, Abe," Morris commented, "but I see where this here Lord Northcliff says that the war is really just beginning, and so far as I can discover that goes without foot-notes or notices that care is taken to have same correct, but the company will not be responsible for delays or for errors in the printing, y'understand."

"Well, I'll tell you," Abe said, "I don't know nothing about this here Lord Northcliff. I admit also that I don't know what his standing as a lord is or when he joined. In fact, I don't even know what a lord has to pay for initiation fees and annual dues, let alone what sick benefit he draws and what they pay to the widow in case a lord dies, understand me, but I don't care if this here Northcliff, instead of a lord, was an Elk or an Odd Fellow, y'understand, he can't tell when this war is going to end no more than I can."

"But I understand this here Northcliff is an awful smart feller, Abe," Morris said. "He owns already a couple dozen newspapers in the old country, and if he wouldn't have the right dope on this here war, I don't know who would."

"Say!" Abe protested. "Nobody could get the right dope about this war out of any newspaper, even if he owned it, Mawruss, because you know as well as I do, Mawruss, if the City Edition says the Germans is starving, y'understand, and couldn't last through the winter, understand me, that ain't no guarantee that they wouldn't be getting plenty of food in the Home Edition and starving again in the Five-star Final Sporting Extra with Complete Wall Street, Mawruss, so the way I figure it is that this here Northcliff has got the idea that if he tells us the war is only beginning we are going to brace up, and if he says the chances is the war would last twenty years yet and that half the world would be down and out with starvation and sickness before it is finished up, y'understand, we are going to say: 'This is _great_. We must get in on this.'"

"Maybe that's the way they get results in the newspaper business, Abe," Morris remarked, "but in the garment business, if I am trying to turn out a big order, y'understand, I tell the operators that the quicker they get through the sooner they will be finished, y'understand, and I make a point of saying that they are practically on the home stretcher even if they are just beginning."

"That ain't such a bad plan, neither," Abe admitted, "but there should ought to be some way to strike an average between your ideas for hurrying up and this you-would-be-all-right-if-blood-poisoning-don't-set-in encouragement of Lord Northcliff's, Mawruss, so that we wouldn't think we'd got too easy a job, but at the same time we wouldn't feel like throwing away the sponge, neither."

"I think he means well, _anyhow_," Morris said, "which he is trying to tell us that we shouldn't think we've got such a cinch as all that; because you know it used to was before this war started, Abe. Every once in a while at a lodge meeting some Grand Army man, who was also, we would say, for example, in the pants business, would get up and make a speech that if this great and glorious land of ours was to be threatened with an invasion by any foreign king or potentate, y'understand, an army of a million soldiers would spring up overnight, and all his lodge brothers would say ain't it wonderful how an old man like that stays as bright as a dollar, y'understand. _But_, just let the same feller get up and make a speech that if the pants business was to be threatened with a strike by any foreign or domestic walking-delegate, understand me, an army of a million pants-operators would spring up overnight, y'understand, and before he had a chance to sit down even them same lodge brothers would have rung for a Bellevue ambulance and passed resolutions of sympathy for his family. And yet, Abe, a learner on pants becomes an expert in six days, whereas it takes six months at the very least to train a soldier."

"That's why Lord Northcliff is making all them discouraging speeches," Abe said. "He's a business man, Mawruss, and he appreciates that we are up against a tough business proposition."

"But what I don't understand is: where does Lord Northcliff come in to be neglecting his newspapers the way he does?" Morris said. "Is he an ambassador or something?"

"Well, for that matter," Abe retorted, "where does Colonel House come in to be neglecting the cloth-sponging business or whatever business the Colonel is in? It's a stand-off, Mawruss. While Lord Northcliff is colonelhousing over here, Colonel House is lordnorthcliffing over in England, and just exactly what that _is_, Mawruss, I don't know, but I got a strong suspicion that the main point about their being where they are is that they ain't where the people are which sent them there, if you understand what I mean."

"And I bet they both feel flattered at that," Morris concluded.

IX

POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON NATIONAL MUSIC AND NATIONAL CURRENCY

Some people wouldn't care what they said, just so long as they could
give the impression that they was regular sharks when it come to
music, but what kind of impression they gave when it come to
patriotism and common sense, such people don't give a nickel.

"It seems that this here Doctor Muck wouldn't play the national anthem, Mawruss, because he found it was inartistic," Abe Potash said as he turned to the editorial page of his daily paper.

"Well, how did he find the national currency, Abe?" Morris Perlmutter inquired. "Also inartistic?"