train in Europe, Abe, he can be pretty near as comfortable as a
traveling-salesman sitting up all night on a day-coach in America, and
if he spends two nights on such a royal train, the way President Wilson
did in going from Paris to Rome, which is about as far as from New York
to Chicago, y'understand, it wouldn't make no difference how many people
is waiting at the station to holler 'Long live the King!' understand me,
he is going to feel half dead, anyway."
"And yet there is people which claims that Mr. Wilson don't give a whoop
whether he makes himself popular or not," Abe commented, "which before
I could lay awake two nights on a train, I wouldn't care if every
newspaper reporter in the United States never got no nearer to Italy
than a fifty-cent _table d'hôte_, including wine."
"Maybe you would care if you was going to Italy to make speeches the way
Mr. Wilson did," Morris said. "Which if the King of Italy was to go to
America and make speeches in Italian at the Capitol in Washington, it
would be just as well if he would bring along an audience of a few dozen
Italians with him, and not depend on enough barbers, shoe-blacks, and
vegetable-stand keepers horning in on the proceedings to give the
Congressmen and Senators a hint as to where the applause should come in.
In fact, I was speaking to one of them newspaper fellers which went to
Italy, Abe, and he says that he listened carefully to all the speeches
which was made in Italian, Mawruss, and that once he thought he heard
the word Chianti mentioned, but he couldn't say for certain. He told me,
however, that the correspondent of _The New York Evening Post_ also
claims that he heard Orlando, the Prime Minister, in a speech delivered
in Rome, use the words Il Trovatore, but that otherwise the whole thing
was like having the misfortune to see somebody give an imitation of
Eddie Foy when you've escaped seeing Eddie Foy in the first place, so
you can imagine what chance Mr. Wilson would have stood with them
Italians if the American correspondents hadn't been along to start the
cries of 'Bravo!' in the right spot.
"So you see, Abe, it's a good thing for them newspaper men to see what
kind of people the Italians is in their own country," Morris continued,
"because if this here League of Nations idea is going to be put over by
Mr. Wilson, Americans should ought to know from the start that Italy is
a Big League nation and its batting average in this war is just as good
as the other Big League nations."
"Did any one say it wasn't?" Abe demanded.
"I know they didn't," Morris said. "But just the same, Abe, there's a
whole lot of people in America which judges the Italians by the way they
behave in the ice business and 'Cavalleria Rusticana,' and also a feller
can get a very unfavorable opinion of Italians by being shaved in one of
them ten-cent palace barber shops, understand me, so even if them
newspaper men couldn't appreciate the performance without a libretto,
y'understand, they could anyhow see for themselves that the Italians in
Italy is doctors and lawyers, clothing-dealers and bankers, just the
same like the Americans are in America, and if they can pass the word
back home, with a few details of how it feels to be a foreigner in a
foreign country, that wouldn't do no harm, neither."
"That is something which an American newspaper correspondent wouldn't
touch on at all," Abe said, "because I bet that every last one of them
has already sent back to America an article about this trip to Italy,
which, when the readers of his newspaper looks at it, Mawruss, not only
would they think that he understood Sonnino's speech from start to
finish, y'understand, but also that every time the newspaper feller is
in Rome, which the article would lead one to believe has been on an
average of once a week for the past ten years, Mawruss, him and Sonnino
drink coffee together."
"Ain't he taking a big chance when he writes a thing like that?" Morris
commented.
"Yow! A chance!" Abe exclaimed. "Why, to read the things that a few of
these here Washington correspondents used to write when they was in
America yet, you would think every one of them was pestered to death
with telephone messages from the White House where Mr. Tumulty says if
the newspaper feller has got a little spare time that evening the
President would consider it a big favor if he would step around to the
White House, as Mr. Wilson would like to ask him an advice about a
diplomatic note which has just been received from Lord George in regards
to the Freedom of the Seas or something."
"But don't you suppose the newspaper which a nervy individual like that
is working for would fire him on the spot?" Morris observed.
"Not at all," Abe said, "because the newspaper-owner likes people to get
the idea that the newspaper has got such an important feller for a
Washington correspondent, just as much as the correspondent does
himself, Mawruss, so you can imagine the bluff some of them fellers is
going to throw now that they really got something interesting to write
about like this here Peace Conference. If Mr. Wilson gains all his
fourteen points, y'understand, the special Paris correspondent of the
Bridgetown, Pa., _Daily Register_ is going to write home, 'And he could
have gained fifteen if he would only have listened to me.' Also,
Mawruss, during the next three months, if the Peace Conference lasts
that long, the readers of the Cyprus, N. J., _Evening Chronicle_ is
going to get the idea that President Wilson, Clemenceau, Lord George,
and a feller by the name of Delos M. Jones, who is writing Peace
Conference articles for the Cyprus, N. J., _Evening Chronicle_, are in
secret conference together every day, including Sundays, from 10 A.M. to
midnight, fixing up the boundaries between Rumania and Servia."
"Well, them boys has got to produce something to make their bosses back
in America continue paying salary and traveling expenses," Morris said,
"because from what this here newspaper correspondent tells me, if he
didn't get his imagination working, all he could write for his paper
would be descriptions of Paris scenery, including the outside of the
buildings where on the insides, with the doors locked and the curtains
pulled, Mr. Wilson and the American Peace Commissioners is openly and
notoriously carrying on open and notorious peace conversations with the
other allied Peace Commissioners, and for all the newspaper
correspondents know to the contrary, Abe, the only point on which them
Peace Commission fellers ain't breaking up the furniture over is that
when they come out, y'understand, it is agreed that the newspaper
correspondents will be told that everything is proceeding
satisfactorily."
"But I thought Mr. Wilson promised before he left America that the old
secret diplomacy would be a thing of the past," Abe said.
"So he did," Morris agreed, "and by what I gather from this here
newspaper man he kept his promise, too, and we now have got a new
diplomacy, compared to which the fellers who were working under the
rules of the old secret diplomacy bladded everything they knew."
"But I distinctly read it in the papers the other day that every morning
at half past ten, Mawruss, Mr. Lansing meets the newspaper
correspondents and lets them know what's been going on," Abe said.
"He meets them," Morris replied, "but so far as letting them know what
has been going on is concerned, all he says that everything is
proceeding satisfactorily and is there any gentleman there which would
like to ask him any questions, which naturally any newspaper
correspondent who could ask Mr. Lansing such questions as would make Mr.
Lansing give out any information he didn't want to give out, wouldn't be
wasting his time working as a newspaper correspondent, Abe, but would be
considering offers from the law firm of Hughes, Brandeis, Stanchfield,
Hughes & Stanchfield to come in as a full partner and take exclusive
charge of the cross-examination of busted railroad presidents."
"Maybe the reason why Mr. Lansing don't tell them newspaper
correspondents nothing is that he ain't got nothing to tell them," Abe
suggested.
"Well, then, if I would be him, Abe, I would make up something," Morris
said, "because if he don't they will, or anyhow some of them will, and
there is going to be a lot of stuff printed in American papers where the
correspondent says he learns from high authority that things ain't going
so good in the Peace Conference as Mr. Wilson would like, because Mr.
Wilson is the doctor in the case, and you know how it is when somebody
is too sick to be seen and the doctor is worried, Abe, he sends down
word by the nurse that everything is proceeding satisfactorily, and the
visitor goes away trying to remember did he or did he not throw away
that fifty-cent black four-in-hand tie he wore to the last funeral he
went to."
"I got a whole lot of confidence in Mr. Wilson as the doctor for this
here war-sickness which Europe is suffering from, Mawruss," Abe said.
"So have I," Morris said: "but you've got to remember that there's a
whole lot of those doctors on the case, Abe--some of them quack doctors,
too, and, when the doctors disagree, who is to decide?"
"I don't know," Abe said; "but I think I know who would like to."
"Who?" Morris asked.
"Some of these here Washington newspaper correspondents you was talking
about," Abe concluded.
V
THIS HERE PEACE CONFERENCE--IT NEEDS PUBLICITY
"Well, Mawruss," Abe Potash said, as he and his partner, Morris
Perlmutter, sat at breakfast in their Paris hotel one Sunday morning, "I
see that the Peace Conference had a meeting the other day where it was
regularly moved and seconded that there should be a League of Nations,
and, in spite of what them Republican Senators back home predicted,
Mawruss, when Chairman Clemenceau said, 'Contrary minded,' you could of
heard a pin drop."
"Sure you could," Morris Perlmutter agreed, "because the way this here
Peace Conference is being run, Abe, when Mr. Clemenceau says: 'All those
in favor would please say _Aye_,' he ain't _asking_ them, he's TELLING
them, which I was speaking to the newspaper feller last night, Abe, and
he says that, compared to the delegates at this here Peace Convention,
y'understand, the delegates of a New York County Democratic Convention
are free to act as they please. In fact, Abe, as I understand it, at the
sewed-up political conventions which they hold it in America, the bosses
do occasionally let a delegate get up and say a few words which ain't
on the program exactly, but at this here Peace Convention a delegate who
tries to get off a speech which 'ain't first been submitted in writing
ten days in advance should ought to go into training for it by picking
quarrels with waiters in all-night restaurants.
"Take this here meeting which they held it on Saturday, Abe," Morris
continued, "and it was terrible the way Chairman Clemenceau jumps, for
instance, on a feller from Belgium by the name M. Hyman."
"That ain't the same M. Hyman which used to was M. Hyman & Co. in the
coat-pad business?" Abe inquired.
"This here M. Hyman used to was a Belgium minister in London," Morris
went on, "which he got up and objected to the way the five big
nations--America, Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan--was, so to
speak, hogging the convention."
"Well, I think the Reverend Hyman was right, at that," Abe said, "which
I just finished reading Mr. Wilson's speech at that meeting, Mawruss, in
which he said that no longer should the select classes govern the rest
of mankind, y'understand, and after the American, French, British,
Italian, and Japanese delegates gets through applauding what Mr. Wilson
says, they select themselves to run the rest of the nations in the
League of Nations. Naturally an ex-minister like the Reverend Hyman is
going to say, 'Why don't you practise what you preach?'"
"And if he wouldn't of been an ex-minister, Abe," Morris said, "the
chances is that Chairman Clemenceau would of whispered a few words into
the cauliflower ear of one of the sergeants-at-arms, and when the
session closed, y'understand, the hat-check boy would have had one hat
left over with the initials M. H. in it which Mr. Hyman didn't have time
to claim before he hit the car tracks, y'understand, and I wouldn't
blame Chairman Clemenceau, neither, because, if this here Peace
Conference is going to end this side of nineteen-fifty, it's got to be
speeded up some."
[Illustration: "I wouldn't blame Chairman Clemenceau neither, because if
this here Peace Conference is going to end this side of nineteen fifty,
it's got to be speeded up some."]
"Nobody says it 'ain't," Abe agreed, "but this here M. Hyman is a
Belgium and he's got a right to be heard."
"He _would_ have if everybody didn't admit that Belgium shall be
protected in every which way, Abe," Morris agreed, "but there is also a
lot of small nations which has got delegates at the Peace Convention,
like Cuba, y'understand, and some of them South American republics, and,
once you begin with them fellers, where are you going to leave off?
Take, for instance, the Committee on Reparation, which has got charge of
deciding how much money Germany ought to pay for losses suffered by the
countries which made war on her, y'understand, and there wasn't one of
them Spanish-American republics which didn't want to get appointed on
that committee, because, when the Reparation Committee gets to work,
practically all of them republics is going to come along with claims
for smoke damages, bills for labor in connection with ripping out the
fixtures of confiscated German steamers, loss of services of the
Presidents of such republics by reason of tonsillitis from talking about
how bravely they would have fought if they had raised an army and navy
which they didn't, y'understand, and any other claims against Germany
which they think they might have had a chance to get by with."
"Well, of course there is bound to be a lot of them small republics
which is going to make a play for a little easy money, Mawruss," Abe
said, "but the indications is that when the proofs of claims is filed by
the alleged creditors, y'understand, there would be a couple of them
comma hounds on the Reparation Committee which would reject such claims
on the grounds of misplaced semicolons alone. Then six months
hafterwards, when the representative of one of them republics goes over
to what used to was the office of the Peace Conference with a revised
proof of claim, which he has just received by return mail, understand
me, he would find the premises temporarily occupied by one of them
crooked special-sale trunk concerns, and that's all there would _be_ to
it."
"Then you think that this here Peace Conference would only last six
months, Abe?" Morris asked.
"Sure I do," Abe replied, "and less, even, because right now already the
interest is beginning to die out, which it wouldn't surprise me in the
slightest, Mawruss, if in three weeks or so, when Mr. Wilson is
temporarily out of the cast on account of going home to America to sign
the new tax bill, y'understand, the attendance of the delegates would
begin to fall off so bad, understand me, that the Peace Conference
managers would got to spend a lot of money for putting in advertisements
that George Clemenceau presents:
"'THE INTERNATIONAL PEACE CONFERENCE
The Unparalleled Success of Two Hemispheres
'Enthralling' _Tribune_
'Punch with a Kick in It' _Sun_
'Vigor and Suspense' _World_
'Wins Audience' _Globe_
'Gripping' _Mail_
'Ausgezeichnet' _Tageblatt_
QUAI D'ORSAY
Now.
Matinees, Saturday, 2:30.'"
"And even then they wouldn't get an audience, Abe," Morris said,
"because those kind of advertisements don't fool nobody but the suckers
which pays for them, Abe."
"Maybe not," Abe agreed, "but if the delegates stays away, Mawruss, the
Peace Conference could always get an audience by letting in the
newspaper correspondents, which I don't care if in addition to Mr. Lord
George and Colonel House they would got performing at this here Peace
Conference Douglas Fairbanks and Caruso, it wouldn't be a success as a
show, _anyhow_, because no theayter could get any audiences if they
would make it a policy to bar out the newspaper crickets."
"Well, I'll tell you," Morris began. "Nobody likes to read in newspapers
more than I do, Abe. They help to pass away many unpleasant minutes in
the Subway when a feller would otherwise be figuring on if God forbid
the brakes shouldn't hold what is going to become of his wife and
children, y'understand; but, at the same time, from the way this here
newspaper feller which hogs our cigars is talking, Abe, I gather that
the big majority of newspaper reporters now in Paris has got the idea
that this here Peace Conference is being held mainly to give newspaper
reporters a chance to write home a lot of snappy articles about peace
conferences, past and present. Although, of course, there is certain
more or less liberal-minded newspaper men which think that if,
incidentally, Mr. Wilson puts over the League of Nations and the Freedom
of the Seas, why, they 'ain't got no serious objections, just so long as
it don't involve talking the matter over privately without a couple of
hundred newspaper reporters present."
"Sure, I know," Abe said; "but if them newspaper fellers has got such an
idee, Mawruss, it is Mr. Wilson's own fault, because ever since we got
into the war, y'understand, Mr. Wilson has been talking about open
covenants of peace openly arrived at, and even before we went into the
war he got off the words 'pitiful publicity,' and also it was him and
not the newspaper men which first give the readers of newspapers to
understand that the old secret diplomacy was a thing of the past,
Mawruss, so the consequences was that, when Mr. Wilson come over here,
the owners of newspapers sent to Paris everybody that was working for
them--from dramatic crickets to baseball experts--just so long as they
could write the English language, y'understand, because them
newspaper-owners figured that, according to Mr. Wilson's own
suggestions, this here Peace Conference was not only going to be a
wide-open affair, openly arrived at, y'understand, but also pitifully
public, whereas not only it ain't wide open, Mawruss, but it is about as
pitifully public as a conference between the members of the financial
committee of Tammany Hall on the day before Election. Also, Mawruss, a
newspaper reporter could arrive at that Peace Conference openly or he
could arrive at it disguised with false whiskers till his own wife
wouldn't know him from a Jugo-Slob delegate, y'understand, and he
couldn't get past the elevator-starter even."
"That was when the conference opened," Morris said; "but I understand
they are now letting them into the next room and giving them once in a
while a look through the door during the supper turns when the Polack
and Servian delegates is performing."
"And that ain't going to do them a whole lot of good, neither," Abe
declared, "because this here newspaper feller told me last night, when
he was smoking my last cigar, that he has been mailing back an article a
day to America ever since the President arrived here and there ain't not
one of them which has got there yet."
"And I was reading in the America edition of the Paris edition of the
London edition of the Manchester, England, _Daily News_ that the
newspaper correspondents couldn't only send back a couple of hundred
words or so by telegraph, Abe," Morris said, "which the way it looks to
me, Abe, if some news don't find its way back to America pretty quick
about this here Peace Conference and Mr. Wilson, y'understand, people
back home in Washington is going to say to each other, 'I wonder
whatever become of this here--now--Wilson?' and the friend is going to
say, '_What_ Wilson?' And the other feller would then say, 'Why, this
here Woodruff Wilson.' And then the friend would say, 'Oh, HIM! Didn't
he move away to Paris or something?' And the other feller would then
say, 'I see where Benny Leonard put up a wonderful fight in Madison
Square Garden yesterday,' and that's all there would be to THAT
conversation."
"Maybe it is because of this, and not because of signing the new tax
bill, that the President is going home in a few days for a short stay
in America," Abe suggested.
"Sure, I know," Morris agreed; "but what good is them short visits going
to do him, because I ain't such an optician like you are, Abe. I believe
that this here Peace Conference is going to last a whole lot longer than
six months, Abe, and, if Mr. Wilson keeps on going home and coming back,
maybe the first time he goes back he would get some little newspaper
publicity out of it, and the second time also, perhaps, but on the third
when he returns from France only the Democratic newspapers would give
him more as half a column about it, and later on, when he lands from his
third to tenth trips, inclusive, all the notice the papers would take
from it would be that in the ship's news on the ninth page there would
be a few lines saying that among those returning on the S.S. _George
Washington_ was J. L. Abrahams, and so on through the B's, C's, and D's
right straight down to the W's, which you would got to read over several
times before you would discover the President tucked away as W. Wilson
between two fellers named Max Wangenheim and Abraham Welinsky."
"There is something in what you say, Mawruss," Abe admitted; "but, at
the same time, a big man like Mr. Wilson ain't looking to get no
newspaper notoriety. He is working to become famous."
"Sure, I know," Morris said; "but the only difference between notoriety
and fame is that with notoriety you get the publicity now, whereas with
fame you get the publicity fifty years from now, and the publicity which
Mr. Wilson is going to get fifty years from now ain't going to help him
a whole lot in the next presidential campaign."
"Mr. Wilson ain't worrying about the next presidential campaign,
Mawruss," Abe declared. "What he is trying to do is to make a success of
this here Peace Conference."
"Then he would better get a press agent for it," Morris observed,
"because, if they don't get some more publicity, it will die on its
feet."
VI
JOINING THE LEGION OF HONOR
"I see where several Americans took advantage to join the Legion of
Honor while they was over here," Morris Perlmutter remarked, as he sat
at luncheon with his partner, Abe Potash, in the restaurant of their
Paris hotel.
"Some people is crazy for life insurance," Abe Potash commented, "in
especially if they could combine it with the privilege to make speeches
at lodge-meetings. Also, Mawruss, a whole lot of people is so badly
predicted to the lapel-button habit that they would join anything just
so long as they get a lapel-button to show for it."
[Illustration: "a whole lot of people is so badly predicted to the lapel
button habit they join anything"]
"But this here Legion of Honor must be a pretty good fraternal-insurance
proposition at that," Morris observed, "because it says here in the
paper where several New York bankers has gone into it, which it's a
mighty hard thing to separate them fellers from their money even with
first-class, A-number-one, gilt-edged, two-name commercial paper, and if
this here Legion of Honor was just a lapel-button affair which assessed
its members every time they had a death claim to pay, you could take it
from me, Abe, not one of them bankers would of went near it, so maybe
it would be a good thing if we looked into it, Abe."
"If you want to join this here Legion of Honor, that's _your_ business,
Mawruss," Abe said, "but I already belong to the Independent Order
Mattai Aaron, which I've been paying them crooks for three years now
that I should get a sick benefit fifteen dollars a week without being
laid up with so much as tonsillitis even."
"About the sick benefit I wasn't thinking about at all," Morris
declared; "but you take a feller like Sam Feder, president of the
Kosciusko Bank, for instance, and if we should be maybe next year a
little short and wanted an accommodation from two to three thousand
dollars, y'understand, it wouldn't do us no harm if we could give him
the L. of H. grip for a starter. Am I right or wrong?"
"Say!" Abe exclaimed. "The chances is that when them New York bankers
gets back to New York they will want to forget all about joining this
here L. of H."
"Why, what is there so disgraceful about joining the L. of H.?" Morris
asked.