decent, respectable fellers is liable to make a mistake of that kind,
understand me," Abe said; "but _you_ take one of these here members of
the firm of--we would say, for example, J. G. Morgan, y'understand,
which comes back from Paris after joining this here L. of H., and what
happens him? The first morning he comes down to the office wearing an
L. of H. button, Mawruss, everybody from the paying-teller up is going
to ask him what is the idea of the button, and he is going to spend the
rest of the day listening to stories about people joining insurance
fraternities which busted up and left the members with undetermined
sentences of from three to five years, y'understand. The consequence
would be that if any of his depositors expect to get an accommodation by
giving him the L. of H. grip or wearing an L. of H. button,
y'understand, they might just so well send him an invitation to a
banquet where, in order to gain his confidence and respect, they are
going to drink champagne out of an actress's slipper, and be done with
it. Am I right or wrong?"
"Well, you couldn't exactly blame them fellers which joined the L. of
H.," Morris observed, "because Paris has a very funny effect on some of
the most level-headed Americans which goes there without their families
and business associates, which if this here League of Nations had been
fixed up at a Peace Conference held somewheres down on Lower Broadway
instead of the Quai d'Orsay, Abe, the chances is that the United States
Senate would of had a whole lot more confidence in it than they have at
present."
"Say!" Abe explained. "This here League of Nations could of been pulled
off in Paris or it could of been pulled off in a respectable
neighborhood like Prospect Park West, Brooklyn, Mawruss, for all the
spare time it gave the fellers which framed it to indulge in any wild
night life. Take, for instance, the proposed constitution and by-laws,
which was printed on three pages of the newspaper the other day,
Mawruss, and anybody which dictated that _megillah_ to a stenographer
would be too hoarse for weeks afterwards to order so much as a plain
Benedictine. Also, Mawruss, nobody which didn't lead a blameless life
could have a brain clear enough to _understand_ the thing, let alone
composing it, which last night I sat up till two o'clock this morning
reading them twenty-six articles, Mawruss, and ten grains of asperin
hardly touched the headache which I got from it."
"Naturally," Morris said, "because when Mr. Wilson wrote that
constitution, Abe, he figured that people which is going to read it has
got a better education as one year in night school."
"Sure, I know," Abe agreed, satirically, "but at the same time everybody
ain't such a natural-born Harvard gradgawate like you are, Mawruss, and
furthermore, Mawruss, it's a big mistake for Mr. Wilson to go ahead on
the idea that we _are_, y'understand, because, so far as I remember it,
the Constitution of the United States didn't say that this was a
government of the college gradgawates by the college gradgawates for the
college gradgawates, y'understand; neither did the Declaration of
Independence start in by saying, 'We, the college gradgawates of the
United States,' Mawruss. The consequences is that most of us
ingeramusses which has got one vote apiece, even around last November
already, begun to feel neglected, and you could take it from me,
Mawruss, if Mr. Wilson tries to win the confidence of the American
people with a few more of them documents with the twin-six words in
them, y'understand, by the time he gets ready to run for President
again, Mawruss, the only people which is going to vote for him would be
the Ph.D. and A.M. fellers."
"Well, Mawruss," Abe said, a few days after the conversation above set
forth, "I see that President Wilson got back to America after a rough
passage."
"Was he seasick?" Morris asked.
"Not a day," Abe replied.
"Then that accounts for it," Morris commented.
"Accounts for what?" Abe asked.
"Doctor Grayson being an admiral," Morris replied, "which a couple of
years ago, when Mr. Wilson appointed Doctor Grayson to be an admiral
over the heads of a couple of hundred fellers which had been captains of
ships for years already, a lot of people got awful sore about it, and
now it appears that he got the appointment because he can cure
seasickness."
"I suppose if Doctor Grayson could cure locomotive ataxia the President
would of appointed him Director-General of Railroads," Abe remarked.
"For my part, Abe," Morris said, "if I had a good doctor like Doctor
Grayson attending me, and it was necessary to appoint him to something
in order to keep him, Abe, I would appoint him a field-marshal, just so
long as he could make me comfortable on an Atlantic trip in
winter-time."
"But there isn't no office in the army or navy that President Wilson
could appoint Doctor Grayson to which would have been a big enough
reward if Doctor Grayson could have made the President feel comfortable
in Washington when he got there, Mawruss," Abe said, "which I see by the
paper this morning that thirty-seven United States Senators, coming from
every state in the Union except Missouri, suddenly discovered they was
from Missouri, in particular the Senator from Massachusetts, and not
only does them Senators want to know what the meaning of that
constitution of the League of Nations means, but they also give notice
that, _whatever_ it means, they are going to knife it, _anyway_."
"Sure, I know," Morris said; "they're like a lot of business men you and
me has had experience with, Abe. They claim a shortage and kick about
the quality of the shipment before they even start to unpack the goods.
Why don't they wait till Mr. Wilson goes back and finishes up his job?"
"They haven't got the time," Abe replied, "because the session ends on
March 4th at noon, just about twenty-four hours before Admiral Grayson
is paying his first professional call on President Wilson aboard the
_George Washington_, and by the time Congress gets together again
President Wilson expects to have the League of Nations proposition sewed
up so tight that there will be nothing left for them Senators to do but
to indorse it."
"But, as I understand it, them Senators just loafed away their time
during the end of the session and didn't pass a whole lot of laws which
they should ought to have passed, Abe, so that it will be necessary for
President Wilson to call an extra session in a few days," Morris said.
"That's what them Senators figured," Abe agreed, "but they was mistaken,
Mawruss, because the President ain't going to run any chances of being
interrupted while he is working on this here Peace Conference by S O S
messages from Washington to please come home if he wants to save
_anything_ out of the wreck Congress is making of the inside of the
Capitol."
"But I thought that before he went to Europe in the first place, Abe,
President Wilson said to Congress that it wouldn't make any difference
to them about his being in Europe, because he was in close touch with
them, and that the cables and the wireless would make him available just
as though he was still living in the White House," Morris said.
"Sure, I know," Abe agreed; "but the trouble with that situation was
that it 'ain't been discovered by the inventors yet how a President can
shake hands with a Senator by wireless or how he can sit down to dinner
by wireless with a few Congressmen and make them feel that he is their
one best friend. Also, Mawruss, it comes high even for a President to
send cable messages to a Senator which he thinks is getting sore about
something, such cable messages being in the nature of: 'Hello, Henry,
what's the good word? Why is it I 'ain't seen you up to the White House
lately, Henry?' or, 'Where have you been keeping yourself lately,
Henry?' or, 'Mrs. Lodge and the children all right, Henry?' or something
like that."
"Say, for that matter, Abe," Morris observed, "President Wilson never
did a whole lot of jollying when he could have done it over the
telephone at unlimited local-service rates. In fact, from what I have
seen of Mr. Wilson, he looks to me like a man who would find it a whole
lot easier to be easy in his manner toward Congressmen by wireless or by
cable than face to face."
"Well, you couldn't blame Mr. Wilson exactly, Mawruss," Abe said,
"because, up to the time he became Governor of New Jersey, his idea of
being a good mixer was to get together with a couple of LL.D.'s and sit
up till pretty near nine o'clock knocking the trustees, y'understand. In
fact, up to the time he resigned from being president of Princeton
College, life to Mr. Wilson was just correcting one examination paper
after another, all of which 'ain't got nothing to do with this here
League of Nations being a good thing, Mawruss," Abe declared.
"And it don't affect the fact that Mr. Wilson is a high-grade,
A-number-one gentleman, which is doing the best he knows how to make
good to his country, Abe," Morris declared.
"Did I say he wasn't?" Abe asked.
"Then what are you dragging up his past life for?" Morris demanded.
"What do you mean--dragging up his past life?" Abe rejoined. "The way
you talk, Mawruss, you would think that being president of a college
come in two degrees, like grand larceny, and had to be lived down
through the guilty party getting the respect of the community by years
of honest work."
"Say, lookyhere, Abe," Morris protested, "don't try to twist things
around till it looks like I was knocking Mr. Wilson, and not you."
"I am knocking President Wilson!" Abe exclaimed. "Why, I've got the
greatest respect for Mr. Wilson, and always did, Mawruss, but it would
be foolish not to admit that the practice which a President of the
United States gets in being a college professor is more useful to him in
framing up a first-class, A-number-one League of Nations than it is in
getting his political enemies to accept it. Am I wright or wrong?"
"Maybe he would have got them to accept it if he had stayed in touch
with them personally and managed the Peace Conference by wireless and
cable," Morris suggested.
"He probably figured that if he wanted to put over this here League of
Nations it was more necessary for him to be on the job in France than on
the job in America," Abe said.
"Well," Morris commented, "the next time the United States of America
has a Peace Conference on its hands, Abe, the President will have to be
a copartnership instead of an individual, with one member of the firm in
Washington and the other in Paris."
"But what would Admiral Grayson do?" Abe asked. "He couldn't be in two
places at the same time."
"Probably the Washington President could find a bright young physician
in the Treasury Department," Morris concluded, "and promote him to the
honorary title and salary of Comptroller of the Currency."
VII
SOME CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENTS FOR THE KAISER
"I see where an American army officer reports that he has investigated
into the food situation in Germany and that the German people looks
thin," Abe Potash observed to his partner, Morris Perlmutter.
"That's already German propoganda, Abe," Morris said. "Word come down
from headquarters that the German people should look thin in order to
get the sympathy of the American officer, so they looked thin,
y'understand."
Abe shrugged his shoulders. "Maybe you're right, Mawruss," he said, "but
all I could say is that them German propoganders which has charge of
making the German people look thin is wasting their time in Germany,
because there is plenty people in America which would make them
propoganders rich for life if they would only come over to New York and
open an office for giving reduction propoganda at a thousand dollars a
treatment."
"Well, I'll tell you," Morris said; "ordinarily, if the German people
looked thin you would believe them. Also, before the war, if somebody
went to Germany and people asked him when he come back how was the
weather there, he didn't say, 'Unless they was putting one over on me,
it was snowing,' y'understand, but to-day it's different. Nobody has got
no confidence in the Germans nowadays. In fact, even the Germans
themselves is losing confidence in them. Take Berlin, for instance, and
every week the Spartacist, or Red, government has got the support of the
people from 9:30 A.M. Tuesday until 6 P.M. Thursday, when the German
people begins to lose confidence in them, so that by 8:30 A.M. Friday
the Coalition, or Yellow, government comes into power. The Coalition, or
Yellow, government then keeps the confidence of the people until Sunday
midnight, when, under the influence of the Sunday night _Ersat
Delicatessen_ supper, the Germans starts in to suspect that everything
ain't right with the Yellow government, neither, so back they go to the
Red government, and they seize Police Headquarters, the Bureau of
Assessments and Arrears, and desk room in the office of the Deputy
Commissioner of Water-supply, Gas, and Electricity, and that's the way
it goes."
"It's a funny thing to me why them colored German governments always
starts a revolution by seizing Police Headquarters, Mawruss," Abe
commented.
"That's the way they finance the revolution," Morris replied; "because I
understand that the night life in Berlin has been going on the same as
usual, revolution or no revolution, Abe, which I bet yer that as soon
as the new chief of police is appointed by the Red or Yellow government,
as the case may be, he don't waste no time, but he right away sends out
plain-clothes men to the proprietors of them Berlin all-night
restaurants with positive instructions to close all restaurants at
eleven sharp and not to accept nothing but gold coin of the present
standard of weight and fineness."
"And yet it used to be thought that when it comes to graft, Mawruss,
German officials was like Cæsar's ghost," Abe observed--"above
suspicion."
"That's only another way of them impressions about Germany which us
Americans has had reversed on us, Abe," Morris said, "which the way our
idees about what kind of a people the Germans used to was has changed,
Mawruss, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if the old habit the
Germans had for drinking beer was just a bluff, y'understand, and that
at heart they was prohibitionists to a man. In fact, Abe, if I would be
a German Bolshevik with instructions to shoot the Kaiser on sight, I
should go gunning for a short, stout man with a tooth-brush mustache and
a holy horror of wearing uniforms, because it's my opinion that all them
so-called portraits of the Kaiser was issued for the purpose of
misleading anarchists to shoot at a thin man in a heavily embroidered
uniform with spike-end mustaches."
"Well, whatever he looks like, Mawruss," Abe said, "if I was him,
rather than have such a terrible fate hanging over me, y'understand, I
would telegraph to Berlin for them to send along a good shot while they
was about it, and have the thing over with quick, Mawruss."
"Say!" Morris exclaimed. "You and me should have hanging over us the
life which the Kaiser is going to lead from now on! For two hundred and
fifty dollars a week at a Pallum Beach hotel you could only get a very
small idea of the hardships the Kaiser will got to undergo in the
future, Abe."
"But do you mean to told me that after what happened to that English
lady in Brussels and the captain of the English mail-boat, Mawruss, the
English ain't going to persecute the Kaiser?" Abe demanded.
"_You_--the English would persecute the Kaiser!" Morris exclaimed.
"Don't you know that the Kaiser's mother was the King of England's
father's sister? Do you suppose for a moment that the King of England
wants a convict in the family?"
"Well, has he got any _mishbocha_ in France, Mawruss?" Abe asked.
"Because if not, Mawruss, it seems to me that now, while all the
witnesses is in Paris, it wouldn't be a bad idea to get the March term
of the Paris County grand jury to hand down an indictment for murder
with intent to kill or something."
"That sounds reasonable to anybody not connected with this here Peace
Conference, Abe," Morris admitted, "but it seems that the Committee for
Fixing Responsibility says that if they was to hang or shoot the Kaiser
it would give him an awful drag with the German people, and they don't
want the Kaiser to get popular again, dead or alive. Their idea is to
punish him by letting him live on to be an outcast among all the people
of the earth, except the proprietors of first-class European hotels,
dealers in high-grade automobiles, expensive jewelry storekeepers,
fashionable tailors, and a couple of million other people who don't
attach an awful lot of importance to the moral character of anybody
which wants to enjoy life and has got the money to do it with. In other
words, Abe, they claim that, in leaving the Kaiser to his conscience and
his bank-account they are punishing him a whole lot worse as hanging him
or shooting him."
"And I suppose that same committee is going to sentence von Tirpitz to
six months at Monte Carlo, while Ludendorff will probably be confined to
a Ritz hotel eight hours a day for the rest of his natural life," Abe
suggested.
"The committee claims not," Morris replied. "It seems that the Kaiser's
ministers--like von Tirpitz and Ludendorff--is going to get what is
coming to them, on the grounds that they are guilty of violations of
international law and 'ain't got no relations among the royal families
of England or Italy."
"But why not bring the whole fleet over to America, and let the
authorities dispose of them there?" Abe inquired.
"The Kaiser would be just as much a martyr if he was sentenced in
America as in Europe," Morris replied.
"Who says anything about sentencing him?" Abe demanded. "All it would be
necessary to do would be to swear out a warrant against him and leave
the rest to a couple of headquarters detectives, which, naturally, when
them fellers would tell him to come along with them, the Kaiser would
technically resist the arrest by asking what for. This would mean at the
very least ten stitches in his scalp, Mawruss, not reckoning a couple of
broken ribs or so when the fingerprints was taken, and, while it
wouldn't be only a starter in the way of punishment, he would anyhow
find out that it is one thing to be actually engaged in a modern battle,
and that looking at it through a high-power telescope while sitting in a
bomb-proof limousine six miles away is absolutely something else again.
Later on, Mawruss, when a New York police-court lawyer visited him in
his cell after the Kaiser had lunched on bread and water and the
police-court lawyer on what used to be called _Koenigsburger Klops_ and
is now known as Liberty Roast, understand me, the Kaiser would get just
an inkling of what it means to be caught in a gas attack without a
gas-mask."
"You talk like you would got a little experience in the way of sitting
in prison yourself, Abe," Morris commented.
"I am giving you what practically happened to a feller by the name
Immerglick which was arrested by mistake on account the police thought
he looked like an Italian who was wanted for barrel murder, Mawruss,"
Abe exclaimed, "and if the police behaves this way to a perfect stranger
which is innocent at that, Mawruss, you could imagine what them fellers
would do to a well-known guilty party like the Kaiser. But that's
neither here nor there, Mawruss. What I am trying to do is to work out a
punishment proposition for the Kaiser which would get by with such a
sensitive bunch as this here committee to place responsibility seems to
be."
"Go ahead and have a good time with your pipe-dream, Abe," Morris said.
"You couldn't make me feel bad, no matter what happens to the Kaiser in
your imagination."
"Well," Abe continued, "after he is through with trying to get rid of
the police-court lawyer, Mawruss, he should ought to be arranged before
the magistrate in a traffic court, y'understand, and should be accused
of driving at the rate of twenty-two miles an hour, which is two miles
past the legal speed limit, and then he would find out that all them
commandants of Ruhleben and the other German prison camps wasn't even
new beginners in the art of making prisoners feel cheap, because you
take one of these here traffic-court magistrates which has had years of
experience bawling out respectable sitsons who has got the misfortune to
own automobiles, Mawruss, and what such a feller wouldn't do to
humilitate the Kaiser, y'understand, ain't even dreamt of in German
prison camps yet."
"I see you still feel sore about getting fined twenty-five dollars for
driving like a maniac down at Far Rockaway last summer Abe," Morris
commented.
"How I feel or how I don't feel hain't got nothing to do with it,
Mawruss," Abe retorted. "And furthermore, Mawruss, any motor-cycle
policeman which has got the nerve to swear that he could tell inside of
two miles an hour how fast somebody is driving, understand me, is guilty
of perjury on the face of it, which I told the judge. 'Judge, your
Honor,' I says, 'I admit I was going fast,' I says, 'but--'"
"Excuse me," Morris interrupted, "but I thought you was talking about
how to punish the Kaiser, ain't it, which, while I admit you got some
pretty good ideas on the subject, Abe, still at the same time there is
plenty of ways that the Kaiser could get punished in America without
going to the trouble and expense of arresting him first, Abe. There is a
whole lot of experiences which the American people pays to go through
just once, y'understand, which if the Kaiser could be persuaded to take
them all on, one after the other, Abe, his worst enemies would got to
pity him. Supposing, for instance, he would start off with one of them
electric vibrating face massages, Abe, and if he comes through it alive,
y'understand, he would then be hustled off to one of these here
strong-arm bunkopathic physicians, which charges five dollars for the
first visit and never has to quote rates for the second or third visits,
because once is plenty, y'understand."
"But I thought the idea was not to let anybody have any sympathy for the
Kaiser, Mawruss," Abe broke in.
"Plenty of fellers I know goes to these here near-doctors," Morris
declared, "and nobody has got any sympathy for them, neither. Also, Abe,
I 'ain't got no sympathy for anybody who goes to these here restaurants
where they run off a cabarattel review, Abe, and yet it's a terrible
punishment at that, so there's another tip for you if you want any more
ideas for making the Kaiser suffer."
"Say, when it comes right down to it, Mawruss, and if you don't want to
show the feller no mercy at all, y'understand," Abe said, "what's the
matter with making him see some of them war plays they was putting on in
New York last winter?"
"Why only _war_ plays?" Morris asked. "I sat through a couple musical
shows last winter without the option of a fine, y'understand, and it
would be a good thing if the Kaiser could see performances like
that--just to make him realize that in losing his throne, y'understand,
he has no longer got the power to order the actors shot, together with
the composer and the man that wrote the jokes."
"But the biggest punishment of all you 'ain't even hinted at yet," Abe
said, "and it's a punishment which thousands of Americans is getting
right now without no sympathy from nobody, which its name is:
"'Form 1040. United States Internal Revenue
Service
INDIVIDUAL INCOME TAX RETURN
For Net Incomes of More than $5,000
FOR CALENDAR YEAR, 1918.'
Also, Mawruss, when you consider what the Kaiser done, Mawruss, I ask
you is it too much that the Committee on Fixing Responsibility should
order him starved to death or talked to death or any other slow and
painful death, because such a fate is going to be a happy one compared
with the thousands of decent, respectable American business men which is
headed straight for an insane-asylum, trying to fill out
"'(a) Totals taxable at 1918 rates (see instructions page 2 under C).
(b) Totals taxable at 1917 rates (see instructions, included in K (a)
page 2).
(c) Amount of stock dividends (column 4) taxable at 1916 rates
(enter as 20).'"
"Well, after all, Abe," Morris said, "there's one worser punishment you
could hand out the Kaiser than filling out this here income tax."
"What's that?" Abe inquired.
"Paying it," Morris said.
VIII
IT ENTERS ON ITS NO-GOLD-CASKET PHASE