Mawruss, it don't take long for them highwaymen to get on to him," Abe
Potash remarked, shortly after Mr. Wilson's return to Paris.
"What highwaymen?" Morris inquired.
"Them presidents of orphan-asylums and homes," Abe said, "and in a way
it serves Mr. Wilson right, Mawruss, because, instead of keeping it to
himself that he got stuck over four thousand dollars for tips alone
while he was in France, y'understand, as soon as he arrived in Boston he
goes to work and blabs the whole thing to newspaper reporters, and you
could take it from me, Mawruss, that for the next six months Mr. Wilson
would be flooded with letters from Associations for the Relief of
Indignant Armenians, Homes for Chronic Freemasons, and who knows what
else. So therefore you take this here Carter H. Glass, Mawruss, and he
naturally comes to the conclusion that Mr. Wilson is an easy mark,
because--"
"Excuse me, Abe," Morris interrupted, coldly, "but who do you think
this here Carter H. Glass is, anyway?"
"I don't know," Abe went on, "but whoever he is he probably figured that
if he was going to get turned down he would anyhow get turned down big,
because it says here in the paper that he cables Mr. Wilson he should
please let him have three million dollars for this here Bureau for
Paying Allowances to the Relations of Soldiers and--"
"Listen, Abe," Morris said, "if you wouldn't know who Carter H. Glass is
after paying twelve per cent. on all you made over four thousand dollars
last year, y'understand, nothing that I could say would ever learn you,
so therefore I 'ain't got no expectations that you are going to remember
it when I tell you that this here Carter H. Glass is Secretary of the
Treasurer, and when he cabled Mr. Wilson for three million dollars, it
ain't so hopeless like it sounds. Also, Abe, while Mr. Wilson gives it
out to the papers that he got stung four thousand dollars for tips, it
also appears in the papers that he came home with a few gold caskets and
things, not to mention one piece of tapestry which the French government
presented him with, valued at two hundred thousand dollars alone,
y'understand, and if that kind of publicity is going to give Mr. Wilson
a reputation as an easy giver-up, Abe, all I can say is that the
collectors for orphan-asylums and homes don't read the papers no more
carefully than you do, Abe."
"But why should the Secretary of the United States Treasury got to
touch Mr. Wilson for?" Abe demanded. "Every day the people of the United
States is paying into the United States Treasury millions and millions
dollars income-tax money and all the President owns is a few gold
caskets which he got presented with, and maybe a little tapestry,
y'understand. What's the matter with that feller Carter H. Glass? Is he
afraid he is going to run short if he spends a couple million dollars or
so? Has he lost his nerve or something?"
"Well, I'll tell you, Abe," Morris began. "The Secretary of the Treasury
'ain't got such a cinch like some people think, y'understand. If the
Bureau for Paying Allowances to the Relations of Soldiers send over and
asks the Secretary of the Treasury to be so good and let 'em have for a
few days three million dollars, understand me, you would naturally think
that it is one of them dead open-and-shut, why-certainly propositions.
The impression you have is that the Secretary grabs ahold of the 'phone
and says to the head of stock to look on the third shelf from the
elevator shaft is there any more of them million-dollar bills with the
picture of Rutherford B. Hayes on 'em left, and if not, to send Jake up
with three hundred of them three-by-seven-inch ten-thousand-dollar
bills, and that's all there is to it. But as a matter of fact he doesn't
do nothing of the kind, because nobody could get any money out of the
Secretary of the Treasury except by an act of Congress."
"Well, it's nothing against Mr. Glass that he is such a tight-wad,
Mawruss, because that's the kind of man to have as Secretary of the
Treasurer, Mawruss, which supposing they had one of them easy-come,
easy-go fellers for Secretary of the Treasurer, Mawruss--somebody who
would fall for every hard-luck story he hears, y'understand, and how
long is it going to be before the police is asking him what did he done
with it all?" Abe said. "So, for my part, Mawruss, they could abuse Mr.
Glass all they want to, y'understand, but I would be just as well
satisfied, so far as my income taxes is concerned, if the only way you
could get money out of him was by a miracle instead of an act of
Congress. Am I right or wrong?"
"Do me the favor, Abe," Morris said, "and don't talk a lot of nonsense
about a subject about which you don't know nothing about, because when I
say that nobody could get money out of Carter H. Glass except by an act
of Congress, y'understand, I ain't talking poetical in a manner of
speaking. They must actually got to got and act of Congress before
anybody could get any money out of the Secretary of the Treasury, no
matter if Mr. Glass would be the most generous feller in existence,
which, for all I know, he _might_ be. So, therefore, Abe, when Congress
adjourned without passing the acts which was necessary in order that the
Secretary of the Treasury should pay the railroads seven hundred and
fifty million dollars to keep 'em going, y'understand, not to mention
such chicken-feed like three million dollars for this here Soldiers'
Relations Bureau and the like, it leaves the country practically broke
with seven or eight billion dollars in the bank. _Now_ do you understand
what I am driving into?"
"I think I do," Abe said, "but explain it to me just as if I didn't,
because what is a mystery to me is, why did Congress adjourn without
passing them acts, Mawruss?"
"They did it to put Mr. Wilson in bad on account he went to Europe
without calling an extra session," Morris said.
"I thought Congress got paid by the year and not by the session," Abe
remarked.
"So they do," Morris continued, "but they said they wanted to stay in
session while Mr. Wilson was in Europe to _help_ him, and Mr. Wilson
thought they wanted to stay in session while he was in Europe to knock
him, and he said: 'Watch! I'll fix them fellers,' and _they_ said:
'Watch! _We'll_ fix that feller.' And between the two of them, the
railroads is left dry and high, the War Risks Bureau claims that they
could only keep going for a week or so, the Soldiers' Relations people
is sending out J O S signals, and that's the way it goes."
"And who do you think is right, Mawruss?" Abe asked. "Mr. Wilson or
Congress?"
"Well, I ain't exactly prepared to say, y'understand," Morris replied,
"but it's a question in my mind whether or not there ain't just so much
need for a Peace Conference in Washington as there is in Paris, and if
so, Abe, whether Mr. Wilson ain't at the wrong Peace Conference."
"So far as that goes, Mawruss," Abe said, "he might just so well be in
Washington as in Paris, because the tapestry and gold-casket period of
this here Conference is already a thing of the past, which I see that
Mr. Wilson ain't even staying with the Murats no longer."
"Naturally," Morris said, "after the way this here Murat went around
talking about the League of Nations."
"Why, I thought he was in favor of it!" Abe said.
"He was in favor of it," Morris said, "up to the time Mr. Wilson and
Lord George had the conference with the Jugo-Slobs where they laid out
the frontiers by making the ink-bottle represent Bessarabia and the
mucilage-bottle Macedonia. When Murat saw the library carpet the next
morning, he began to say that, after all, why shouldn't France control
her own foreign policy."
"I don't blame him," Abe commented.
"Later on the Polish National Committee called on Mr. Wilson and was
shown into the parlor before the butler had a chance to put the slip
covers on the furniture," Morris continued, "and that very evening Murat
went around saying that if France was going to have to police the
corridor through West Prussia to Dantzig, he was against articles
fourteen to twenty, both inclusive, of the League constitution, and
where could he find a good dry-cleaner."
"That don't surprise me, neither," Abe remarked.
"But it wasn't till the President's body-guard of secret-service men had
an all-night stud-poker session in the yellow guest-room that he
actually made speeches against the League of Nations," Morris went on,
"and at that, the room will never look the same again."
"I wonder if there ain't some kind of property-damage insurance that he
could have took out against a thing happening like that?" Abe
speculated.
"I don't know," Morris said, "but if there is, you can bet your life
that this here Mrs. Bischoffsheim, where the President is staying now,
has got it."
"And she is going to need it, Mawruss," Abe said, "because what the best
home-trained men do with cigarettes and fountain-pens, when their minds
are occupied with business matters, ain't calculated to improve the
appearance of a bar-room, neither."
"Say!" Morris commented. "The President _oser_ cares what his address is
in Paris, but I'll bet you he is doing a lot of thinking as to what it
is going to be in Washington after March 4, 1921."
"It ain't a question of who is going to move _out_ of the White House,
Mawruss," Abe said. "What people in America is wondering is, Who is
going to move _in_, which right now there is a couple of generals, five
or six Senators, and a banker or so which is figuring on not renewing
the leases of their apartments beyond March 3, 1921, in case they should
be obliged to go to Washington for four years, or maybe eight."
"Lots of things can happen before the next presidential election,"
Morris said.
"That's what these Senators and generals thinks," Abe agreed, "and in
the mean time, Mawruss, nobody has got to press them a whole lot to
speak at dinners and conventions, which I see that a general made a
speech at a meeting in memory of Grover Cleveland the other day where he
didn't refer once to Mr. Wilson, but said that Mr. Cleveland wasn't an
expert at verbal messages and believed in the Monroe Doctrine."
"Well, suppose the general did say that," Morris said. "What of it?"
"Nothing of it," Abe replied; "but on the other hand, if this here
general had gone a bit farther, understand me, and said that Grover
Cleveland never refused to meet Judge Cohalan at the Metropolitan Opera
House and as a general rule didn't act cold toward a Sinn Fein
committee, Mawruss, you would got to admit that such remarks is anyhow
suspicious, ain't it?"
"All it is suspicious of to me, Abe," Morris said, "is that if such a
general has got ambitions to be President, y'understand, he ain't going
the right way about it, because fashions in opinions changes like
fashions in garments, Abe. At this day and date nobody could tell no
more about what the people of the United States is going to think in
the fall of 1920 as what they are going to wear in the fall of 1920,
which it would of been a whole lot better for the general's prospects if
he would of said that Grover Cleveland was just as expert at verbal
messages as another great American and believed just as strongly in a
League of Nations. In fact, Abe, if there was, Heaven forbid, a chance
of me being nominated for President in 1920, I would lay pipes for
claiming that it was me that suggested the whole idea of the League of
Nations to President Wilson in the first place. Am I right or wrong?"
"You're right about the Heaven forbid part, anyway," Abe commented.
"Because," Morris continued, as though he had not heard the
interruption, "what between the people who are willing to take President
Wilson's word for it and the people who ain't willing to take a United
States Senator's word for anything, y'understand, this here League of
Nations looks like a pretty safe proposition for any politician to tie
up to, and it wouldn't surprise me in the least if even some of them
Senators which signed the round robin would be claiming just before the
1920 National Conventions that they was never what you might call
actually against a League of Nations except, as one might say, in a
manner of speaking, if you know what I mean. Also, Abe, these here
Senators which is now acting like they would have sworn a solemn oath,
in addition to the usual amount of swearing about such things, that
they would never ratify this here League of Nations, y'understand, are
already beginning to say that they wouldn't ratify it anyhow in its
present form, understand me, and before they got through, Abe, you could
take it from me, that when it finally comes up for ratification them
same Senators is going to go over it again carefully and find that it
has been amended by inserting two commas in Article two and a semicolon
in Article twenty-five, and a glad shout of 'Oh, well, this is something
else again!' will go up, understand me, and after they vote to
unanimously ratify it they will be telling each other that all you have
to do is to make a firm stand against Mr. Wilson and he will back right
down."
"The way it looks to me, Mawruss," Abe commented, "the back-down is on
the other foot."
"It's fifty-fifty, Abe, because, when the President gets his back up,
the Senate starts to back down," Morris concluded, "and _vice versa_."
IX
WORRYING SHOULD BEGIN AT HOME, AIN'T IT?
"I see where the Italian delegates to the Peace Conference says that if
Italy don't get Fiume, Mawruss, there would be a revolution in Italy,"
Abe Potash remarked to his partner, Morris Perlmutter.
"Any excuse is better than none," Morris Perlmutter commented, "which it
is very clear to me, Abe, that with the example of Poland in front of
them, the Italians being also a musical people and seeing that Poland
has got it a first-class A-number-one pianist like Paderewski for a
President, y'understand, they are taking the opportunity of Fiume to put
in Caruso or Scotti or one of them fellers as President."
"They would got to offer their Presidents an awful big salary if they
expect to compete with the Metropolitan Opera House, Mawruss," Abe said.
"If Poland could do it, Abe, why couldn't Italy?" Morris said. "Which
Paderewski didn't have to tune pianos on the side to make a living over
here, neither, Abe, and, besides, Abe, if they would let Caruso have a
free hand in the formation of his Cabinet, he would probably get a good
barytone for Secretary of State, a basso for Secretary of Commerce and
Labor, De Luca for Secretary of the Treasury, Martinelli for Secretary
of War, and draw on the Chicago Opera Company for Secretaries of the
Navy, the Interior, and Agriculture. After that, Abe, all the Italian
government would got to do would be to move the capital to Milan and
hold open sessions of the Cabinet at the Scala with a full orchestra,
and they could take in from ten to twenty thousand dollars at the door,
daily, in particular if they was to advertise that Caruso would
positively appear at every session of the Cabinet, y'understand."
"But, joking to one side, Mawruss," Abe declared, "while personally I
got to admit that up to a short time ago, for all I knew about Fiume,
y'understand, if somebody would of said to me suddenly, 'Fiume,' I would
have said, 'Fiume yourself, you dirty loafer!' and the chances is there
would have been a fight then and there, understand me. Still, I couldn't
help thinking that as between old friends like the Italians and perfect
strangers like the Jugo-Slobs, y'understand, Italy should ought to have
Fiume and anything else she wants within reason and even a couple of
places not within reason, if she wants them that bad."
"In deciding these things, Abe," Morris said, "Mr. Wilson couldn't
consider prejudice."
"No?" Abe retorted. "Well, could he consider who discovered America? A
Jugo-Slob, I suppose, what? But never mind going so far back as
Christopher Columbus, Mawruss. Take our best workmen right in our own
shop, Mawruss--them Tonies and them Roccos with all the time a pleasant
smile no matter how hard we work them, and what are they? Jugo-Slobs or
Italians? Take it in the city of New York alone, and do we get there
half a million Jugo-Slobs or half a million Italians? I am asking you?
Also, Mawruss, I suppose the American people is crazy to see Jugo-Slob
opera, with wonderful Jugo-Slob singers and composed by Jugo-Slob
composers, ain't it? Furthermore, Mawruss, when you want to give your
wife a treat, you take her out and blow her to a good Jugo-Slob _table
d'hôte_, one dollar and a half including wine--what?"
"Listen, Abe," Morris protested, "I didn't say a word that Italy
shouldn't have Fiume."
"I know you didn't," Abe said, "but there's a whole lot of people which
does, Mawruss, and how they expect to use it for an argument to get the
millions of Italians in America to subscribe to the next Victory Loan,
Mawruss, may be perfectly clear to them, Mawruss, but _I_ couldn't see
it and I doubt if them millions of Italians will be able to see it,
neither."
"Probably you ain't wrong exactly," Morris said, "but whichever way Mr.
Wilson thinks is the best for the good of Europe, Abe, that's the way he
would decide it about Fiume."
"Well, I'll tell you, Mawruss," Abe observed, "while I consider that
Europe, excepting the coffee they give you for breakfast, is a
high-grade continent, taking it by and large, still at the same time I
ain't so fanatical about it that if I would be President Wilson, I
wouldn't once in a while give America a look-in also. Furthermore,
Mawruss, admitting that Mr. Wilson is acting wonderful in the way he is
unselfish about America, y'understand, and that he would probably go
down in history as a great and good man, y'understand, he should ought
to watch out that he don't act _too_ unselfish about America, Mawruss,
otherwise he would be going down as a great and good man in French and
English history and not in American history."
"There is even some people which figures that he would be a great man in
the history of the world even," Morris interrupted.
"Sure, I know," Abe said, "and that's the trouble with a whole lot of
people these days, Mawruss. They are figuring on world propositions, and
what goes on in the next block don't interest them at all. Worrying
should begin at home, Mawruss, whereas with them world thinkers they
couldn't get really and truly anxious about the way things is going
anywheres nearer to the Woolworth Building than the Nevski Prospekt.
'Ain't you ashamed of yourselves to be kicking about not having a job,'
they says to the returning American soldiers, 'when thousands of muzhiks
in Ukrania is idle.' And they go to work and collect dollar after dollar
for milk to feed Czecho-Slovak babies, with sixty cents after sixty
cents overhead on the collection, y'understand, while right here in New
York City families with an income of eighteen dollars a week has got to
pay twenty cents a quart for grade B milk when the milk-wagon drivers
ain't on strike."
"People has become European-Americans from reading too much newspapers
nowadays, Abe," Morris said, "which in these times of one newspaper
trying to show the others how much more money it is spending for foreign
cables, y'understand, if you want to see who is murdered in your own
town, understand me, you are liable to find a couple of lines about it
'most any part of the paper except in the first four pages, and the
consequences is that people gets the impression from reading the papers
that a strike in Berlin is ever so much more important than a strike in
Hoboken for the simple reason that as the Berlin strike cost the
newspaper proprietor several hundred dollars for cables, he put it on
the front page, whereas the strike in Hoboken only cost him seven cents
car fare for the reporter each way, and therefore it gets slipped in on
the eleventh page with over it the head-line: 'PLAN AMERICAN ORCHESTRA.
Chicago's New Philharmonic Is Headed by Mrs. J. Ogden Armour,' the
orchestra story with the strike head-line having failed to get into the
paper at all."
"Well, I'll tell you," Abe said, "people which reads the newspapers
don't take the same amount of interests in strikes like they once used
to did before the United States government organized them Conciliation
and Arbitration Boards, which nowadays strikes is long, dull affairs
consisting of the first strike, the arbitration, the decision, the
second strike, the arbitration, the decision, the third strike, and so
on for several months, because that's the trouble with arbitration,
Mawruss: everybody is willing to arbitrate and nobody is willing to be
decided against."
"Also strikes is becoming too common, Abe," Morris said. "Everybody is
going on strike nowadays, from milk-wagon drivers to the United States
Senate, and although the last strike only _begun_ as a strike and ended
up as a lock-out, y'understand, still the example wasn't good to the
country, which if the strike fever is going to spread as high up as the
United States Senate, Abe, where is it going to stop? The first thing
you know, the members of the Metropolitan Club will be going on strike
for a minimum of six hundred sturgeon eggs in a ten-dollar portion of
fresh Astrakhan caviar, and the Amalgamated Bank Presidents of America,
New York Local No. 1, will be walking out in a body for a minimum wage
of fifty thousand dollars a year, with a maximum working year of four
months."
"But even when strikes had no foreign competition in the newspapers,
Mawruss," Abe said, "the interest in them soon died out, which very few
people outside the parties concerned ever finds out when a strike ends
or who wins, and you might even say gives a nickel one way or the other,
Mawruss."
"It ain't only strikes which affects people like that, Abe," Morris
commented. "Long-drawn-out murder trials and graft investigations also
suffers that way, which I bet yer the American newspaper-reading people
will soon get on to the fact that the newspapers is playing up to their
cable tolls, y'understand, and everybody will be starting in to read the
paper at the fourth or fifth page."
"Still, I think that considerable interest was revived in the League of
Nations and the Peace Conference by the argument that Senator Lodge put
up last week in Lowell, Massachusetts," Abe said.
"It wasn't _in_ Lowell, but _with_ Lowell," Morris corrected.
"In or with," Abe said, "it caused a whole lot of comment in the
newspapers, and the people which bought the next morning them papers
that printed the whole affair in full, Mawruss, skipped as much as two
or three pages about it."
"Well, they didn't miss much, Abe," Morris said, "because it didn't come
up to the advertisement."
"What do you mean--the advertisement?" Abe inquired.
"Why, for days already, the newspapers come out with a notice that
Senator Lodge would argue with this here Lowell, which he is a college
president and not a town, Abe, the argument to take place in a big hall
in Boston, and the application for tickets was something tremendous,
Abe, because you know how arguments about the League of Nations is,
Abe. Sometimes the parties only use language and sometimes the smaller
one of the two goes to a hospital, understand me. But, however, in this
case it must be that the friends of Senator Lodge must have went to him
and said: 'What do you want to get into an argument with Lowell for?
Treat him with contempt. What do you care _what_ he says about you? You
are _doch_ a United States Senator, ain't it?' And the friends of this
here Lowell also must have went to him and said: 'Listen, Lowell, don't
make a show of yourself. If Lodge wants to behave himself that way, all
right; he's only a United States Senator, but you are anyhow president
of Harvard College, and you can't afford to _act_ that way.' 'Act _what_
way?' Lowell probably said. 'Do you think I am going to sit down and let
him walk all over Wilson, which Wilson and me was presidents of colleges
together for years already?'"
"And besides a college president don't make such big money that he could
afford to sneeze at his share of the gate receipts, neither," Abe
commented.