even if Danzig 'ain't belonged to Poland since 1492 and the only Danzig
people now speaking Polish as a regular language is the interpreter of
the First District Magistrate's Court for the City and County of Danzig,
y'understand," Abe declared. "Furthermore, I think this here Peace
Conference is taking it too particular about what Germany should or
shouldn't give up, Mawruss, which if the shoe pinched on the other foot,
Mawruss, and this here Peace Conference was being held in Berlin or
Vienna, y'understand, with Germany, Austria, Turkey, and Bulgaria as the
Big Four, understand me, there wouldn't be any question as to what
Allied territory would or wouldn't be given up by the Allies, Mawruss.
If Germany would have won the war, Mawruss, she would have taken Calais
and Boulogne with as much argument over it as a golluf-player taking a
Scotch highball, y'understand, and if France would have threatened to go
Bolshevik on account of it, Germany would of said, 'Don't do us no
favors,' understand me, and let it go at that. So, therefore, if the
people of Danzig couldn't speak Polish, Mawruss, let 'em learn to do so,
even if it would be necessary for them to go to a nose and throat
specialist till they got used to the pronunciation."
"Say, for my part I am willing that this here Peace Conference should do
anything and everything, Abe, just so long as they would get through
with their work and I wouldn't have to listen no longer to your
nonsense," Morris declared.
"No nonsense at all," Abe protested. "The thing this here Peace
Conference should ought to have done from the start was to consider what
Germany would have done under the circumstances, put the reverse English
on it, and then let her whoop, which I see by the paper that they are
now getting ready to make airyoplane journeys across the Atlantic Ocean,
Mawruss."
"And what's that got to do with this here Peace Conference?" Morris
asked.
"Nothing," Abe said, "except that I see Mr. Wilson is writing home that
they should please send over the _George Washington_ in case it should
be necessary for him to make good any bluff he might throw to the Peace
Conference that if they don't do as he says, he would leave them flat
and go back to America. So, therefore, if he has to make good sooner
than he thinks, he could go home by airyoplane and not wait for the
_George Washington_."
"I don't think that this here transatlantic airyoplane flying is exactly
in the President-carrying class just yet, Abe," Morris suggested.
"Neither do I, Mawruss," Abe said, "but the manufacturers of airyoplanes
seems pretty confident, Mawruss. In fact, I see in the papers that it
won't be but a matter of a few years when the New York business man
which has business to do in London, instead of getting on the
_Mauretania_ in New York and landing six days later in Liverpool,
y'understand, would be able to take the railroad to Halifax, Nova
Scotia, spend the night there or anyhow only as many nights there as it
would be necessary before the steamer sails for Saint John's,
Newfoundland, and then take the steamer to Saint John's, Newfoundland,
where there would be a passenger airyoplane in waiting and no
first-class hotels, y'understand. At Saint John's, such is the strides
airyoplane-manufacturing has made, Mawruss, he would probably only have
to stick around for five or six days till the airyoplane was in shape to
leave, understand me, and in twenty-four hours he would land at the
Azores, where there ain't no hotels at all, understand me. In less than
four days more, provided the repairs didn't take longer, he would be on
his way to Lisbon, Portugal, which he would reach on the following day
or days. There the same airyoplane or another airyoplane, in case the
same airyoplane got smashed in landing, would be ready or approximately
ready to start for Paris, and might even start, you couldn't tell. On
arriving in Paris, he would be only a few hours by railroad and steamer
from London, provided he was in shape to travel, which, when you
consider that only a few years ago flying was in its infancy, Mawruss,
you've got to admit that nobody could ever have dreamed that it was
possible to make such a journey."
"Not unless you ate something which disagreed with you before you went
to sleep," Morris commented, "and even then, Abe, where is the
advantage?"
"It ain't the advantage, it's the novelty of the thing," Abe said, "and
I'll bet yer, Mawruss, that if an Airyoplane Company was to open a
ticket-office in New York to-morrow, Mawruss, men would be standing in
line to buy accommodations on the first available airyoplane--men with
wives and families and no life insurance at that."
"They would be the very first ones," Morris agreed, "but the way it
looks to me, Abe, New York business men which has not business to do
in London would continue to take twin-screw steamers with bilge
keels, no matter how unimportant the business they was going to
transact over there might be, because even the stockholders in
airyoplane-manufacturing corporations would got to admit that while
airyoplane-flying ain't in its infancy, exactly, it ain't in the prime
of life, neither. Also, Abe, as long as gas only costs a dollar
twenty-five a thousand cubic feet, why should any one want to pull off
such a high-priced suicide as these here transatlantic airyoplane
voyages is going to be?"
"Anyhow, the first one has still got to be made yet, Mawruss," Abe
remarked.
"And even if the tenth one was successful, Abe," Morris concluded, "you
could take it from me, this here transatlantic airyoplane navigation
ain't going to put much of a crimp into the business of manufacturing
seasick remedies. Am I right or wrong?"
XII
THIS HERE VICTORY LIBERTY LOAN
"The way some people is acting about this here Victory Loan, Mawruss,"
Abe Potash remarked one morning in April, "you would think that they was
all presidents of a first national bank and that this here Carter J.
Glass has already made a big overdraft and if he don't like the line of
credit they are giving him, he should be so good as to take his account
somewheres else, y'understand."
"Them same people probably think that investing their money in any
securities bearing interest at less than fifteen per cent. per annum is,
so to speak, the equivalence from giving money to orphan-asylums and
hospitals, understand me," Morris Perlmutter said. "'We already give
them Liberty Loan _schnorrers_ two hundred dollars toward the expenses
of their rotten war,' they probably say, 'and _still_ they ain't
satisfied.'"
"And at that they don't mean nothing by it," Abe said, "because there is
a whole lot of business men in the United States which couldn't even
give up the family housekeeping money every week without anyhow saying
to their wives: 'Here, take my blood; take my life. What do you want
from me, _anyway_?'"
"Maybe they do and maybe they don't mean nothing by it, Abe," Morris
said, "but it would be a whole lot easier for this here Carter J. Glass
if everybody would act as his own Victory Bond salesman and try to sell
himself just one more bond than he has really got any business buying,
y'understand."
"It would be a whole lot easier for this here Carter J. Glass, Mawruss,
but it would be practically impossible for pretty nearly everybody
else," Abe remarked, "which human nature is so constituted, Mawruss,
that the only time a man really and truly uses some high-class,
silver-tongued salesmanship on himself is when he is trying to persuade
himself that it is all right for him to do something which he knows in
his heart it is dead wrong for him to do."
"Well, at least, Abe, in this here Victory Loan Campaign, every man
should ought to try to put himself in the place of the salesman which is
trying to sell him some of these Victory Bonds," Morris continued, "so
we would say, for example, that you would be a Victory Bond salesman,
Abe, and you are calling on a feller which he is a pretty tough
proposition in such matters by the name of, we would say, for instance,
Abe Potash."
"Why don't you make the feller which the salesman is supposed to call on
a really and truly hard-boiled egg, by the name, we would say, for
instance, Mawruss Perlmutter?" Abe asked. "Which when you put up to me
a hypocritical case, Mawruss, why is it you must always start in by
getting insulted already?"
"What do you mean getting insulted?" Morris asked. "I am only putting
something up to you for the sake of argument not arguments."
"Well, then, why not be perfectly neuter and call the tough proposition
which the Victory Bond salesman is visiting, somebody by the name of a
competitor like Leon Sammet, for instance?" Abe suggested.
"Because I am trying to make you put yourself in the place of the
Victory Bond salesman who is trying to sell you bonds," Morris declared.
"Put your _own_ self in the place of the Victory Bond salesman," Abe
exclaimed, "which if you want to give me any hypocritical cases for the
sake of argument, Mawruss, I have seen the way you practically snap the
head off a collector for a charitable fund enough times to appreciate
how you would behave towards a Victory Bond salesman, so go ahead on the
basis that you are the tough proposition and not me."
"A charitable fund is one thing and this here Victory Loan another,"
Morris said.
"I know it is," Abe agreed, "but at the same time, Mawruss, a whole lot
of people feels that if ever they give a couple dollars to an
orphan-asylum, they practically got vaccinated against future attacks of
the same complaint, and if three years later the collector for the
orphan-asylum calls on them again they say: 'Why, I already gave you
two dollars for that orphan-asylum! What did you done with it all?' And
I bet yer that just as many people considered that the fifty-dollar bond
which they bought during the First Liberty Loan Campaign should ought to
have set up such a strong antiseptic in their system that they would be
immune to all other Liberty Bond Campaigns, no matter if such campaigns
would continue until there was, God forbid! a Fiftieth Liberty Loan
already."
"Some people never even got, so to speak, jabbed the first time," Morris
observed, "and the way they avoid Liberty Bond salesmen, Abe, you would
think that such a salesman was a sort of Liberty Bond Typhoid Mary and
would infect them tightwads with a disease where they were liable to
break out all over with coupons or something."
"As a matter of fact, Mawruss, that's just the effect which a Liberty
Bond salesman should ought to have on the right kind of sitson," Abe
said, "which while I don't mean to say that making a good investment
like buying of a Liberty Bond should ought to be considered as a
disease, Mawruss, it should anyhow be infectious and should ought to
spread so rapidly that everybody in the United States could say they had
it to the extent of at least one fifty-dollar bond of the Victory Loan."
"But there is over a hundred million people in the United States, Abe,"
Morris said, "and if they all bought one fifty-dollar bond,
y'understand, it would make the Victory Loan five billion dollars,
whereas this here Carter J. Glass is only asking for four billion five
hundred million."
"Well, to my mind, he's acting too modest, Mawruss," Abe went on,
"because if we expect Germany to raise the first five billion dollars of
her indemnity with nothing to show for it but the promise that she would
have to raise five billion more every two years till the whole indemnity
was paid, understand me, how much more should we raise over here with
the promise that it is going to be paid back to us in a few years, with
interest at the rate of four and three-quarters per cent. per annum?
Why, under them conditions, Mawruss, any American which would refuse to
buy a Victory Loan Bond should ought to be considered as applying for
German sitsonship papers and should ought to be exported to Hamburg,
where his adopted fellow-sitsons is getting frisked by the German
government for every cent they possess and ain't getting so much as a
receipt to show for it."
"For that matter, an American which refuses to buy Victory Liberty Bonds
should ought to completely lost his memory, Abe," Morris declared.
"Evidently a feller, if some one starts a conversation about the war, is
going to say, '_What_ war?' and when it is reminded to his memory that
as recently ago as last November the papers was printing every day
columns and columns about the war which was going on in Europe, he would
probably say: 'Oh, _that_ war! I thought that war was already a thing
of the past.' And also probably he might even ask, 'Tell me, was there
many people hurt?'"
"Well, if some folks has got such short memories like all that, and is
only affected by what they have read in the papers at the latest the day
before yesterday, Mawruss," Abe said, "why not have the Victory Liberty
Loan salesmen approach them on the basis of what is going on _now_ in
Europe? 'You are asked,' such a salesman would say, 'to invest your
money in a first-class A-number-one security, backed by the United
States government and bearing interest at the rate of four and
three-quarters per cent. per annum, and that is the very least you could
do for your country when you consider that right now,' the salesman
would say, and he should practise in advance to make his voice sound
tragical, 'right now _your_ uncles and _my_ uncles is making peace in
Paris with all the strength of language which they've got in their
system.
"'Yes, Mr. Sitson,' the salesman should go on to say, 'the government is
only asking _you_ to invest in interest-bearing cash money, so to speak,
and what for a sacrifice is _that_ compared to the suffering of _your_
father-in-laws and _my_ father-in-laws which is bravely standing larynx
to larynx in the battle area of the Peace Conference while the air is
filled with the French, Italian, Greek, Jugo-Slob, and Polish remarks?
_You_ sit here in your comfortable home while the flower of our experts
and college professors is exposed to all kinds of coffee and cigars.
Ain't you ashamed to be doing nothing but buy bonds when old and feeble
men like most of the American Peace delegates is battling with French
waiters, French taxicab-drivers, French hotel service, and French
laundry-lists, giving and receiving no mercy, y'understand, and you
should thank Heaven that your own country has been spared the horrors of
having on our own soil this here Peace Conference which is now raging in
Paris, understand me.'"
"That would be anyhow an argument," Morris admitted, "but with these
here Victory Liberty Bonds it shouldn't ought to be a case of first come
first serve. With only four and a half billion dollars' worth of Victory
Liberty Bonds for sale, Abe, seventy-five per cent. of the people of the
United States should ought to be going around looking as sore as fellers
that sell tickets in theater box-offices, and when any one asks 'em why,
they should say: 'Ain't it just my luck! I put off buying my Victory
Liberty Bonds till April 23d, and when I got round to the bank there
wasn't one left.' Yes, Abe, instead of Victory Liberty Bond salesmen
having to go about visiting customers, y'understand, they should ought
to have luxurious fitted-up offices, and it should ought to be a case of
when the customer arrives the Victory Liberty Bond salesman should ought
to be playing auction pinochle or rummy with two other Victory Liberty
Bond salesmen. Then when the customer says is this the place where they
sell Victory Liberty Bonds, the salesman says, 'I'll be with you in a
minute,' and makes the customer stand around without even offering him a
seat until the salesmen gets through playing two more hands. The
customer should then make out his own application, y'understand, have
the exact change ready, and close the door quietly when leaving, and
that's the way I would sell Victory Liberty Bonds if I was the
government."
"That's the way you even try to sell garments," Abe commented.
"Because," Morris continued, evading the challenge, "it is my idee that
it is a privilege to be allowed to buy these here Victory Liberty Bonds,
and before any one gets that privilege, Abe, he should be made to prove
that he has done something to deserve it. Yes, Abe, instead of a man
wearing a button to show that he has bought Liberty Bonds, he should
ought to go before a notary public and make an oath that he has given up
his quota to all Red Cross and United War Relief drives and otherwise
done everything he could do to help win the war if he couldn't fight in
it, y'understand, and then, and only then, Abe, he should be given a
button entitling him to buy Victory Liberty Bonds under the conditions I
have stated."
"But, joking apart, Mawruss, and talking business, not poetry,
understand me," Abe asked, "do you actually think that this here Victory
Liberty Loan would be all taken up by them methods? To my mind,
Mawruss, it would be a whole lot better to look the horse straight in
the teeth, y'understand, and take it as settled that a lot of people
which has got the money to buy bonds would go round saying that they
would be very glad to buy bonds if they only had the money,
y'understand. To such people, Mawruss, I would remind them again that a
war, even when you win it, ain't a cash-in-advance proposition. In fact,
a war ain't even a C. O. D. proposition. Wars is paid for on the
instalment plan, Mawruss, and while this particular war is over,
understand me, the bill has still got to be paid, and if such people
won't lend the government the money to pay for the war, the government
would have to do what the German government is going to do to the German
people--instead of touching them for it and paying it back, they would
frisk them for it and not even say much obliged, y'understand."
"At that, Abe, I ain't worried a whole lot about the result of this
Victory Liberty Loan," Morris said. "When all is said and done, Abe, the
American people love their country."
"I know they do," Abe agreed, "but also, Mawruss, there is a whole lot
of fellers which loves their families and at the same time don't lose no
sleep nights because they ain't providing for them as they should ought
to do. So to them people I would say: 'Which would you rather have it as
a souvenir of the war: Victory Liberty Bonds or tax bills?' Also, 'Would
you sooner be paid interest or would you sooner pay interest?'"
"In other words, Abe, you would threaten 'em into buying bonds," Morris
observed.
"Only when it's necessary, Mawruss," Abe concluded, "and that wouldn't
be in the case of one thousandth of one per cent. of the entire
population, because the great majority of the people thinks the way I do
about their money: the government let me make it, and the government
lets me keep it, and if the government would sooner borrow part of it
instead of taking it all, Mawruss, that's only the government's good
nature, which nobody should presume too much on good nature, Mawruss. Am
I right or wrong?"
XIII
WHEN IS A SECRET TREATY SECRET?
"I see where President Wilson sent a letter to the German government
that they might just so well save the car fare and not send any
delegates to this here Peace Conference which wouldn't be prepared for
the worst, Mawruss," Abe Potash said one morning in April.
"You would think, considering how excited the German people gets
nowadays, that they would have a hard time finding any one to take the
job of delegate, Abe," Morris Perlmutter suggested, "which the least
that happens to one of them German delegates after the German people
finds out what was in the paper he signed is that his executioners would
claim that the daylight-saving law made it unnecessary for them to wait
till sunrise, y'understand."
"Well, he would always have the excuse that the only thing he seen of
the Peace Treaty before he signed it was a dotted line, Mawruss," Abe
said, "and also, Mawruss, it is just possible that the return half of
them German peace delegates will read _via_ Amsterdam, and that before
taking a three years' lease of an Amsterdam apartment some of them
peace delegates would first visit a ticket-scalper and get that much off
their minds, anyway."
"And even in Paris them German peace delegates wouldn't be, neither,"
Morris declared, "which I see that the French government is too safe
arranging for the accommodation of them German delegates at a hotel next
to the place where the Peace Treaty is going to be signed, Abe, and the
lot on which the hotel stands is going to be protected with an egg-proof
fence eight feet high so that the German delegates can escape any stray
rotten eggs."
"The fence could be twelve feet high, Mawruss," Abe remarked, "and it
wouldn't do any good, because nobody could escape rotten eggs in a
French hotel, Mawruss, rotten coffee, neither. Also, Mawruss, eggs
'ain't got nothing to do with that fence, because if that fence wouldn't
be there, Mawruss, when it comes time for them German delegates to sign
the treaty, Mawruss, the Peace Conference would got to appoint a
Committee of Resident Buyers to round up them German delegates, on
account that nobody else but Resident Buyers who is accustomed to
entertaining their American clients would know where them German
delegates had disappeared to."
"Well, in a way it is the Peace Conference's own fault because they sent
word to the German government that they didn't want to deal with no
messengers, but that the German delegates should all be high-up
officials, Abe," Morris said, "which seemingly as a general thing the
higher up a German happens to be, y'understand, the lower down he can
act. Take, for example, the Crown Prince, Abe, and I always thought that
no matter how much people abused him, Abe, he could anyhow go home and
say to his wife whatever I done, I done it all for you, instead of going
somewhere else and saying it to ballet-dancers, as his wife's mother
claims."
"I understand he was leading a double life, Mawruss," Abe observed.
"He was leading a double life in spades, Abe," Morris declared, alluding
to the game of auction pinochle. "Day after day his wife's mother says
he would leave the house to go down-town to the palace, and instead he
would go down-town not to the palace and never show up till all hours of
the morning. Then when his wife asked him where he was putting in his
time, y'understand, instead of acting reasonable and telling her a phony
story about being sick and tired of getting stuck at the Reichskanzlei
night after night, and that he wished the old man would get through
springing a new chancellor on him every week, understand me, he gives
himself dead away by getting sore. In fact, Abe, his mother-in-law says
that the Hohenzollern royal colors is black and blue, anyhow so far as
the Crown Princess is concerned, and that she made up her mind that she
wouldn't let her daughter live with him no longer, so the chances is
that if the German people goes back to the monarchy, they would not
only got to pay indemnities for what the Crown Prince done, but alimony
besides."
"Well, even if the mother-in-law couldn't prove what she says about her
daughter's husband, which very few mother-in-laws can, Mawruss," Abe
said, "the Crown Princess would be able to get her devorce upon the
grounds that her husband was convicted of a felony, y'understand, which
he will be, Mawruss, just so soon as the Peace Conference has finished
drawing up the indictment."
"Then them German people will be paying her temporary alimony
permanently for the rest of her life, Abe," Morris said, "because them
fellers which is drawing the indictments against the Kaiser and the
Crown Prince seems to be taking their own time about it."
"It's a big job, Mawruss, because you take the indictment against the
Crown Prince, Mawruss, and the chances is that the first two hundred
counts alone is for French château furniture, and when some one steals
anything from a French château, Mawruss, it's a hundred to one that he
is guilty not only of larceny, y'understand, but of concealing mortgaged
property besides, understand me," Abe said, "which it has always been a
wonder to me, Mawruss, that some of these ladies of the four hundred who
open tea-rooms for European war relief has never considered doing
nothing for them Ruined Mortgagees of France, or the Suffering Judgment
Creditors of Allied Noblemen. Most of our best families has had
experience some time or another with railroad reorganizations, and you
would think they would have enough sympathy for them Starving Lienors of
France, Mawruss, to get up, anyhow, a bazaar. It could be advertised
with a picture by some big artist like C. G. Gibson, where an old man in
what used to was a fur overcoat before the moths got into it is bending
over Liber 2244 of Mortgages, page 391, which is all the old feller has
got to show for what was once a first lien on some gilt-edged château
property, Mawruss."
"Well, I'll tell you," Morris said, "there's a certain number of people
which nobody has got any sympathy with, like mortgagers, coal dealers,
head waiters, garage proprietors, and fellers which works in theayter
ticket-offices, to which, of course, must also be added
Postmaster-General Burleson."