The hopeless part of it is that there's no way of putting a nation of
ninety million people in a lunatic asylum, even if there was an
asylum big enough to hold them, which there ain't.
"I see where the French President is going to lose his Prime Minister
again," Abe Potash said, "which the way that feller is always changing
Prime Ministers, Mawruss, he must be a terrible hard man to work for."
"Say," Morris Perlmutter replied, "I've got enough to think about
keeping track of what happens here in this country without I should
worry my head over political _Meises_ in France."
"Well, you are the same like a whole lot of Americans," Abe said, "which
for all they read about what is going on over in Europe the Edison
Manufacturing Company might just so well never have invented the
telegraph at all."
"I don't _got_ to read it with such a statesman like you around here,"
Morris retorted, "so go ahead and tell me: what did the French Prime
Minister done _now_ that he gets fired for it?"
"That only goes to show what you know from Prime Ministers!" Abe
declared. "A Prime Minister never gets fired, Mawruss--he resigns, and
while I admit that nine times out of ten when the French President has
had a Prime Minister resign on him, it's probably been a case of the
stenographer tipping the Prime Minister off that before the boss went to
lunch he said, 'If that grafter's still here when I come back there'll
be another Prime Minister going around on crutches,' y'understand, yet
at the same time this here last Prime Minister has been right on the
job, and the French President has been quite worried for fear he's going
to quit."
"Well, let him get along _without_ a Prime Minister for a while," Morris
said. "With the money the French people is spending for war supplies it
won't do him no harm to cut down his pay-roll, and, besides, what does
he want a Prime Minister for, _anyway_? Has President Wilson got a Prime
Minister? Them people come over here a couple of months ago and cashed
in a hard-luck story for a matter of a few hundred million dollars,
y'understand, and like a lot of come-ons that we are, understand me, it
never even occurred to us but what them boys was living right up close
to the cushion."
"How much do you think a Prime Minister draws, Mawruss--a million a
week?" Abe asked.
"It ain't how much he draws," Morris said. "It's the idea of the thing
which I don't care if he only gets five dollars a day and commissions,
Abe, if President Wilson would got a Prime Minister working for him
instead of attending to the business himself, which is what President
Wilson gets paid for, y'understand, there's many a time when the
President has been out late at the theayter or when he is feeling under
the weather, understand me, where he would say: 'Why should I kill
myself slaving day in, day out, like a slave, y'understand. What have I
got a Prime Minister for, anyway?' And that's how I bet yer the French
President has passed over to the Prime Minister a whole lot of important
stuff which the poor _nebich_ was bound to slip up on, because, after
all, a Prime Minister is only a Prime Minister."
"Maybe you're right," Abe admitted, "but at the same time there's some
pretty smart Prime Ministers, too, which you take this here Prime
Minister Lord George, over in England, and that feller practically runs
the country. In fact, as I understand it, King George leaves the entire
management to him, so much confidence he's got in the feller."
"Perhaps it's because this here Lord George and King George is related
maybe," Morris suggested.
"I don't think so," Abe replied. "The names is only a quincidence, which
even before Lord George was ever heard of at all the Prime Minister
always run things in England while the King put in his whole time
opening charity bazars and laying corner-stones. First and last I
suppose that feller has laid more corner-stones than all the heads of
all the fraternal orders in the United States put together, and if
there's such a disease as grand master's thumb, like smoker's heart and
housemaid's knee, Mawruss, I'll bet that King George has got it."
[Illustration: "Perhaps it's because this here Lord George and King
George is related maybe," Morris suggested. "I don't think so," Abe
replied. "The name is only a quincidence."]
"Well an English king can afford to spend his time that way," Morris
said, "because them English Prime Ministers is really prime,
y'understand, whereas you take the Prime Ministers which the Czar
_nebich_, the King of Greece, and even the King of Sweden had it, and
instead of them Prime Ministers being prime, understand me, they ranged
all the way from sirloin to chuck, as they would say in the meat
business."
"Some of the English Prime Ministers wasn't so awful prime, neither,"
Abe said. "Take the feller which was holding down the job of Prime
Minister around July fourth, seventeen seventy-six, and the way that boy
let half a continent slip through his fingers was enough to make King
Schmooel the Second, or whatever the English king's name was in them
days, swear off laying corner-stones for the rest of his life. Also the
English Prime Minister which engineered the real-estate deal where
Germany got ahold of the island of Heligoland wasn't what Mr. P.B.
Armour would call first cut exactly, which, if England would now own
Heligoland instead of Germany, Mawruss, such a serial number as U
Fifty-three for a German submarine would never have been heard of. They
would have stopped short at U Two or U Two B."
"Well, anybody's liable to get stuck in a swap with vacant lots, Abe,"
Morris said, "and the chances is the poor feller figured that with this
here Heligoland, the only person who would have the nerve to call such
real estate _real estate_, y'understand, would be a real-estater with a
first-class imagination when the tide was out."
"That's what Germany figured, too," Abe said, "and the consequence is
she went to work and improved them vacant lots with fortifications which
lay so low in the water, Mawruss, that from two miles out at sea no one
would dream of such things--least of all an admiral."
"So how could you blame a Prime Minister if he didn't suspect what
Germany was up to when she bought that sand-bank?" Morris asked.
"Of course that was a long time before the war, Mawruss," Abe said.
"Nowadays the dumbest Prime Minister knows enough to know that coming
from a German diplomat a simple remark like, 'Good morning, ain't it an
elegant weather we are having?' is subject to one of several
constructions, none of which is exactly what you could call _kosher_,
y'understand."
"And supposing he finds such a remark in a letter from a German diplomat
to the Kaiser, Abe?" Morris asked. "What does it mean then?"
"That depends on where it is written from," Abe said, "which if the
Minister of Foreign Affairs down in Paraguay or Peru finds out that a
German ambassador has written home to the effect that he is feeling
quite well again and hopes this letter finds you the same,
y'understand, the Foreign Minister hustles over to the War Department
and wants to know if they are going to allow him to be insulted in that
way by a dirty crook like that. On the other hand, if the chief of the
United States Secret Service gets ahold of a letter from any one of them
honorary German diplomats who is practically holding down the job of
Imperial German Consul to the Bronx while drawing the salary of--we
would say, for example--a New York Supreme Court justice, Mawruss, and
if the letter says, 'Accept my best wishes for a prosperous and happy
new year in which my wife joins and remain,' y'understand, that means
the copper was shipped in pasteboard containers marked:
PRUNES
USE NO HOOKS."
"The German Secret Service certainly fixes up some wonderful cipher
codes, Abe," Morris said. "Sometimes as much as two hours and a quarter
passes before a United States Secret Service man gets the right dope on
one of them code letters."
"Sure, I know," Abe said. "But most times he don't have no more trouble
over it than the average business man would with a baseball column,
which the way every government secret service knows every other
government's secret service's secrets, Mawruss, it's a wonder to me that
they don't call the whole thing off by mutual consent, because the only
difference between government secret services is that some secret
services is louder than others. Take, for instance, the German Secret
Service, and there was months and months when this here Dr. Heinrich
Albert, Captain von Papen and his boy Ed got as much newspaper publicity
as one of them rotten shows which received such a good notice from the
cricket of the _Cloak and Suit Gazette_ that the manager thinks it may
have a chance, y'understand. Why, there wasn't a district messenger-boy
which couldn't direct you to number Eleven Broadway, where that secret
service had its head offices, and I would be very much surprised if they
didn't ship their bombs from number Eleven Broadway, to the steamboat
docks in covered automobile delivery-wagons with signs painted on 'em: