POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON BEING AN OPTICIAN AND LOOKING ON THE BRIGHT
SIDE
"Yes, Mawruss," Abe Potash said as he laid down the morning paper after
glancing over the alarming head-lines, "a feller which has got stomach
trouble or the toothache nowadays is playing in luck, because when
you've got stomach trouble you couldn't think about nothing else, and
what is a little thing like stomach trouble to worry over with all the
_tzuris_ which is happening in the world nowadays?"
"Well, then _have_ stomach trouble," Morris Perlmutter advised.
"What do you mean--_have_ stomach trouble?" Abe said. "A man couldn't
get stomach trouble the same way he could get drunk, Mawruss. It is
something which is just so much beyond your control as red hair or a
good tenor voice."
"Sure, I know," Morris agreed. "But what is happening in Russia and
Italy is also beyond your control, Abe, so if them Bolsheviki is getting
on your nerves, and you hate to pick up the paper for fear of finding
that the Germans would have captured Venice, understand me, console
yourself with the idee that there's a lot of brainy fellers in this
country which is doing all they know how to handle the situation over in
the old country, and then if you want something near at home to worry
about like stomach trouble, y'understand, there's plenty of misfortunate
people in orphan asylums and hospitals right here in New York City which
will be very glad to have you worry over them in a practical way out of
what you've got left when you're through paying income and excise profit
taxes, Abe."
"Maybe there is some people which would get so upset over having to give
twenty dollars or so to an orphan asylum or a hospital, Mawruss, that
for the time being they could forget how General Crozier 'ain't ordered
the machine-guns yet," Abe said, "but me I ain't built that way. When it
says in the papers where the Germans is sending all their soldiers away
from the Russian front to the Italian front, y'understand, it may be
that some people could read it and try not to worry by sending five
dollars to them Highwaymen for Improving the Condition of the Poor,
Mawruss, but when _I_ read it, Mawruss, I think how it's all up to them
Bolsheviki in Russia, and I get awful sore at the poor--in especially
the Russian poor."
"What are you worrying your head about what they put in the papers?"
Morris asked. "Seventy-five per cent. of the bridge-heads which the
Germans capture in the New York morning papers might just so well be
French villages, except that the reporters would have to look up the
names of the villages on the map, because some editors are very
particular that way; they insist that the reporter should use the name
of a real village, whereas if he puts down that the Germans has captured
a bridge-head on the Piave River he could go right out to lunch, and he
never even stops to think that if somebody would check up the number of
bridge-heads which the Germans has captured that way in the New York
morning papers, Abe, the Piave River would got to be covered solid with
bridges from end to end."
"But I am just so bad as a reporter, Mawruss--I never stop to think
that, neither," Abe admitted. "It's my nature that I couldn't help
believing the foolishness which I read in the papers, and if the Germans
capture a bridge-head on me in the Sporting Edition with Final Wall
Street Complete they might just so well capture it in Italy and be done
with it, because if I play cards afterward I couldn't keep my mind on
the game, anyhow. Only last Sunday I had a three-hundred-and-fifty hand
in spades, with an extra ace and king, understand me, when I happened to
think about reading in the paper where the Germans is going to build for
next spring submarines in extra sized six hundred feet long,
y'understand, and the consequence was I forget to meld a twenty in clubs
and lost the hand by eighteen points. Before I fell asleep that night I
thought it over that Germany couldn't build such a big submarine as the
papers claimed, but by that time I was out three dollars on the hand,
_anyway_, and that's the way war affects _me_, Mawruss."
"Well, that's where you are making a big mistake, Abe," Morris
commented, "because even when the articles which they print in the
newspaper is true, y'understand, if you only stop to figure them out
right, Abe, you could get a whole lot of encouragement that way. Take,
for instance, when you read _via_ Amsterdam that General Hindenberg is
now commanding the western front, Abe, and with some people that would
throw a big scare into 'em, y'understand, but with me not, Abe, because
the way I look at it is from experience. I've known lots of fellers from
seventy to seventy-five years old, Abe, and in particular my wife's
mother's a brother Old Man Baum in the cotton-converting business.
There's a feller which he actually went to work and married his
stenographer when he was seventy-two, Abe, and, compared to an
undertaking like that, running the western front would be child's play,
Abe, and yet when all was said and done, if he went to theayter Saturday
night and eats afterward a little chicken _a la_ King, y'understand, it
was a case of ringing up a doctor at three o'clock Sunday morning while
his wife's relations sat around his flat figuring the inheritance tax.
Now, take Hindenberg which he is six months older as Old Man Baum, Abe,
and what that feller has went through in the last three years two
lifetimes in the cotton-converting business wouldn't be a marker to it,
understand me, and still there are people which is worried that when he
begins to run things on the western front, it is going to be a serious
matter for the Allies, instead of the Germans.
"Yes, Abe," Morris continued, "with all the things them Germans has got
to attend to on the western front, it's no cinch to have on their hands
an old man seventy-two years of age, which, if anything should happen to
the old _Rosher_, like acute indigestion from eating too much gruel or
lumbago, y'understand, then real generals on the western front would
never hear the end of it."
"Ain't Hindenberg also a real general?" Abe asked.
"Not an old man like that, Abe," Morris replied. "He used to was a real
general, but now he is just a mascot for the Germans and a bogey man for
us, which I bet yer the most that feller does to help along the war is
to wear warm woolen underwear, keep out of draughts, and not get his
feet wet under any circumstances at his age. Furthermore, Abe, I ain't
so sure that the Germans is withdrawing so many soldiers as they claim
from the Russian frontier, neither, y'understand, because the way them
Bolsheviki has swung around to Germany must sound to the Kaiser almost
too good to be true, and I bet yer also he figures that maybe it isn't
because nobody knows better as the Kaiser how much reliance you could
place on a deal between one country and another, even when it's in
writing and signed by the party to be charged, which, for all any one
could tell, whether Russia is now a government, a co-partnership, a
corporation, or only so to speak a voluntary association, Abe, the
Kaiser might just as well sign his peace treaty with Pavlowa and Nordkin
as with Lenine and Trotzky, so far as binding the Russian people is
concerned."
"It ain't a peace treaty which them fellers wants to sign, Mawruss," Abe
said. "It's a bill of sale, which I see that Lenine and Trotzky agrees
Germany should import goods into Russia free of duty and that she should
take Russian Poland and Courland and a lot of other territory, and if
that's what is called making peace, Mawruss, then you might just as well
say that a lawsuit is compromised by allowing the feller which sues to
get a judgment and have the sheriff collect on it."
"And at that, Abe," Morris said, "there ain't a German merchant which
wouldn't be only too delighted to swap his rights to import goods into
Russia free of duty _after the war_ for three-quarters of a pound of
porterhouse steak and a ten-cent loaf of white bread right now, which
the way food is so scarce nowadays in Germany, Abe, when a Berlin
business man's family gets through with the Sunday dinner, and the
servant-girl clears off the table, there's no use asking should she give
the bones to the dog, because the chances is they _are_ the dog,
understand me. As for sugar, we think we've got a kick coming when we
could only get two teaspoonfuls to a cup of coffee for five cents,
y'understand, whereas in Germany they would consider themselves lucky if
they could get two teaspoonfuls to a gallon of coffee if they had a
gallon of coffee in the entire country, understand me. So that's the way
it goes in Germany, Abe; the people ask for bread and they give 'em a
report on Norwegian steamers sunk by U-boats during the current week,
and if one of the steamers was loaded with sugar, y'understand, that
ain't going to be much satisfaction to a German which has got a sweet
tooth and has been trying to make out with one two-grain saccharin
tablet every forty-eight hours, neither."
"But the Germans seems to be making a lot of progress everywheres," Abe
said.
"Except at home," Morris declared. "Maybe the German people still feels
encouraged when the German army gets ahold of more territory, Abe, but
it's a question of a short time now when the German people is going to
realize that they don't need no more room to starve in than they've got
at present, and that a nation can go broke just as comfortably in nine
hundred thousand square miles as it can in nine million square miles."
"Sure, I know," Abe agreed, "but one thing Germany has fixed already,
Mawruss, and that is that she is going to get a whole lot of customers
in Russia."
"Well, if she does," Morris commented, "she'll have to provide the
capital to set them customers up in business, and after she has done
that, Abe, she will have to hustle around to drum up trade for them
Russian customers, because when the Bolsheviki get through with their
fine work in Russia, Abe, the Russian people won't have enough
purchasing power to make it a fair territory for a salesman with a line
of five-and-ten-cent store supplies. So if Germany started this here war
to get more trade, she's already licked."
"Then what does she go on fighting for?" Abe asked. "It seems to me that
if we saw we couldn't accomplish nothing by going on fighting, Mawruss,
we'd stop, ain't it?"
"Sure we would," Morris agreed. "But then, Abe, we 'ain't got nothing to
stop us from stopping, because we ain't fighting for the sake of
fighting, the way Von Tirpitz, Mackensen, and Ludendorff are doing.
Take, for instance, Von Tirpitz, and that _Rosher_ insists that the
U-boats is going to win the war, so it don't make no difference to him
how many German sailors goes down in U-boats, he's going to keep on
sending out U-boats right up to the time the German people shoots him,
and his last words will be that the reason why the U-boats didn't win
the war was because they didn't have a fair trial. Then there's
Mackensen and Ludendorff which they've got _their_ idees about how the
war should be won, and they mean to see that their idees continue to
have a fair trial till there ain't enough German soldiers alive to give
them idees a fair trial, and that's the way it goes, Abe. All the idees
that we want to give a fair trial is that we are going to keep on
fighting till we've proved to the German people that it don't pay to
back up the Von Tirpitz, Ludendorff, and Mackensen idees."
"And how long is this going to take?" Abe inquired.
"Not so long as you think, Abe," Morris replied, "because Germany may
have made peace with Russia, but she has still got fighting against her
England, France, Italy, America, Starvation, Bad Business, Conceit,
Lies, and Stubbornness."
"And in the mean time, Mawruss," Abe said, "what's going to happen to
us?"
"Don't worry about us," Morris said. "All America has got to do is to
try to be an optician and look on the bright side of things, and she's
bound to win out in the end."