Potash and Perlmutter discuss the Chamberlain suggestion.
"You know how it is yourself, Mawruss," Abe Potash said, one morning in
January. "If you would see somebody nailing up something your first idee
is to say: 'Here, give me that hammer. Is that a way to nail up a
packing-case?' And then, if you went to work and showed him how, the
chances is that before you get through the packing-case would look like
it had been nailed up with a charge of shrapnel, and for six months
people would be asking you what's the matter with your sore thumb.
Painting is the same way. There's mighty few people which could see
anybody else doing a home job of enameling without they would want to
grab ahold of the brush and get themselves covered with enamel from head
to foot, y'understand. So can you imagine the way Mr. Roosevelt is
feeling about this war, Mawruss?"
"Well, you've got to hand it to Mr. Roosevelt," Morris Perlmutter said.
"He has had some small experience in that line, although, at that,
you've got to take his statements of what ain't being done to run the
war right with a grain of salt, Abe, whereas with Senator Chamberlain,
y'understand, when he says that the President ain't running the war
right according to the idees of a man which used to was a practising
lawyer and politician out in the state of Oregon, y'understand, and,
therefore, Abe, his speeches should ought to be barred by the Food
Conservation Commission as being contrary to the Save the Salt
movement."
"But even Mr. Roosevelt, which he may or may not know anything about
running a modern army, as the case may be and probably ain't, Mawruss,
because lots of changes has come about in the running of armies since
Mr. Roosevelt went out of the business, Mawruss," Abe said, "but as I
was saying, Mawruss, even Mr. Roosevelt, as big a patriot as _he_ is,
y'understand, ain't above spoiling a perfectly good job half done by Mr.
Wilson, because he just couldn't resist saying: 'Here, give me hold of
them soldiers. Is that a way to run an army?"
"And besides, Abe," Morris said, "there's a great many people in this
country, including Mr. Roosevelt, which believes that the only man which
has got any license to say how the army should ought to be run is Mr.
Roosevelt, y'understand, and ever since we got into this war, Abe, them
fellers has been hanging around looking at Mr. Wilson like a crowd
watching a feller gilding the ball on the top of the Metropolitan
Tower, not wishing the feller any harm, y'understand, and hoping that he
will either get away with it unhurt or make the drop while they are
still standing there."
"They ain't so patient like all that, Mawruss," Abe said. "Them fellers
has got so tired waiting for Mr. Wilson to fall down on his job that
they now want to drag him down or, anyhow, trip him up."
"Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say that," Morris declared, "but it
looks to me that when Mr. Roosevelt read the results of the Senate
investigations, y'understand, he wasn't as much shocked and surprised as
he would have liked to have been, although to hear Senator Chamberlain
talk you might think that what them investigations showed was bad enough
to satisfy not only Mr. Roosevelt, but the Kaiser and his friends, also,
when, as a matter of fact, the worst that any good American can say
about Mr. Wilson as a result of them investigations is that instead of
hiring angels who performed miracles, y'understand, he hired human
beings who made mistakes."
"Sure, I know," Abe said. "But the worst thing of all that Mr. Wilson
did was to say that Senator Chamberlain was talking wild when he made a
speech about how every department of the government had practically gone
to pieces, which Senator Chamberlain says that no matter how wild he may
have talked before, nobody ever accused him that he talked wild in all
the twenty-four years he has held public office."
"Well, that only goes to show how wild some people talk, Abe," Morris
said, "because when a man has held office for twenty-four years, talking
wild is the very least people accuse him of."
"But as a matter of fact, Mawruss, a feller from Oregon was telling me
that Senator Chamberlain has held public office ever since eighteen
eighty," Abe said. "He has run for everything from Assemblyman to
Governor, and if he ain't able to remember by fourteen years how long he
has held public office, Mawruss, how could he blame Mr. Wilson for
accusing him that he is talking wild, in especially as he now admits
that when he said all the departments of the government had broken down,
y'understand, what he really meant was that the War Department had
broken down. His word should not be questioned, or, in effect, that when
a Senator presents a statement, the terms he is entitled to are
seventy-five per cent. discount for facts."
"Some of 'em needs a hundred per cent.," Morris said, "but that ain't
here nor there, Abe. This war is bigger than Mr. Chamberlain's
reputation, even as big as Mr. Chamberlain thinks it is, and it don't
make no difference to us how many speeches Mr. Roosevelt makes or what
Senator Stone calls him or he calls Senator Stone. Furthermore, Senator
Penrose, Senator McKellar, and this here Hitchcock can also volunteer to
police the game, Abe, but when it comes right _to_ it, y'understand,
every one of them fellers is just a _Kibbitzer_, the same like these
nuisances that sit around a Second Avenue coffee-house and give free
advice to the pinochle-players--all they can see is the cards which has
been played, and as for the cards which is still remaining in Mr.
Wilson's hand, they don't know no more about it than you or I do."
"And the only kick they've got, after all," Abe said, "is that President
Wilson won't expose his hand, which if he did, Mawruss, he might just so
well throw the game to Germany and be done with it."
"So you see, Abe, them fellers, including Mr. Roosevelt, is willing to
let no personal modesty stand in the way of a plain patriotic duty, at
least so far as thirty-three and a third per cent. of his answer was
concerned. But at that, it wouldn't do him no good, Abe, because, owing
to what Mr. Roosevelt maintains is an oversight at the time the
Constitution of the United States was fixed up 'way back in the year
seventeen seventy-six, y'understand, the President of the United States
was appointed the Commander-in-chief to run the United States army and
navy, and also the President was otherwise mentioned several other
times, but you could read the Constitution backward and forward, from
end to end, and the word ex-President ain't so much as hinted at,
y'understand."
"Evidencely they thought that an ex-President would be willing to stay
ex," Abe suggested.
"But Mr. Roosevelt ain't," Morris said. "All that he wanted from Mr.
Wilson was a little encouragement to take some small, insignificant part
in this war, Abe, and it would only have been a matter of a short time
when it would have required an expert to tell which was the President
and which was the ex, y'understand."
"I don't agree with you, Mawruss," Abe said. "Where Mr. Wilson has made
his big mistake is that he is conducting this war on the theory of the
old whisky brogan, 'Wilson! That's All.' If he would only of understood
that you couldn't run a restaurant, a garment business, or even a war
without stopping once in a while to jolly the knockers, Mawruss, all
this investigation stuff would never of happened. Why, if I would have
been Mr. Wilson and had a proposition like Mr. Roosevelt on my hands it
wouldn't make no difference how rushed I was, every afternoon him and me
would drink coffee together, and after I had made up my mind what I was
going to do I would put it up to him in such a way that he would think
the suggestion came from him, y'understand. Then I would find out what
it was that Senator Chamberlain preferred, _gefullte Rinderbrust_ or
_Tzimmas_, and whenever we had it for dinner, y'understand, I would have
Senator Chamberlain up to the house and after he had got so full of
_Tzimmas_ that he couldn't argue no more I would tell him what me and
Mr. Roosevelt had agreed upon, and it wouldn't make no difference if I
said to him, 'Am I right or wrong?' or 'Ain't that the sensible view to
take of it?' he would say, 'Sure!' in either case."
"You may be right, Abe," Morris agreed, "but if he was to begin that way
with Roosevelt and Chamberlain, the first thing you know, William
Randolph Hearst would be looking to be invited up for a
five-course-luncheon consultation, and the least Senator Wadsworth and
Senator McKellar would expect would be an occasional Welsh rabbit up at
the White House, which even if Mr. Wilson's conduct of the war didn't
suffer by it, his digestion might, and the end would be, Abe, that every
Senator who couldn't get the ear of the President with, anyhow, a Dutch
lunch, would pull an investigation on him as bad as anything that
Chamberlain ever started."
"It's too bad them fellers couldn't act the way Mr. Taft is behaving,"
Abe said. "There is an ex-President which is really and truly ex,
y'understand, and seemingly don't want to be nothing else, neither."
"Well, Mr. Taft has got a whole lot of sympathy for Mr. Wilson, Abe,"
Morris said. "He knows how it is himself, because when he was President,
y'understand, he also had experience with Mr. Roosevelt trying to police
his administration."
"There's only one remedy, so far as I could see, Morris," Abe said, "if
we're ever going to have Mr. Wilson make any progress with the war."
"You don't mean we should put through that law for the three brightest
men in the country to run it?" Morris inquired.
"No, sir," Abe replied. "Put through a law that after anybody has held
the office of ex-President for two administrations, Mawruss, he should
become a private sitson--and mind his own business."