XVII
POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON THE PEACE PROGRAM, INCLUDING THE ADDED EXTRA FEATURE AND THE SUPPER TURN
"It seems that this here Luxberg, the German representative in Argentine which sent them spurlos versenkt letters, has been crazy for years, Mawruss," Abe Potash said, one morning in January.
"Yes?" Morris Perlmutter said. "And when did they find that out, Abe?"
"It's an old story, Mawruss," Abe replied. "Everybody knew it in Berlin, only they never happened to think of it until we discovered those letters in the private mail of the Swedish minister."
"And what do they lay the Swedish minister's behavior to, Abe?" Morris inquired. "Stomach trouble?"
"That they didn't say," Abe continued. "But I guess they figure that Sweden should think up her own alibis."
"Well, it's a hopeful sign when the Germans realize that them Luxberg letters sound like the idees of a crazy man, Abe," Morris said, "although compared to Zimmermann's break about handing Mexico a couple of our Southern states if she went to war with us, y'understand, Luxberg's letters ain't so meshuggah, neither. So it seems to me, Abe, that Germany would be doing well to say that Luxberg was drunk when he wrote them letters, because later when it comes to explaining the hundreds of rotten acts that Germans has done in this war, Abe, Germany is going to have to think up a lot of excuses, and she may as well keep the insanity defense for somebody who would really need it, like the Kaiser."
"Don't worry about the Kaiser, Mawruss," Abe said. "For years already that feller has been getting up such strong evidence for an insanity defense, in the way of speeches to soldiers, y'understand, that he could feel absolutely safe in not only doing what he has been doing, but also what Doctor Waite and Harry Thaw did, too, because all that the counsel for the defense would got to do is to read the Kaiser's remarks at Koenigsburg, for instance, and five minutes after the jury had returned a verdict without leaving their seats, y'understand, the Kaiser would be on his way up to the Matteawan Asylum for the Criminal Insane."
"There ain't much danger of that, anyway," Morris declared, "because I read them fourteen propositions of Mr. Wilson's peace program, and so far as any mention is made of punishing the guilty parties, Abe, you might suppose the Lusitania had never been sunk at all, which it may be dumbness on my part, Abe, but the way it looks to me is that if them fourteen propositions is fourteen net, and not ten, five, and two and one-half off for cash, understand me, we have got to give Germany such a big licking before she accepts them that we might just so well give her a bigger one and add propositions from fifteen to twenty inclusive, of which proposition sixteen would contain the same demands as proposition fifteen, except that the person upon whom the sentence was to be carried out would be the Crown Prince instead of the Kaiser, but no flowers in either case, understand me, and if twenty propositions wasn't enough to take care of all the responsible parties we could add as many more propositions as necessary."
"What you are trying to fix up, Mawruss, ain't a program, but a catalogue, Mawruss," Abe commented, "which if we want to get a performance of Mr. Wilson's program, y'understand, and they're going to have a lot of trouble putting that number over with a satisfactory sea, on account they would either have to paint a sea, dig a sea, or have some sort of a sea effect, because Poland is like Iowa, Mawruss – the only time you could get a glimpse of the sea there is when they run off one of them Annette Kellermann filums in a moving-picture theayter."
"That only goes to show what you know from Poland," Morris retorted, "because in seventeen ninety-three a lot of the sea-front of Prussia belonged to Poland."
"Yes, and in seventeen ninety-three a lot of the sea-front of Texas belonged to Mexico," Abe continued. "So I guess Mr. Wilson must have some sea in mind which ain't barred by the statute of limitations; but that ain't here nor there, because getting a sea to Poland ain't the biggest difficulty in carrying out the peace program. Take, for instance, number six on the program, which is a proposed turn or act by all the Allies, entitled, 'Welcoming Russia into the Society of Free Nations.' The directions is that the performers should give Russland all sorts of assistance of every kind that she may need, and also to behave kindly to her, y'understand, and no sooner does Mr. Wilson come out with this, so to speak sob scenario, understand me, than Trotzky & Lenine get right back at him with a counter-proposition, so I guess that the present number six will be taken out of the program, and another number substituted for it, like this:
VI
Extra Added Feature, the Popular Russian Dramatic Stars in Rôles that Suit Them to Perfection
Leon Trotzky & Lenine Barney
In 'Nix on the Bonds,' a Playlet with a Punch
Suspense, Surprise, Finish, and All the Fixings that Make a Snappy Dramatic Entertainment in Tabloid Form."
"The mistake that Mr. Wilson made in number six on the program was that he took it for granted when the Allies welcomed Russland into the Society of Free Nations, Russia would behave like a new member should ought to behave, instead of which Russia started right in by giving a bad check for her initiation fees and first annual dues," Morris said. "She has also got out of the United States railroad supplies, munitions, and food, y'understand, and after giving bonds in payment, Abe, she turns right round and refuses to make good on 'em and at the same time practically says, 'What are you going to do about it?' and all this is right on top of Mr. Wilson saying, 'The treatment accorded to Russia by her sister nations,' y'understand, 'in the months to come,' verstehst du mich, 'will be the acid test of their good-will,' understand me, 'and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy.'"
"Well, I'll tell you," Abe remarked, "the English which I learned it at night school, Mawruss, was more or less a popular-price line of language, and when Mr. Wilson comes across every once in a while with one of them exclusive models in the way of speeches, using principally high-grade words in imported designs, understand me, I ain't no more equipped to handle his stuff than a manufacturer of fly-papers is to make flying-machines, but as an ignorant business man, Mawruss, which you would be the last person to admit that I ain't, Mawruss, it seems to me that the acid test of our good-will is not going to be the way we treat Russland, but the way Russia treats us; and, in fact, Mawruss, Russia already poured a little acid on us long before this. But now when she renigs on her bonds and practically gives us a whole bathful of acid, Mawruss, for my part the treatment needn't go on for months to come. I am satisfied with the acid test so far as it's gone this month, Mawruss, because it don't make no difference what kind of acid you use, Mawruss, a dead beat is a dead beat, understand me, and for a dead beat nobody has got any sympathy – either intelligent or unselfish, or unintelligent and selfish. Am I right or wrong, Mawruss?"
"I wouldn't worry my head over that if I was you, Abe," Morris said, "because, as you said just now, Russland will attend to that number on the program for herself. But what is troubling me is number one, which provides that peace shall be made openly, and at the same time does away with the possibility that some afternoon when you and me gets out of here, after making up our minds that the war would last for ten years yet, we would buy a Sporting Extra with Final Wall Street Complete, and see the whole front page filled up mit the word PEACE in letters a foot high, understand me, which it has always been in the back of my head that the next time Colonel House would slip off to Europe no one would know anything about till the treaty of peace comes back signed 'Woodrow Wilson, per E.M.H.' But if the first number on the program goes through as planned, Abe, and we have open covenants of peace openly arrived at, y'understand, why, then, that will be something else again."
"You bet your life it would be something else again," Abe agreed, fervently, "and what is more, Mawruss, not only would them covenants of peace be open, but they would remain open for a long time, because there's a whole lot of Senators, Congressmen, ex-Senators, ex-Congressmen, and ex-Presidents which is laying for the opportunity when peace is proposed, so that they can discuss the peace terms with one another, openly, frankly, and in the public view, as Mr. Wilson would say. Yes, Mawruss, there's several political orators in and out of Congress which has got the word 'traitor' in their system and has got to get it out again in reference to somebody – preferably a member of the Cabinet – before peace negotiations is closed, and there is also such indigestible words like 'pusillanimous,' which gives certain ex-Presidents a feeling of fullness around the throat, and a couple of Senators will need time to find out just what the other Senators wants to do about them peace terms so that they can differ with them; and looking at it one way and another, Mawruss, if Senator Wadsworth and Senator McKellar thinks it is taking a long time to get ready for war, they should wait till we get ready for peace, Mawruss, and if they don't want to be afterward holding investigations as to why the throat specialists wasn't mobilized on time, Mawruss, they should start right in and mobilize the throat specialists, and also it wouldn't do any harm to find out the available stock of cough-drops is in the hands of the dealers, so that the lung power of the nation can go forth to holler for peace equipped to the last menthol lozenge."
"In a way, that ain't no joke, neither, Abe," Morris said. "There is people that Mr. Wilson didn't include in his war program which is going to do their utmost to horn in on his peace program at the very best spot in the bill. Take Mr. Roosevelt, and his friends will no doubt insist that Mr. Wilson does a supper turn while Mr. Roosevelt goes on somewheres around nine forty-five, because to-day yet they're talking about making the Presidency of the United States a coalition affair, in which Wilson, Roosevelt, and Taft would be equal partners with the same drawing account and everything."
"And where does Mr. Wilson get off in this coalition business?" Abe inquired. "Ain't two undivided one-thirds of the Presidency of the United States for the unexpired portion of his term worth nothing to Mr. Wilson, even at short rates, Mawruss?"
"Well," Morris replied, "I suppose Roosevelt and Taft would throw in their experience as Presidents."
"Say!" Abe exclaimed. "There ain't a week goes by nowadays but what Mr. Wilson gets more experience as President than Taft and Roosevelt did in both their terms put together, so I don't think you need waste no more breath about it, Mawruss. When the people last time elected a President of the United States they chose Mr. Wilson as an individual, not as a co-partner, and you could take it from me, Mawruss, it don't make no difference whether it would be a peace program or a war program which Mr. Wilson is fixing up, the name of the chief performer on it was settled by the people a year ago last November!"
XVIII
POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON THE NEW NATIONAL HOLIDAYS
"Yes, Mawruss," Abe Potash said, after Mr. Garfield had announced the five-day shut-down, "one of the hardest things that a patriotic sitson is called on to do nowadays is to have faith in those fellers which is running the Fuel Commission, the Food Commission, and all the other commissions that they ain't such big fools as you would think for."
"Well, you don't think this here Garfield would close up the country for five days unless it would be necessary, ain't it?" Morris Perlmutter retorted.
"Certainly I don't," Abe agreed. "But what is troubling me is that he ain't said as yet for why it is necessary, Mawruss."
"Maybe he 'ain't figured it out yet," Morris suggested. "And even if he didn't, Abe, it stands to reason that if the country don't burn no coal for five days, at the end of five days they would still got the coal they didn't burn, provided they had got any coal at all to start with."
"But as I understand it, Mawruss," Abe said, "not burning coal 'ain't got nothing at all to do mit Mr. Garfield's order that we shouldn't burn no coal. It seems from what ex-President Taft says and also from what a professor by the name of Jinks oder Jenks says, Mawruss, Mr. Garfield done it because the people 'ain't begun to realize that we are at war, Mawruss."
"You mean to say that again the people don't begin to realize we are at war?" Morris exclaimed. "It couldn't be possible, Abe. Here we have had two Liberty Loan campaigns, a military draft which took in every little cross-road village in the country, a war-tax bill that hits everybody and everything, and people like Mr. Taft and Professor Jinks saying day in and day out that the people 'ain't begun to realize we are at war, y'understand, and yet you try to tell me that the people has slipped right back into not beginning to realize we are at war, Abe."
"I don't try to tell you nothing," Abe said. "For my part I think it's time that somebody put them wise, Mawruss."
"What do you mean – put them wise?" Morris demanded. "The people knows that – "
"Who is saying anything about the people?" Abe interrupted. "I am talking about Mr. Taft and this here Professor Jinks, Mawruss. Them fellers has got ideas from spring and summer designs of nineteen seventeen. What we are looking for from the big men of the country is new ideas for the late summer of nineteen eighteen and fall and winter seasons of nineteen eighteen, nineteen nineteen, and this here people-'ain't-begun-to-realize talk was already a back-number line of conversation in June, nineteen seventeen."
"But what them fellers is driving into, Abe," Morris observed, "is that it's going to help the war along if the people of America should be made to suffer along with the people of France and England. They figure that it ain't going to do us Americans a bit of harm to know how them Frenchers feel, nebich, with the Germans holding on to their coal-supply, Abe."
"Well, we could get the same effect by going round in athaletic underwear and no overcoats, Mawruss," Abe retorted, "so if that's what Mr. Taft claims Mr. Garfield shut off the coal for, Mawruss, he is beating around the wrong bushes."
"And he ain't the only one, neither, Abe," Morris said. "From the way other people is talking, Abe, you would think that in order to get into this war right, y'understand, we should ought to go to work and blow up a few dozen American cathedrals, send up airyoplanes over New York, and drop a couple gross bombs on the business section of the town, poison the water-supply, cut off the milk for the babies, and do everything else that them miserable Germans did to France and England, not to say also Russia, y'understand. This will cause us to become so sore, understand me, that everybody of fighting age will want to fight, and the rest of us will be willing to work in the munition-factories and spend all our time and money to end a war where American cathedrals is being blown up, airyoplanes is bombing New York, and babies is suffering for want of milk, Abe."
"You mean that Professor Jinks is willing to have us believe that Mr. Garfield is shutting off the coal, not because it's necessary, but because it's the equivalence of us bombing our own cities and making ourselves feel sore?" Abe asked. "Mr. Garfield?"
"Ordinary people which ain't professors and ex-Presidents might figure that way," Morris continued, "but it seems that the theory is we are going to feel sore at Germany, Abe."
"Well," Abe commented, "I am perfectly willing to feel sore at Germany for the things she has done in this war, Mawruss, and I am so sore at Germany, anyway, that I am also willing to feel sore at her for the things which she 'ain't done also, Mawruss, but so far as Mr. Garfield is concerned, y'understand, I prefer to think that he's a hard-working feller which could once in a while make a mistake, understand me, and that if he cuts off the coal, it's on account he thinks it's necessary to save the coal. Because if I thought the way Professor Jinks thinks, Mawruss, and I should meet Mr. Garfield face to face somewheres, understand me, the least they could send me up for would be using rotten language tending to cause a breach of the peace, y'understand."
"Sure I know, Abe," Morris agreed. "But the chances is that Mr. Taft and Professor Jinks may have a private idee that when Mr. Garfield shut down on the coal he could of saved coal in some other way, and so in order that he shouldn't get stumped for explanations afterward, y'understand, they are taking this way of giving him what they think is a good pointer in that line, understand me, because if you read the papers this morning, Abe, there must be thousands of prominent sitsons which claims to be patriotic, y'understand, and from what them fellers said about Mr. Garfield, Abe, it was plain to me that the stuff they was holding back from saying about him was pretty near giving them apoplexy, y'understand."
"Well, when it comes to cussing out the Fuel Administrator, Mawruss," Abe said, "them prominent sitsons wouldn't have nothing on the unprominent sitsons which is going to lose five days' pay now and one day's pay a week for ten weeks later. Yes, Mawruss, what them poor people is going to call Mr. Garfield during the five days they will lay off is going to pretty near warm up their cold homes even if it ain't going to provide food for their families, Mawruss. Furthermore, Mawruss, five continuous days is going to give them an opportunity to do a lot more real, hard thinking than they could do if they would have, we would say, for example, only one hour a day lay-off every other day over a period of a hundred days, Mawruss, and if at the end of them five days, Mawruss, they are going to take as much interest in the problems of this war as they are in the problem of how they are going to catch up with what they owe for five days' food and rent, Mawruss, I miss my guess, because Mr. Taft and Professor Jinks may think that them fellers is going to spend their five days' lockout in looking up war maps and sticking little colored flags in the positions now held by the French and German troops or in reading up the life of General Pershing and My Three Years in Germany by Ambassador Gerard, Mawruss, but I don't."
"And yet, Abe, admitting all you say is true, y'understand, what reason do you got for supposing that before Mr. Garfield shut off the coal he didn't also consider all these things, when they even occurred to a feller like you?" Morris asked.
"What do you mean – a feller like me?" Abe demanded. "Thousands of people the country over is saying the selfsame thing."
"I know they are," Morris said. "And why you and they should think that what occurred to thousands of people the country over shouldn't also occur to Mr. Garfield, Abe, is beyond me. Now I don't know no more about this coal proposition than you do, Abe, but I am willing to take a chance that when a big man like Garfield, backed up by President Wilson, does a crazy thing like this, y'understand, he must have had an awful good reason for it, no matter how good the reasons were against it."
"Did I say he didn't?" Abe said.
"Then why knock the feller?" Morris asked.
"Say, looky here, Mawruss," Abe retorted, "are we living in Germany or America? An idee! On twenty-four hours' notice the government shuts off the coal-supply of the country and you expect that all that the people would say is, 'Omane! Solo!' ('Amen! Selah!')."
"Well, that's the way a government does business – on short notice, Abe, which if Mr. Garfield would be one of them take-it-on-the-other-hand fellers who considers the matter from every angle before he decides, y'understand, while he would have still got a couple of thousand angles to consider the matter from, Abe, the country would have been tied up into such knots over the coal-and-freight situation that it would have required not five days, but five hundred days, to untangle it, y'understand," Morris said.
"But it seems to me, Mawruss, that Mr. Garfield could have spent, say, twenty-five minutes longer on that order of his, so that a manufacturer could tell from reading it over a few dozen times, with the assistance of a first-class, cracker-jack, A-number-one criminal lawyer, just what it was he couldn't do without making himself liable to a fine of five thousand dollars and one year imprisonment, y'understand," Abe said. "In fact, Mawruss, if the average manufacturer is going to try to understand that order before he does anything about it he'll have to shut down for five days while he is working to puzzle it out, and then he will keep his place closed down for five days longer while he is resting up from brain fag, understand me. Take, for instance, a department store which sells liquors and groceries, has a doctor in charge of the rest-room, and runs a public lunch-room in the basement, y'understand, and if the proprietor decided to make a test case of it by hiring John B. Stanchfield and keeping open on Monday, Mawruss, once Mr. Garfield got on the witness-stand and started to explain just what the exemptions exempted, y'understand, it would be years and years before he ever had a chance to see the old college again."
"But Mr. Garfield wrote that order to save coal, not arguments, Abe," Morris said. "He expected that the business men of the country would do the sensible thing next Monday by staying home and playing pinochle or poker, and those fellers which don't know enough about cards to even kibbitze the game, y'understand, could go into another room and start in on their income-tax blanks, which, when it comes to figuring out what is capital and what is income in the excess-profits returns, Abe, there is many a business man which would not only put in all his Mondays between now and the first of March trying to straighten it out, y'understand, but would also be asking for further extensions of time to finish it up along about the fifteenth of April."
"And that's the way it goes, Mawruss," Abe commented, with a sigh. "It use to was in the old days that all a feller had to know to go into the clothing business was clothing, y'understand, but nowadays a manufacturer of clothing or any other merchandise must also got to be a certified public accountant, an expert of high-grade words from the English language, a liar, a detective, and should also be able to take the stand on his own behalf in such a level-head way that the assistant district attorney couldn't get him rattled on cross-examination."
"Well, my advice to these test-case fellers, Abe," Morris concluded, "is this: Be patriotic now. Don't wait till you're indicted."