_ CHAPTER VII. POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
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."
"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:
Telephone Battery 2222
GERMAN SECRET SERVICE
'WE LEAD--OTHERS FOLLOW'
11 Broadway
Ask about our Special Service plan
for furnishing explosives by the month
AT LOW RATES."
"At the same time, Abe," Morris remarked, "the Germans make things pretty secret when they want to, otherwise how could the Kaiser have kept that mutiny under his chest for over a couple of months?"
"And you could take it from me, Mawruss," Abe said, "before Michaelis let it out in the Reichstag, he might just so well have stopped in at the
Lokal Anzeiger office on his way down-town and inserted a couple of lines or so under the head of 'Situations Wanted Males.'"
"Why, I thought you said a Prime Minister never gets fired," Morris said.
"Prime Ministers is one thing and Chancellors another, Mawruss," Abe told him.
"Then I imagine this here Michaelis must be putting in a lot of time nowadays going over his contract to see if he's got any come-back against the party of the first part in case that crook fires him," Morris said.
"Well, he can keep on looking till he finds another job," Abe replied, "because the Kaiser is like a lot of other highwaymen in the cutting-up trade, Mawruss. To them fellers the first and most important thing about a contract is the loopholes, y'understand, and after that's fixed they don't care what goes into it, which you take that contract of Michaelis's and I bet yer that a police-court lawyer could drive an armored tank through them paragraphs which is supposed to hold the Kaiser, y'understand, whereas if
Michaelis wanted to get out of it, Mawruss, he could go to work and hire Messrs. Hughes, Brandeis, Stanchfield, Hughes & Stanchfield, supposing there was
Gott soll huten such a firm of lawyers, and they wouldn't be able to find so much as a comma out of place for him."
"And as a good German, Abe, Michaelis would be awful disappointed if they did," Morris said, "because that's the way the Germans feel toward the Kaiser. He robs 'em, he murders 'em, and he starves their wives and children to death, just so him and his family could run the country, and them poor Heinies says to one another: 'That's the kind of a kaiser to have! A big strong man which he don't give a nickel for nobody! He's a wonder, all right, and if we didn't have a feller like that at the head of the country I don't know how we would be able to stand all the trouble that cutthroat and his crook family is causing us--Heaven bless them.'"
"The hopeless part of it is," Abe commented, "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, Mawruss."
"And as much as you sympathize with a lunatic, you can't have him going around loose, Abe," Morris said, "so what are we going to do about it?"
"Well, we're trying hard to shut 'em up in Germany again," Abe declared, "and after we've got them there, Mawruss, I am willing to stand my share of the expense that the war should go on long enough to give them lunatics a little home treatment, y'understand, and by home treatment, Mawruss, I mean not only treating the lunatics themselves, but also treating their homes," Abe continued, growing red in the face at the thought of it, "which I only hope that I live long enough to see a moving picture of German homes the same like I seen moving pictures of French homes and Belgian homes, and if that don't sweat the Kaiser-mania out of their systems they are crazy for keeps." _