Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things Part 9

"Well, I'll tell you," Abe said, "it is always the case that when the creditors begin to sc.r.a.p among themselves, y'understand, the fraudulent bankrupt stands a good chance to get away with the concealed a.s.sets, ain't it, and in particular in this case where there is so many liberal-minded people around which don't want to be too hard on Germany, _anyway_."

"I bet yer," Morris said, fervently; "and while this here Peace Conference is killing a whole lot of time deliberating how to make this the last war, y'understand, they will wake up some fine morning to find out that they have really made it the last war but one. Furthermore, Abe, this next-to-the-last war wouldn't be a marker to the war we are going to have in collecting indemnities from Bolsheviki, because when it comes to atrocities, Abe, a Bolshevik government could make the old German government look like the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, y'understand."

"Might the Peace Conference would hurry up, maybe," Abe suggested.

"They've got to hurry up if they don't want to be shifted from a Peace Conference to a Council of War," Morris said. "Look what has already happened in Hungary."

"And yet, Mawruss, you would think that with a nation like the Hungarians, which is used to eating in Hungarian restaurants, y'understand, a little thing like starvation wouldn't worry them at all," Abe said, "so therefore I couldn't understand why the Hungarians should have gone Bolshevik from want of food, as the papers says they did."

"_My_ paper didn't say it," Morris commented, "and if it did, I wouldn't believe it, anyway, because the most you could claim for Bolshevism as a cure for starvation is that it keeps the patient so busy worrying about his other troubles that he forgets how hungry he is. Furthermore, Abe, the way it looks to me, this here Bolshevik revolution in Hungary ain't even what the Poor Food Law would call a Bolshevik Type revolution, because it is my idea that Lenine and Trotzky could read the papers the same like anybody else. So, therefore, when they seen it that all the American newspaper correspondents was sending out word that the Peace Conference should ought to hurry up its work because of the spread of Bolshevism, y'understand, and that the delegates should ought to go easy on Germany because, if they didn't, Germany would probably go Bolshevik, y'understand, this here Trotzky, which once used to work on a New York newspaper but lived it down by changing his name from Bronstein to Trotzky, understand me, at once gets up a line of snappy advertis.e.m.e.nts headed:

"'WHY BOLSHEVISM?'

to the effect that a Revolution a Day Drives Indemnities Away and for particulars to write to Trotzky & Lenine, Department M, Petrograd Land t.i.tle and Trust Building, Petrograd. And, of course, Hungary fell for it."

"So you think that this here Hungarian revolution is a fake?" Abe asked.

"It ain't a fake, it's a business," Morris replied, "which I bet yer that right now Messrs. Ebert, Scheidemann & Co. is writing Trotzky & Lenine they should please quote prices on Bolshevist uprisings as per Hungarian sample, F.O.B. Berlin, and also that it wouldn't be only a matter of a few days when knocking Germany would be a capital offense in Petrograd, upon the grounds that the customer is always right."

"But I understand that in Budapest the working-men is seizing the factories and running them themselves," Abe said.

"There's always bound to be a certain number of people which couldn't take a job," Morris commented.

"There's no joke about it," Abe declared, "which I see in the paper this morning that the new Hungarian Soviet government has directed the presidents of banks to put their business in the hands of the clerks and that the landlords has got to let the janitors manage the apartment-houses."

"The landlords has got to do that in America, whether the government tells 'em to or not, Abe," Morris said, "and as for the bank presidents, Abe, they might just as well go out and look for another job to-day as to wait till next week when them committees of factory-workers will start in to make overdrafts at the point of a revolver."

"Things must be terribly mixed up in Hungary, according to the papers,"

Abe observed.

"Well, I'll tell you," Morris said, "in some countries a Bolshevik government could be quite disturbing, but take Hungarian cooking, for instance, and it wouldn't really make a whole lot of difference if _gulyas_ or paprika chicken was cooked by one chef or a committee of scullions, Abe, it would be just so miscellaneous and n.o.body could tell from eating it what had been put into it, y'understand. Also, Abe, take these here gipsy Hungarian bands, and while there would probably be a terrible conglomeration of noises if a committee of players was to start in to conduct the Boston Symphonies or the New York Philharmonics, y'understand, a committee of gipsy musicians couldn't make a _czardas_ sound worser than it does, no matter how they disagree as to the way it should ought to be played."

"For that matter, there's a lot of things produced in Germany which a Soviet government couldn't spoil, neither, Mawruss," Abe said, "like music by this here Nathan Strauss, the composer, or _Koenigsburger Klops_, now called Liberty Roast, which I see by last Sunday's paper that the Kaiser has been talking again."

"And what's that got to do with Germany going Bolshevik?" Morris asked.

"Nothing, except that it partially accounts for it," Abe replied, "which a newspaper feller by the name of Begbie called on the Kaiser in Holland, and he says the Kaiser couldn't see it at all."

"See what?" Morris asked.

"Why, he couldn't see what people is making such a fuss about," Abe said. "He says that, so far as starting this here war is concerned, he didn't _say_ nothing, he didn't _do_ nothing, and all he knows about it is that he lays the whole thing to the Freemasons."

"You mean the F. A. M.?" Morris asked.

"What other Freemasons is there?" Abe said.

"You're sure he didn't say the Knights of Pythias or the I. O. O. F., because, while I don't belong to the Masons myself, Abe, Rosie's sister's husband's brother by the name Harris November has been a thirty-sixth degree Mason for years already," Morris declared, "and I'll swear that if a gabby feller like him would have known that the Masons had anything to do with bringing on the war, Abe, he would of spilled it already long since ago."

"Well, of course, I don't know nothing about what Harris November said or what he didn't say, Mawruss, but that's what the Kaiser said," Abe continued, "and he also had a good deal to say about Queen Victorine of England what a wonderful woman she was, _olav hasholom_, and how she told him many times he should look out for that low-life of a son of hers by the name Edwin."

"But I always thought this here Edwin was such a decent, respectable feller," Morris interrupted.

"That's what everybody else thought," Abe went on, "but the Kaiser says that many times the old lady says to him he shouldn't have nothing to do with Edwin. 'Believe me,' she said, according to the Kaiser, 'he wouldn't do you no good intellectually, morally, or socially,' and so for that reason the Kaiser wouldn't join the Entente with England, France, and Russia."

"Because this here Edwin was at the bottom of it?" Morris inquired.

"That's what the Kaiser _said_," Abe replied.

"Maybe he also caught the poor Czar _selig_ eating with his knife or something," Morris suggested.

"That he didn't say, neither," Abe answered, "but he might just so well have said it, for all it would go down with me, Mawruss, because we all know how kings sow their rolled oats, Mawruss, and any king which wouldn't a.s.sociate with any other king on the grounds of running around the streets till all hours of the night or gambling, y'understand, if that ain't a case of a pot calling a kettle, I don't know what is."

"And I suppose he topped off them lies by getting religious, ain't it?"

Morris remarked.

"Naturally," Abe said. "And in particular he got very sore at the Freemasons on account of them being atheists."

"That's the first time I hear that about the Freemasons," Morris observed. "I think, myself, that he was getting them mixed up with the Elks."

"The Elks ain't atheists," Abe said.

"I know they ain't, but at the same time they ain't religious fanatics exactly," Morris said, "which to a particular feller like the Kaiser would be quite enough, Abe."

"Also, Mawruss," Abe went on, "he claims that the Freemasons is all Bolshevists, and in fact, from the way he carried on about the Freemasons, you would think he was crazy on the subject."

"Maybe they once turned him down or something," Morris commented, "which when I was treasurer of Friendship Lodge, 129, I. O. M. A., before we quit giving sick benefits, Abe, we turned down a feller by the name Turkeltaub on account of varicose veins, and the way he went around calling us all kinds of highwaymen you wouldn't believe at all."

"But the newspaper feller that interviewed him says that the Kaiser seems to be in pretty good health, Mawruss," Abe declared.

"That don't make him a good risk, neither," Morris retorted. "I suppose the interviewer didn't say how his appet.i.te was."

"What's his appet.i.te got to do with it?" Abe asked.

"Because, in speaking of murderers just before they go to the chair, Abe," Morris concluded, "the newspaper always say, 'The condemned man ate hearty.'"

XI

IT IS STILL UP IN THE AIR, BUT YOU CAN'T SAY THE SAME FOR TRANSATLANTIC VOYAGES

"I am surprised to see that an old-established and well-settled government like Mexico should got a revolution on his hands, Mawruss,"

Abe Potash declared as he skimmed the head-lines in the morning papers.

"What makes you think that Mexico is an old-established and well-settled government, Abe?" Morris Perlmutter asked.