UNWRITTEN LETTERS TO THE KAISER.
No. XXXIX.
(From James J. Saltontale, of New York City.)
Kaiser William,—I guess you'll remember who I am when I tell you that the Jay-Jay Lecture Agency and the Pushalong Dramatic Show Company were invented by me and that I'm the sole possessor of these two world-wide organisations. I wasn't always in with the high-brow crowd of the lecturing business. To tell you the truth I began quite low down with a six-legged pig that could spell out the word "pork" by touching the letters with his snout on a big cardboard alphabet. He didn't last long. Times were hard during his second winter, and—well, I never knew till then how much bacon there is to a pig, even when it's a learned one with six legs to it. It was always some trouble tying on them two extra legs, and it was nervous work watching them while the show was open to see they didn't work loose. So on the whole I wasn't altogether put into mourning when old six-legs joined the dear departed and left me free to speculate in Mexican dwarfs and a Bolivian giantess with a rich contralto voice.
After that we rose to lions and tigers and a very massive elephant and a few comic bears and a gorilla from Africa. It was profitable but tiring, and after I'd saved a dollar or two I was able to retire from the Mammoth Antediluvian Menagerie and devote myself to Lectures and the Pushalong stunt, which is living pictures of an historic and improving sort. So now you remember me, don't you?
Well, the fact is, Kaiser, that a notion's come into my head, and it's this. When peace comes with all its horrors, you won't want to go on every day explaining to the German people how you lost the War by being too kind or by not having prepared yourself enough. And you won't want to keep telling them why you spent so much time over Verdun and why the British Fleet didn't make things as easy and comfortable for you as you reckoned it ought to have done. The German people won't want to listen to talk of that kind. They've been there and they'll know all about it without being told. No, what you'll want to do will be to get into a new atmosphere, with people all round you listening to you just as if you were the only man in the world. You'll find all that in the United States if you'll only put yourself in the hands of the Jay-Jay Lecturing Agency and the Pushalong Dramatic Show Company. We shall engage the halls and get together the audiences by our unique system of advertisements, and all you've got to do is to appear at the time fixed and address the meeting for an hour to an hour and a-half on such subjects as "Why Belgium started the War," and "How Serbia used Poison Gas," and "A Dozen Proofs that the Lusitania was Sunk by the British out of Spite," and "Turkey, the Saviour of the Armenians." There'll be plenty of others, but these four will do as a good working basis, and we can fill out the list later on, not forgetting the Monroe Doctrine and how Germany is going to knock everyone who attacks it into pie.
Then, there can be living pictures of yourself, in all kinds of uniforms, deciding reluctantly to issue an ultimatum, or packing your valise for the Front, or leading two millions of men in a charge and bringing back four millions of prisoners or setting an example to your people by eating War-bread by the crumb. And then you can wind up the evening's entertainment by showing yourself making a speech in which you bring in that bit about the good old German God who has always been your ally. And then the audience will stream out very devoutly, and all of them will shake you by the hand and say they're pleased to meet you. I tell you, William Hohenzollern, it will be great, and the dollars will come pouring in. Leave it all to me, and I'll guarantee a success that'll make you grateful to me for ever. If we could only get Uncle Francis Joseph to join—but no; that might distract attention from you, and it's you I'm banking on. All I ask is a miserable twenty per cent. on the profits. Is it a bargain?
Yours, James J. S.