"But we already got laws over here to take care of people which would sooner commit murder than work, Abe," Morris said, "and as for being liberal-minded about the Bolsheviki, Abe, I am content that after they are sentenced they should have all the privilege that the other convicts have, and that's as far as I would go."
"Well, you couldn't claim credit for being very funny that way, Mawruss. You've got practically all the unliberal-minded people in the United States siding with you," Abe declared, "because, being liberal-minded is a matter of being able to see only the unpopular side of every question. It is the liberal-minded people which thinks there is something to be said in favor of the Germans and says it, y'understand. It is the liberal-minded people which is always willing to try anything that don't seem reasonable to practically everybody."
"And I suppose them liberal-minded people would even approve of Germany trying to get out of paying an indemnity by pulling off one of them street affairs with shooting which passes for Bolshevik revolution," Morris said, "but the backing of such liberal-minded Americans wouldn't help the Germans none, because there would be a whole lot of husky parties in khaki going into Germany and acting in such an unliberal-minded way that the Germans would wish they would have paid the indemnity voluntarily on the instalment plan rather as have it collected all in one sum by levy and sale under an execution."
"Well, I'll tell you," Abe said, "it is always the case that when the creditors begin to scrap among themselves, y'understand, the fraudulent bankrupt stands a good chance to get away with the concealed assets, 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 advertisements headed:
"'Why Bolshevism?'