to the effect that a Revolution a Day Drives Indemnities Away and for particulars to write to Trotzky & Lenine, Department M, Petrograd Land Title 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 nobody 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."