"Only when it's necessary, Mawruss," Abe concluded, "and that wouldn't be in the case of one thousandth of one per cent. of the entire population, because the great majority of the people thinks the way I do about their money: the government let me make it, and the government lets me keep it, and if the government would sooner borrow part of it instead of taking it all, Mawruss, that's only the government's good nature, which nobody should presume too much on good nature, Mawruss. Am I right or wrong?"
XIII
WHEN IS A SECRET TREATY SECRET?
"I see where President Wilson sent a letter to the German government that they might just so well save the car fare and not send any delegates to this here Peace Conference which wouldn't be prepared for the worst, Mawruss," Abe Potash said one morning in April.
"You would think, considering how excited the German people gets nowadays, that they would have a hard time finding any one to take the job of delegate, Abe," Morris Perlmutter suggested, "which the least that happens to one of them German delegates after the German people finds out what was in the paper he signed is that his executioners would claim that the daylight-saving law made it unnecessary for them to wait till sunrise, y'understand."
"Well, he would always have the excuse that the only thing he seen of the Peace Treaty before he signed it was a dotted line, Mawruss," Abe said, "and also, Mawruss, it is just possible that the return half of them German peace delegates will read via Amsterdam, and that before taking a three years' lease of an Amsterdam apartment some of them peace delegates would first visit a ticket-scalper and get that much off their minds, anyway."
"And even in Paris them German peace delegates wouldn't be, neither," Morris declared, "which I see that the French government is too safe arranging for the accommodation of them German delegates at a hotel next to the place where the Peace Treaty is going to be signed, Abe, and the lot on which the hotel stands is going to be protected with an egg-proof fence eight feet high so that the German delegates can escape any stray rotten eggs."
"The fence could be twelve feet high, Mawruss," Abe remarked, "and it wouldn't do any good, because nobody could escape rotten eggs in a French hotel, Mawruss, rotten coffee, neither. Also, Mawruss, eggs 'ain't got nothing to do with that fence, because if that fence wouldn't be there, Mawruss, when it comes time for them German delegates to sign the treaty, Mawruss, the Peace Conference would got to appoint a Committee of Resident Buyers to round up them German delegates, on account that nobody else but Resident Buyers who is accustomed to entertaining their American clients would know where them German delegates had disappeared to."