"Maybe," Morris admitted, "but when you start in to tell about how smart one of your nephews by marriage is, Abe, it generally ends up by our paying a few weeks' salary to a young feller which all he learned about double entry is making birds with a pen, so I just want to warn you before you go any further, Abe, that in the future with me, Abe, if any of your nephews is an expert bird-maker with a pen, y'understand, you should please find him a job in a millinery concern and let me out."
"I wasn't going to say nothing about giving a job to nobody," Abe protested. "All I am trying to tell you is that if the Treaty of Peace, which you talked my head off about the other day, contained a section that the Germans should walk in a parade and show to the Allies how that Peace Treaty made them suffer, Mawruss, Lenine and Trotsky and all the other crickets who abuse Mr. Wilson like the New York Republican newspapers and the American ladies who are attending that Zurich Permanent Peace Convention, would of called the Allies all sorts of barbarians, y'understand. However, Mawruss, it only goes to show how unnecessary such a section in the Peace Treaty would be, Mawruss, because the Germans is now obliging with a wonderful Roman exhibition of themselves. In fact, Mawruss, from the lowest to the highest, them German people seems to be saying to each other, 'Let's act like real Germans and make the worst of it!'"
"Did any one expect anything else from them Germans?" Morris asked.
"Well, from the way this here four-flusher von Brockdorff-Rantzau behaved the day they handed him the Peace Treaty, Mawruss," Abe said, "it looked like the Germans had made up their minds to be just so stiff-necked as they always was, Mawruss, and I begun to think that they were going to treat it as a case of so mechullah, so mechullah, y'understand, but the way them Germans is now crying like children, Mawruss, there ain't going to be enough sackcloth and ashes in Germany to go around, and them German professors will have to get busy and invent some ersatz sackcloth and ashes to supply the demand."
"Crooks are always poor sports, Abe," Morris declared, "in particular when they throw themselves on the mercy of the people that they didn't intend to show no mercy to themselves. Take this here Ebert, for instance, and he don't make no bones about saying that the German people relied on President Wilson and the United States of America being easy marks, but ai Tzuris, what a mistake that was! In effect he says that President Wilson on January 22, 1917, made the statement that the victor must not force his conditions on the vanquished, and relying on that statement, Germany went to work and got into a war with the United States because if Germany got licked, y'understand, the worst that can happen her is that she makes peace again on her own terms, and then when Germany did get licked, see what happens to her. President Wilson behaves like a frozen snake in the grass which somebody tries to warm by putting the snake into his pants pocket, y'understand, and when the snake gets thawed out, understand me, it bites the hand that feeds it, and what are you going to do in a case like this?"
"At that, Mawruss, Ebert ain't making near so bad an exhibition of himself as this here Prince von Hohenlohe. There was a feller which was used to was the German Chancellor, Mawruss," Abe said, "and the dirty deals which he helped to put over on the Rumanians and the Russians, by way of Treaties of Peace, y'understand, was such that if we would of attempted it with the Germans, Mawruss, and the United States Congress would of confirmed it, Mawruss, Victor Berger would be fighting to be let out of the House of Representatives and to be admitted to Leavenworth, instead of vice versa, on the grounds that he didn't want to associate with no crooks, y'understand, but seemingly this here Hohenlohe is suffering from loss of memory as well as loss of self-respect, Mawruss, because he is now making speeches in which he is weeping all over his already tear-stained copy of the Peace Treaty and calling it the Tragedy of Versailles, whereas compared to the Treaty of Peace which you might call the Tragedy of Brest-Litovsk, Mawruss, this here Versailles Treaty of Peace is a Follies of 1919 with just one laugh after another, y'understand."
"And I see also where this here Scheidemann is also figuring very largely in this here Roman exhibition the Germans is making of themselves, Abe," Morris observed. "He said the other day that the Germans would never, never, never—or anyhow not until next Thursday a week—sign the Peace Treaty. He put his hand on where a German's heart would be if he had one, Abe, and said that no Germans would positively and absolutely not submit to any such Treaty of Peace as the one offered to them, or that is to say they would not submit to it except on and after May 22, 1919, and anyhow, nobody would ever trust President Wilson again."
"And yet, Mawruss, when them Germans gets over the first shock of this here Peace Treaty and wipe away their tears sufficient to see things a little more clearly, y'understand," Abe commented, "it is just barely possible that they are going to do some rapid figuring on what they gain by not supporting a few thousand princes, not to mention the money which that bloodthirsty Kaiser and his family used to draw in salaries and commissions, Mawruss, and when these amounts are offset against indemnities which the Germans are required to pay under the Peace Treaty, Mawruss, it will in all probability be found that the German nation is beggared, as this here Scheidemann would say, to the extent of $0.831416 per capita per annum by such indemnities. The result is going to be that some of them Germans will then begin to figure how maybe it was worth that much money per capita per annum to get rid of that rosher and they will also begin to realize that it has been worth even more than that much per capita per annum to the Allied people to see a performance such as the German people continuing to weep in sympathy with Ebert and Scheidemann, y'understand, they will be advising them two boys to go and take for ten cents apiece some mathematic spirits of ammonia and quit their sobbing."
"However, Abe," Morris remarked, "there was a few Americans which instead of being in the audience enjoying the performance was back on the stage with the Germans and weeping just so hard as any of them. Take these here American lady delegates to the small-time Peace Conference which is running at Zurich, Switzerland, in opposition to the old original Peace Conference in Paris, Abe, and them ladies with their voices choked by tears, Abe, passed a resolution that be it resolved that the Peace Treaty is already secret diplomacy, that it is the old case of the side winning the war getting the spoils, and a lot of other resolutions to which the only resolution anybody could pass in answer to such resolutions would be, 'Well, what of it?'"
"That only proves to me, Mawruss, how necessary it is, this here Americanization work which you read so much about in the papers," Abe declared. "Here is four American ladies which is lived in the country for some years—in fact, ever since they was born, and that ain't such a short time neither, when you see their pictures, Mawruss, and yet them ladies talks like they never heard tell of the Star-spangled Banner. Seemingly the fact that we licked Germany don't appeal to them at all, and so far as these resolutions which they passed between sobs, Mawruss, gives any indications, Mawruss, they would like to have seen this here European War end in a draw, with perhaps Germany getting just a shade the better of it."