"So how could you blame a Prime Minister if he didn't suspect what Germany was up to when she bought that sand-bank?" Morris asked.
"Of course that was a long time before the war, Mawruss," Abe said. "Nowadays the dumbest Prime Minister knows enough to know that coming from a German diplomat a simple remark like, 'Good morning, ain't it an elegant weather we are having?' is subject to one of several constructions, none of which is exactly what you could call kosher, y'understand."
"And supposing he finds such a remark in a letter from a German diplomat to the Kaiser, Abe?" Morris asked. "What does it mean then?"
"That depends on where it is written from," Abe said, "which if the Minister of Foreign Affairs down in Paraguay or Peru finds out that a German ambassador has written home to the effect that he is feeling quite well again and hopes this letter finds you the same, y'understand, the Foreign Minister hustles over to the War Department and wants to know if they are going to allow him to be insulted in that way by a dirty crook like that. On the other hand, if the chief of the United States Secret Service gets ahold of a letter from any one of them honorary German diplomats who is practically holding down the job of Imperial German Consul to the Bronx while drawing the salary of—we would say, for example—a New York Supreme Court justice, Mawruss, and if the letter says, 'Accept my best wishes for a prosperous and happy new year in which my wife joins and remain,' y'understand, that means the copper was shipped in pasteboard containers marked:
PRUNES
USE NO HOOKS."
"The German Secret Service certainly fixes up some wonderful cipher codes, Abe," Morris said. "Sometimes as much as two hours and a quarter passes before a United States Secret Service man gets the right dope on one of them code letters."
"Sure, I know," Abe said. "But most times he don't have no more trouble over it than the average business man would with a baseball column, which the way every government secret service knows every other government's secret service's secrets, Mawruss, it's a wonder to me that they don't call the whole thing off by mutual consent, because the only difference between government secret services is that some secret services is louder than others. Take, for instance, the German Secret Service, and there was months and months when this here Dr. Heinrich Albert, Captain von Papen and his boy Ed got as much newspaper publicity as one of them rotten shows which received such a good notice from the cricket of the Cloak and Suit Gazette that the manager thinks it may have a chance, y'understand. Why, there wasn't a district messenger-boy which couldn't direct you to number Eleven Broadway, where that secret service had its head offices, and I would be very much surprised if they didn't ship their bombs from number Eleven Broadway, to the steamboat docks in covered automobile delivery-wagons with signs painted on 'em:
Telephone Battery 2222
GERMAN SECRET SERVICE
'WE LEAD—OTHERS FOLLOW'
11 Broadway
Ask about our Special Service plan
for furnishing explosives by the month
AT LOW RATES."
"At the same time, Abe," Morris remarked, "the Germans make things pretty secret when they want to, otherwise how could the Kaiser have kept that mutiny under his chest for over a couple of months?"
"And you could take it from me, Mawruss," Abe said, "before Michaelis let it out in the Reichstag, he might just so well have stopped in at the Lokal Anzeiger office on his way down-town and inserted a couple of lines or so under the head of 'Situations Wanted Males.'"