XIX
Potash and Perlmutter discuss the Chamberlain suggestion.
"You know how it is yourself, Mawruss," Abe Potash said, one morning in January. "If you would see somebody nailing up something your first idee is to say: 'Here, give me that hammer. Is that a way to nail up a packing-case?' And then, if you went to work and showed him how, the chances is that before you get through the packing-case would look like it had been nailed up with a charge of shrapnel, and for six months people would be asking you what's the matter with your sore thumb. Painting is the same way. There's mighty few people which could see anybody else doing a home job of enameling without they would want to grab ahold of the brush and get themselves covered with enamel from head to foot, y'understand. So can you imagine the way Mr. Roosevelt is feeling about this war, Mawruss?"
"Well, you've got to hand it to Mr. Roosevelt," Morris Perlmutter said. "He has had some small experience in that line, although, at that, you've got to take his statements of what ain't being done to run the war right with a grain of salt, Abe, whereas with Senator Chamberlain, y'understand, when he says that the President ain't running the war right according to the idees of a man which used to was a practising lawyer and politician out in the state of Oregon, y'understand, and, therefore, Abe, his speeches should ought to be barred by the Food Conservation Commission as being contrary to the Save the Salt movement."
"But even Mr. Roosevelt, which he may or may not know anything about running a modern army, as the case may be and probably ain't, Mawruss, because lots of changes has come about in the running of armies since Mr. Roosevelt went out of the business, Mawruss," Abe said, "but as I was saying, Mawruss, even Mr. Roosevelt, as big a patriot as he is, y'understand, ain't above spoiling a perfectly good job half done by Mr. Wilson, because he just couldn't resist saying: 'Here, give me hold of them soldiers. Is that a way to run an army?"
"And besides, Abe," Morris said, "there's a great many people in this country, including Mr. Roosevelt, which believes that the only man which has got any license to say how the army should ought to be run is Mr. Roosevelt, y'understand, and ever since we got into this war, Abe, them fellers has been hanging around looking at Mr. Wilson like a crowd watching a feller gilding the ball on the top of the Metropolitan Tower, not wishing the feller any harm, y'understand, and hoping that he will either get away with it unhurt or make the drop while they are still standing there."
"They ain't so patient like all that, Mawruss," Abe said. "Them fellers has got so tired waiting for Mr. Wilson to fall down on his job that they now want to drag him down or, anyhow, trip him up."
"Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say that," Morris declared, "but it looks to me that when Mr. Roosevelt read the results of the Senate investigations, y'understand, he wasn't as much shocked and surprised as he would have liked to have been, although to hear Senator Chamberlain talk you might think that what them investigations showed was bad enough to satisfy not only Mr. Roosevelt, but the Kaiser and his friends, also, when, as a matter of fact, the worst that any good American can say about Mr. Wilson as a result of them investigations is that instead of hiring angels who performed miracles, y'understand, he hired human beings who made mistakes."