Well we go to a restaurant a swell one because I have got my swell new clothes now and I have got my bright hair all cut off and my head fixed with a veil and I am a respectable Emergency Field Grammarian so that a member of the Administration can buy me a dinner without its being a scandal. And Mom in this place they are so respectable that they bring the cocktails to you in a soup-tureen and you eat them out of a dish with a spoon and gee Mom it is so funny!
And we are talking all about international affairs and Mr. Edgerton tells me the most interesting things it seems that the police has just arrested a way high-up bootlegger and how they come to do such a thing he cannot say but the police is getting more and more higher handed all the time. I shall never forget my indignation while that one was shooing me away from the Elite Beauty Parlors while I was leading the strike.
Well anyhow they have got this bootlegger and he is got a notebook on him with all the addresses of his customers and how much they have bought and all and gee Mom it is the most awful thing because there is senators and judges and some Persons the most sacred so that I would not dare to put it into a letter except to say that a very very special friend of mine is one of them and had just got a case of genuine Scotch that very week and now it seems that some of them dry fellers in Congress is got a hold of the story and is threatening to make speeches about it and of course none of the papers is saying a word but still everybody is scared because something might bust open. He says that is always the way in political life you can never be really safe because there is always some Bolshiviki senators that makes speeches and there is Bolshiviki papers that will print what they say.
And he told me all about how it was when this new Spokesman first come into office there was the most dreadful lot of scandals because it was found that some of the brass kings had been buying up the government. He explained to me how it is these brass fellers is very rich and great sports and is used to getting what they want and paying what it costs even if it is a member of the cabinet. And it seems that the government owned a huge brass teapot somewhere in the West and it was the brass reserve for the navy so that if ever there was to be a war we would be able to make all the brass buttons that would be needed for the sailors’ uniforms. But it seems that one of the brass kings paid a hundred thousand dollars in a black bag to a member of the cabinet and got away with this brass teapot.
I says, “Look ahere Mr. Edgerton what is this that you are telling me the plot of a movie that you seen last night?” And he says, “Upon my word no it is exactly what happened and I would rather of had to enlist and sit for four years with German big Berthas dropping bomb-shells onto me than go through with all that trouble again.”
I says, “What did you have to do with it?” and he says, “I was the Spokesman’s Secretary all through it the same as I am now and my God you could not think of anything so awful in a nightmare. You would spend hours thinking up a story and then hold a session of the cabinet and get everybody to agree and learn it by heart and then early next morning you would get a call from the chief of the secret service that in the night they had raided the rooms of one of them Bolshiviki senators that was doing the exposures and they had found out that these senators had got evidence that would knock your story into a cocked hat. And then you would have to begin telephoning to all the members of the cabinet to get them to change the story and a few hours later the secret service would bring you word that the Bolshiviki senators had tapped your telephone lines and heard what your new story was to be. It went on like that for weeks,” he says, “and the Spokesman was just about paralyzed with fright.”
“Well,” I says, “Mr. Edgerton does it not suggest that maybe there is something in my idea of just telling the plane truth all the time?” But he will not hear to no such Sunday school talk as he calls it because he says, “How can you tell the truth when the truth is that everybody you know has been helping himself to everything he could get his hands on?”
I says, “Mr. Edgerton there is a lot about this political game that is hard for an outsider to understand and one of the things is how it can be called patriotism and economy and all that when people that holds high office is busy robbing the government?” I says. “It seems to me we are giving the Bolshivikis too easy an argument if that is the ways things is.”
“Yes,” he says, “I know it seems like that and it is complicated and hard for the plain people to understand but I have heard the Spokesman Himself explain it and it is quite all right when you get His ideas. You see there is all kinds of wealth that the government is got but is not able to make use of it because the government is got no business being in business which it cannot run economical or efficient. The right people to own all these resources is the big business men that is got the money and brains and everything and so it is a real advantage to the people when the business men get these things away from the government.”
“You mean even when they have got to steal them?” I says.