hey would consider themselves lucky if
they could get two teaspoonfuls to a gallon of coffee if they had a
gallon of coffee in the entire country, understand me. So that's the way
it goes in Germany, Abe; the people ask for bread and they give 'em a
report on Norwegian steamers sunk by U-boats during the current week,
and if one of the steamers was loaded with sugar, y'understand, that
ain't going to be much satisfaction to a German which has got a sweet
tooth and has been trying to make out with one two-grain saccharin
tablet every forty-eight hours, neither."

"But the Germans seems to be making a lot of progress everywheres," Abe
said.

"Except at home," Morris declared. "Maybe the German people still feels
encouraged when the German army gets ahold of more territory, Abe, but
it's a question of a short time now when the German people is going to
realize that they don't need no more room to starve in than they've got
at present, and that a nation can go broke just as comfortably in nine
hundred thousand square miles as it can in nine million square miles."

"Sure, I know," Abe agreed, "but one thing Germany has fixed already,
Mawruss, and that is that she is going to get a whole lot of customers
in Russia."

"Well, if she does," Morris commented, "she'll have to provide the
capital to set them customers up in business, and after she has done
that, Abe, she will have to hustle around to drum up trade for them
Russian customers, because when the Bolsheviki get through with their
fine work in Russia, Abe, the Russian people won't have enough
purchasing power to make it a fair territory for a salesman with a line
of five-and-ten-cent store supplies. So if Germany started this here war
to get more trade, she's already licked."

"Then what does she go on fighting for?" Abe asked. "It seems to me that
if we saw we couldn't accomplish nothing by going on fighting, Mawruss,
we'd stop, ain't it?"

"Sure we would," Morris agreed. "But then, Abe, we 'ain't got nothing to
stop us from stopping, because we ain't fighting for the sake of
fighting, the way Von Tirpitz, Mackensen, and Ludendorff are doing.
Take, for instance, Von Tirpitz, and that _Rosher_ insists that the
U-boats is going to win the war, so it don't make no difference to him
how many German sailors goes down in U-boats, he's going to keep on
sending out U-boats right up to the time the German people shoots him,
and his last words will be that the reason why t