munitions,
and food, y'understand, and after giving bonds in payment, Abe, she
turns right round and refuses to make good on 'em and at the same time
practically says, 'What are you going to do about it?' and all this is
right on top of Mr. Wilson saying, 'The treatment accorded to Russia by
her sister nations,' y'understand, 'in the months to come,' _verstehst
du mich_, 'will be the acid test of their good-will,' understand me,
'and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy.'"

"Well, I'll tell you," Abe remarked, "the English which I learned it at
night school, Mawruss, was more or less a popular-price line of
language, and when Mr. Wilson comes across every once in a while with
one of them exclusive models in the way of speeches, using principally
high-grade words in imported designs, understand me, I ain't no more
equipped to handle his stuff than a manufacturer of fly-papers is to
make flying-machines, _but_ as an ignorant business man, Mawruss, which
you would be the last person to admit that I ain't, Mawruss, it seems to
me that the acid test of our good-will is not going to be the way we
treat Russland, but the way Russia treats us; and, in fact, Mawruss,
Russia already poured a little acid on us long before this. But now when
she renigs on her bonds and practically gives us a whole bathful of
acid, Mawruss, for my part the treatment needn't go on for months to
come. I am satisfied with the acid test so far as it's gone _this_
month, Mawruss, because it don't make no difference what kind of acid
you use, Mawruss, a dead beat is a dead beat, understand me, and for a
dead beat nobody has got any sympathy--either intelligent or unselfish,
or unintelligent and selfish. Am I right or wrong, Mawruss?"

"I wouldn't worry my head over that if I was you, Abe," Morris said,
"because, as you said just now, Russland will attend to that number on
the program for herself. But what is troubling me is number one, which
provides that peace shall be made openly, and at the same time does away
with the possibility that some afternoon when you and me gets out of
here, after making up our minds that the war would last for ten years
yet, we would buy a Sporting Extra with Final Wall Street Complete, and
see the whole front page filled up mit the word PEACE in letters a foot
high, understand me, which it has always been in the back of my head
that the next time Colonel House would slip off to Europe no one would
know anything about