while I admit that nine times out of ten when the French President has
had a Prime Minister resign on him, it's probably been a case of the
stenographer tipping the Prime Minister off that before the boss went to
lunch he said, 'If that grafter's still here when I come back there'll
be another Prime Minister going around on crutches,' y'understand, yet
at the same time this here last Prime Minister has been right on the
job, and the French President has been quite worried for fear he's going
to quit."

"Well, let him get along _without_ a Prime Minister for a while," Morris
said. "With the money the French people is spending for war supplies it
won't do him no harm to cut down his pay-roll, and, besides, what does
he want a Prime Minister for, _anyway_? Has President Wilson got a Prime
Minister? Them people come over here a couple of months ago and cashed
in a hard-luck story for a matter of a few hundred million dollars,
y'understand, and like a lot of come-ons that we are, understand me, it
never even occurred to us but what them boys was living right up close
to the cushion."

"How much do you think a Prime Minister draws, Mawruss--a million a
week?" Abe asked.

"It ain't how much he draws," Morris said. "It's the idea of the thing
which I don't care if he only gets five dollars a day and commissions,
Abe, if President Wilson would got a Prime Minister working for him
instead of attending to the business himself, which is what President
Wilson gets paid for, y'understand, there's many a time when the
President has been out late at the theayter or when he is feeling under
the weather, understand me, where he would say: 'Why should I kill
myself slaving day in, day out, like a slave, y'understand. What have I
got a Prime Minister for, anyway?' And that's how I bet yer the French
President has passed over to the Prime Minister a whole lot of important
stuff which the poor _nebich_ was bound to slip up on, because, after
all, a Prime Minister is only a Prime Minister."

"Maybe you're right," Abe admitted, "but at the same time there's some
pretty smart Prime Ministers, too, which you take this here Prime
Minister Lord George, over in England, and that feller practically runs
the country. In fact, as I understand it, King George leaves the entire
management to him, so much confidence he's got in the feller."

"Perhaps it's because this here Lord George and King George is related
maybe," Morris suggested.

"I don't