kind of people for a German Cabinet, because the ordinary
tests which they use in England, France, or America, Mawruss, don't
apply to Germany. You've got to be awful careful in forming a German
Cabinet, Mawruss, otherwise you are liable to have slipped in on you
just one decent, respectable man with an idea of keeping his word and
doing the right thing, Mawruss, and by a little carelessness like that,
understand me, the whole Cabinet is ruined. However, Mawruss, you could
take it from me that a couple of experienced Cabinet-formers like this
here Erzberger and von Brockdorff-Rantzau didn't fall down on their
job, and I bet yer that every member of the new Cabinet is keeping up
the best traditions of the good old German spirit, which is to be able
to look the whole world straight in the eye and lie like the devil,
y'understand."

"Then you think this Cabinet wouldn't act no different to the other
Cabinets?" Morris said.

"Not if the Allies don't act different," Abe said, "and where the Allies
made their first big mistake was the opening session at Versailles, when
the usher or the janitor or whoever had charge of such things didn't
take von Brockdorff-Rantzau by the back of his neck and yank him to his
feet after he started to talk without rising from his chair, because the
Germans is very quick to take a tip that way, Mawruss. Whatever they put
over once, they think they could put over again, and since that time all
arguments the Germans has made about the Peace Treaty have been, so to
speak, delivered by the German people and the German Cabinet, not only
seated, y'understand, but also with the feet cocked up on the desk, the
hat on, and in the corner of the mouth a typical German cigar which is
made up of equal parts hay and scrap rubber blended with the _Vossicher
Zeitung_ and beet-tops and smells accordingly."

"Well, it is one of the good qualities of the American people that
before they get good and sore, as they have a right to do, Abe, they
will put up with a whole lot of bad manners from people that they deal
with," Morris said. "Take, for instance, these here foreign-born Reds
which they held a meeting in Madison Square Garden the other evening,
and if they said in any other country about the government what they
said in Madison Square Garden, y'understand, the owner of Madison Square
Garden would of pocketed thousands of dollars for the moving-picture
rights of the bayoneting alone. But we don't do busines