rican Peace Commissioners is openly and
notoriously carrying on open and notorious peace conversations with the
other allied Peace Commissioners, and for all the newspaper
correspondents know to the contrary, Abe, the only point on which them
Peace Commission fellers ain't breaking up the furniture over is that
when they come out, y'understand, it is agreed that the newspaper
correspondents will be told that everything is proceeding
satisfactorily."

"But I thought Mr. Wilson promised before he left America that the old
secret diplomacy would be a thing of the past," Abe said.

"So he did," Morris agreed, "and by what I gather from this here
newspaper man he kept his promise, too, and we now have got a new
diplomacy, compared to which the fellers who were working under the
rules of the old secret diplomacy bladded everything they knew."

"But I distinctly read it in the papers the other day that every morning
at half past ten, Mawruss, Mr. Lansing meets the newspaper
correspondents and lets them know what's been going on," Abe said.

"He meets them," Morris replied, "but so far as letting them know what
has been going on is concerned, all he says that everything is
proceeding satisfactorily and is there any gentleman there which would
like to ask him any questions, which naturally any newspaper
correspondent who could ask Mr. Lansing such questions as would make Mr.
Lansing give out any information he didn't want to give out, wouldn't be
wasting his time working as a newspaper correspondent, Abe, but would be
considering offers from the law firm of Hughes, Brandeis, Stanchfield,
Hughes & Stanchfield to come in as a full partner and take exclusive
charge of the cross-examination of busted railroad presidents."

"Maybe the reason why Mr. Lansing don't tell them newspaper
correspondents nothing is that he ain't got nothing to tell them," Abe
suggested.

"Well, then, if I would be him, Abe, I would make up something," Morris
said, "because if he don't they will, or anyhow some of them will, and
there is going to be a lot of stuff printed in American papers where the
correspondent says he learns from high authority that things ain't going
so good in the Peace Conference as Mr. Wilson would like, because Mr.
Wilson is the doctor in the case, and you know how it is when somebody
is too sick to be seen and the doctor is worried, Abe, he sends down
word by the nurse that everything is proceeding satisfactorily, and the
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