etting in the
newspaper correspondents, which I don't care if in addition to Mr. Lord
George and Colonel House they would got performing at this here Peace
Conference Douglas Fairbanks and Caruso, it wouldn't be a success as a
show, _anyhow_, because no theayter could get any audiences if they
would make it a policy to bar out the newspaper crickets."

"Well, I'll tell you," Morris began. "Nobody likes to read in newspapers
more than I do, Abe. They help to pass away many unpleasant minutes in
the Subway when a feller would otherwise be figuring on if God forbid
the brakes shouldn't hold what is going to become of his wife and
children, y'understand; but, at the same time, from the way this here
newspaper feller which hogs our cigars is talking, Abe, I gather that
the big majority of newspaper reporters now in Paris has got the idea
that this here Peace Conference is being held mainly to give newspaper
reporters a chance to write home a lot of snappy articles about peace
conferences, past and present. Although, of course, there is certain
more or less liberal-minded newspaper men which think that if,
incidentally, Mr. Wilson puts over the League of Nations and the Freedom
of the Seas, why, they 'ain't got no serious objections, just so long as
it don't involve talking the matter over privately without a couple of
hundred newspaper reporters present."

"Sure, I know," Abe said; "but if them newspaper fellers has got such an
idee, Mawruss, it is Mr. Wilson's own fault, because ever since we got
into the war, y'understand, Mr. Wilson has been talking about open
covenants of peace openly arrived at, and even before we went into the
war he got off the words 'pitiful publicity,' and also it was him and
not the newspaper men which first give the readers of newspapers to
understand that the old secret diplomacy was a thing of the past,
Mawruss, so the consequences was that, when Mr. Wilson come over here,
the owners of newspapers sent to Paris everybody that was working for
them--from dramatic crickets to baseball experts--just so long as they
could write the English language, y'understand, because them
newspaper-owners figured that, according to Mr. Wilson's own
suggestions, this here Peace Conference was not only going to be a
wide-open affair, openly arrived at, y'understand, but also pitifully
public, whereas not only it ain't wide open, Mawruss, but it is about as
pitifully public as a conference between the members of th