't get you to
Pallum Beach in the winter or Maine in the summer unless the government
official in charge of the railroads thinks it is necessary, and also if
this war only goes on long enough and wool gets any scarcer, Abe, money
won't buy you a new pair of pants even until you can put up a good
enough argument with it to convince a government pants inspector that
it's a case of either buying a new pair of pants or a frock-coat to make
the old ones decent, understand me."

"But the papers has said right straight along that money would win this
war, Mawruss," Abe said.

"Yes, and it could lose it, too, according to the way it is spent,"
Morris continued, "and particularly right now when money can still buy
things which the government needs for the soldiers, y'understand, money
is a dangerous article in the hands of some people who think that the
feller which don't feel the high price of sugar is more privileged to
eat it than the feller which could barely afford it."

"Even so," Abe remarked, "it seems to me that not spending money must be
an easy way to be patriotic."

"And some fellers is just natural-born patriots that way," Morris added,
"and if they ain't, y'understand, the war is going to make them. It's
going to give the rich man the same chance to be a good sitson as the
poor man, and it's made a fine start by taking the lights off of
Broadway so that you couldn't tell it from a respectable street, like
Lexington Avenue."

"Couldn't a street be lighted up and still be respectable?" Abe asked.

"Yes, and a rich man could spend his money foolishly and also be
respectable," Morris agreed, "but not in war-times."

XVII

POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON THE PEACE PROGRAM, INCLUDING THE ADDED EXTRA
FEATURE AND THE SUPPER TURN

"It seems that this here Luxberg, the German representative in Argentine
which sent them _spurlos versenkt_ letters, has been crazy for years,
Mawruss," Abe Potash said, one morning in January.

"Yes?" Morris Perlmutter said. "And when did they find _that_ out, Abe?"

"It's an old story, Mawruss," Abe replied. "Everybody knew it in Berlin,
only they never happened to think of it until we discovered those
letters in the private mail of the Swedish minister."

"And what do they lay the Swedish minister's behavior to, Abe?" Morris
inquired. "Stomach trouble?"

"_That_ they didn't say," Abe continued. "But I guess they figure that
Sweden should think up her own alibis."

"Well, it's