n't be possible, Abe. Here we have
had two Liberty Loan campaigns, a military draft which took in every
little cross-road village in the country, a war-tax bill that hits
everybody and everything, and people like Mr. Taft and Professor Jinks
saying day in and day out that the people 'ain't begun to realize we are
at war, y'understand, and yet you try to tell me that the people has
slipped right back into not beginning to realize we are at war, Abe."

"I don't try to tell you nothing," Abe said. "For my part I think it's
time that somebody put them wise, Mawruss."

"What do you mean--put them wise?" Morris demanded. "The people knows
that--"

"Who is saying anything about the people?" Abe interrupted. "I am
talking about Mr. Taft and this here Professor Jinks, Mawruss. Them
fellers has got ideas from spring and summer designs of nineteen
seventeen. What we are looking for from the big men of the country is
new ideas for the late summer of nineteen eighteen and fall and winter
seasons of nineteen eighteen, nineteen nineteen, and this here
people-'ain't-begun-to-realize talk was already a back-number line of
conversation in June, nineteen seventeen."

"But what them fellers is driving into, Abe," Morris observed, "is that
it's going to help the war along if the people of America should be made
to suffer along with the people of France and England. They figure that
it ain't going to do us Americans a bit of harm to know how them
Frenchers feel, _nebich_, with the Germans holding on to their
coal-supply, Abe."

"Well, we could get the same effect by going round in athaletic
underwear and no overcoats, Mawruss," Abe retorted, "so if that's what
Mr. Taft claims Mr. Garfield shut off the coal for, Mawruss, he is
beating around the wrong bushes."

"And he ain't the only one, neither, Abe," Morris said. "From the way
other people is talking, Abe, you would think that in order to get into
this war _right_, y'understand, we should ought to go to work and blow
up a few dozen American cathedrals, send up airyoplanes over New York,
and drop a couple gross bombs on the business section of the town,
poison the water-supply, cut off the milk for the babies, and do
everything else that them miserable Germans did to France and England,
not to say also Russia, y'understand. This will cause us to become so
sore, understand me, that everybody of fighting age will want to fight,
and the rest of us will be willing to work in the munition