matter how they disagree as to the way it
should ought to be played."

"For that matter, there's a lot of things produced in Germany which a
Soviet government couldn't spoil, neither, Mawruss," Abe said, "like
music by this here Nathan Strauss, the composer, or _Koenigsburger
Klops_, now called Liberty Roast, which I see by last Sunday's paper
that the Kaiser has been talking again."

"And what's that got to do with Germany going Bolshevik?" Morris asked.

"Nothing, except that it partially accounts for it," Abe replied, "which
a newspaper feller by the name of Begbie called on the Kaiser in
Holland, and he says the Kaiser couldn't see it at all."

"See what?" Morris asked.

"Why, he couldn't see what people is making such a fuss about," Abe
said. "He says that, so far as starting this here war is concerned, he
didn't _say_ nothing, he didn't _do_ nothing, and all he knows about it
is that he lays the whole thing to the Freemasons."

"You mean the F. A. M.?" Morris asked.

"What other Freemasons is there?" Abe said.

"You're sure he didn't say the Knights of Pythias or the I. O. O. F.,
because, while I don't belong to the Masons myself, Abe, Rosie's
sister's husband's brother by the name Harris November has been a
thirty-sixth degree Mason for years already," Morris declared, "and I'll
swear that if a gabby feller like him would have known that the Masons
had anything to do with bringing on the war, Abe, he would of spilled it
already long since ago."

"Well, of course, I don't know nothing about what Harris November said
or what he didn't say, Mawruss, but that's what the Kaiser said," Abe
continued, "and he also had a good deal to say about Queen Victorine of
England what a wonderful woman she was, _olav hasholom_, and how she
told him many times he should look out for that low-life of a son of
hers by the name Edwin."

"But I always thought this here Edwin was such a decent, respectable
feller," Morris interrupted.

"That's what everybody else thought," Abe went on, "but the Kaiser says
that many times the old lady says to him he shouldn't have nothing to do
with Edwin. 'Believe me,' she said, according to the Kaiser, 'he
wouldn't do you no good intellectually, morally, or socially,' and so
for that reason the Kaiser wouldn't join the Entente with England,
France, and Russia."

"Because this here Edwin was at the bottom of it?" Morris inquired.

"That's what the Kaiser _said_," Abe replied.

"Maybe