to experience what it is like when you sit in a poker game all evening
and don't find out till the last round is on that everybody else around
the table is playing for the house."

"They could all be playing honest at that, Mawruss," Abe suggested.

"Sure they could, with the exception of having a couple of secret
treaties or so," Morris agreed, "but at the same time, Abe, I wouldn't
be a bit surprised if since the discovery of these here secret treaties,
Mr. Wilson has waked up more than once somewheres around three A.M. and
asked himself did he or did he not need a mandatory, y'understand, and
also wondered what the folks back home is thinking--particularly a few
Senators like Lodge and Johnson."

"I don't agree with you, Mawruss," Abe declared. "I think that Mr.
Wilson will get the better end of the deal, because from what has
happened in this war, Mawruss, diplomacy is one of them games where the
feller which don't know how to play it has got a big advantage over the
feller that does. So, therefore, while the old-time experienced
diplomatist is saying it never has been done that way and therefore
couldn't be done, Mawruss, a new beginner like Mr. Wilson has already
gone to work and done it, which I bet yer right now, Mawruss, that if
Mr. Wilson don't want Italy to have Fiume she won't get it, and the same
thing goes for Japan also, Mawruss--secret treaty or no secret treaty."

"Still, there's a whole lot of people in America which would like to see
Italy get Fiume, Abe," Morris said.

"There was a whole lot of people, Mawruss," Abe said, "but this
secret-treaty business has killed it, which if Italy wanted to be fair
about it, why didn't she come right out before the armistice even and
say, 'Look-a-here, we got a secret treaty and we may as well tell you so
right from the start'?"

"Then the secret treaty wouldn't been no more secret, Abe," Morris said.

"She would have been doing the manly thing, anyway," Abe said.

"I know she would," Morris admitted, "but that's the difference between
the old-fashioned Italian diplomacy and the new-fashioned American
diplomacy. The Italians believe that there should be secret covenants of
peace secretly arrived at, and we believe that there should be open
covenants of peace openly arrived at."

"There is also the difference, Mawruss, that the Italians stick to their
beliefs," Abe concluded, "and we don't."

XIV

THE FIRST DAY OF MAY

"I see where in Genoa t