"But the point which them coda and obbligato fans make is that if a feller like this here Captain Kreisler of the Austrian army is the best fiddler in existence, y'understand, it's up to us Americans to pay two dollars and fifty cents a throw, not including war tax, to hear him fiddle, and that we shouldn't ought to got no _Rishus_ against him even if he would be only over here on a leave of absence dating from January first, nineteen fifteen, up to and including seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars," Abe said, "because it is claimed that the best fiddlers in the world and the best conductors in the world don't belong to any country. They are international."
"Maybe they are, Abe," Morris agreed, "but the money which they earn belongs to the country in which they spend it, understand me, which my idea is that these are war-times, and if the ordinary people is willing to take their wheat bread with a little potato flour in it, them big-league music fans should ought to be willing to take their fiddle-playing with a few sour notes in it, so if the best fiddler in the world is an Austrian who spends his money at home, y'understand, they should ought to be contented with the next best one, and if he is also an Austrian or a German let them work on right straight down the line till they find one who ain't, because trading with the enemy is trading with the enemy, whether you are trading with a German fiddler or a German fish-dealer, and if you are going to hand over money to Germany it don't make much difference if you do it in the name of art or in the name of fish."
"Well, you couldn't exactly feel the same way about an artist with his art as you could about a fish-dealer with his fish," Abe protested.
"I didn't say you could," Morris said. "I've got every respect for this here Kreisler as a feller which plays something elegant on the fiddle, but at the same time he has had himself extensively advertised with pictures the same like King C. Gillette and William L. Douglas, and that's probably what made him, Abe, because it's pretty safe to say that if you could by any possibility induce and persuade them people which is hollering about art being international and Kreisler being the best fiddler in existence, y'understand, to go and hear Kreisler at a concert where under the name of Harris Fine and wearing false whiskers he was playing a program consisting principally of Rabinowitz's Concerto in G, Opus number Two fifty-six B, y'understand, they would come away saying it was awful rotten even for an amateur and that you should ought to hear Kreisler play Rabinowitz's Concerto in G, Opus number Two fifty-six B, and then you would know how that feller Harris Fine murdered it. So that's why I say, Abe, that advertised art comes under the head of merchandise, and I ain't so sure that the artist who advertises ain't just as much of a business man as we would say, for example, a fish-dealer."