The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: needed conversion badly I beg to remain...."
How many American soldiers in Europe, I wonder, have looked about them,
have used their sensible independent American brains (our very best
characteristic), have left school histories and hearsay behind them and
judged the English for themselves? A good many, it is to be hoped. What
that judgment finally becomes must depend not alone upon the personal
experience of each man. It must also come from that liberality of outlook
which is attained only by getting outside your own place and seeing a lot
of customs and people that differ from your own. A mind thus seasoned and
balanced no longer leaps to an opinion about a whole nation from the
sporadic conduct of individual members of it. It is to be feared that
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