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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: had answers, and to these the Tommies had further answers, and this
encounter of wits very naturally led to a result which could not possibly
have been happier. I don't know what the Tommies expected the Yankees to
do. I suppose they were as ignorant of our nature as we of theirs, and
that they entertained preconceived notions. They suddenly found that we
were, once again to quote Mr. Kipling, "bachelors in barricks most
remarkable like" themselves. An American first sergeant hit a British
first sergeant. Instantly a thousand men were milling. For thirty minutes
they kept at it. Warriors reeled together and fell and rose and got it in
the neck and the jaw and the eye and the nose--and all the while the
British and American officers, splendidly discreet, saw none of it.
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