ir horizon. The war itself was only
an accident; for the growth of American commerce, the increase of
wealth, the uncontainable expansive force of their industrial energy,
must have compelled a departure from the old isolation under any
circumstances. The quarrel with Spain did but furnish, as it were, a
definite taking-off place for the leap which had to be made.[113:1]
Since then, foreign politics and foreign affairs have acquired a new
interest for Americans. They are no longer topics entirely alien from
their every-day life and thoughts. It would still be absurd to pretend
that the affairs of Europe (or for that matter of Asia) have anything
like the interest for Americans that they have for Europeans, or that
the educated American is not as a rule still seriously uninformed on
many matters (all except the bare bones of facts and dates) of
geography, of ethnology, of world-politics which are elementary matters
to the Englishman of corresponding education;[113:2] but with their
_debut_ as a World-Power--above all with the acquisition of their
colonial dependencies--Americans have become (I use the phrase in all
courtesy) immensely more intelligent in their outlook on the affairs of
the world. With a longer experience of the difficulties of colonial
government, they will also come to appreciate more nearly at its true
value the work which Great Britain has done for humanity.

Americans may retort that their knowledge of Europe was at least no
scantier than the Englishman's knowledge of America, and the mistakes of
travelling Englishmen in regard to the size, the character, and the
constitution of the country have been a fruitful source of American
witticism. But why should Englishmen know anything of the United
States? The affairs of the United States were, after all, however big,
the affairs of the United States and not of any other part of the rest
of the world; while the affairs of Europe were the affairs of all the
world outside of the United States. Undoubtedly the American could
fairly offset the Englishman's ignorance of America against the
American's ignorance of England; but what has never failed to strike an
Englishman is the American's ignorance of other parts of the world,
which might be regarded as common to both. They were not common to both;
for, as has been said, since the beginning of her history, which has
stretched over some centuries, England has been constantly mixed up with
the affairs, not only