The Spanish-American War brought the people suddenly into contact with the things of Europe and widened their 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.