The empire that had once dominated the Americas had been defeated entirely in less than four months—a “splendid little war,” the ambassador to Britain remarked to Roosevelt. Back home, writers crowed about the vigor of the United States and the decrepitude of Spain. The Spanish empire was a “house of cards,” wrote Woodrow Wilson. “When the American power touched it it fell to pieces.” The president of Stanford offered a similar explanation: “We succeeded because we were bigger, richer, and far more capable than our enemy.”
