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Spanish-American War.

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Hey everyone… make love, not war…

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Being the Treaty of Paris, I know a little something about keeping the peace.

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Things were a mess before I came along to make everybody play nice.

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So here’s what happened… Cuba and Spain were having a bit of a tiff.

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Cuba wanted their independence… Spain not so much.

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And just like an adult separating two kids who are fighting,

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America decided to step in and intervene.

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Although… America might have actually been a third child in this scenario.

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They were certainly acting immaturely. They didn’t stick their noses in because they

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were being dramatically affected by the war themselves…

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...instead, it was really just an itch they felt they had to scratch.

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Believe it or not, people… ahem, Roosevelt… were actually delivering public addresses

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about how soft American men had become.

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And it wasn’t just because of the invention of the Tootsie Roll.

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Okay, so there were a couple of reasons the U.S. got involved, other than their irrepressible

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need to get all up in everybody’s business.

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First, it would benefit Americans for trade purposes. If Cuba could win the war and get

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Spain out of its hair…

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…shipping products back and forth between the two nations would become

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much safer and easier and more profitable.

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And second… a U.S. ship exploded off the coast of Cuba, and it was blamed on a supposedly

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Spanish naval mine. They didn’t have absolute proof that it

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was indeed a Spanish mine…

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…but when a country is looking to put a little hair on its chest, it can’t always

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be bothered to acquire proof.

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Once the American public got wind of this tragedy…

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…they were totally behind a U.S. declaration of war.

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It was time to head over to Cuba to stave off the Spanish, guns a-blazin’.

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With America’s mighty military in the picture, the war didn’t last long.

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The Spanish fleet was crippled before the year was over…

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…and there were thousands of others who had died on the mainland.

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Most of them had been killed because of the campaign run by the likes of Teddy Roosevelt

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and his “Rough Riders.”

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I am not making that name up.

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Guess they must have had a bad case of saddle sores.

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And that’s where I came into play.

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I was drawn up in the city of Paris…

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hence my name…

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in late 1898 after the full surrender of the Spanish…

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…which declared Cuba independent...

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as well as a handful of other countries.

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It was a fantastic development, first of all because freedom is groovy…

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…but also because it meant that all that shooting and killing could end.

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Whatever happened to the “Brotherhood of man,” people?

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Anyway, the U.S. is no longer at war,

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so they’ll have to bide their time until the next one knocks at their door.

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I’m sure they won’t have to wait long. In the meantime…

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Peace out.

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