Not only did all the Allies take their stand, but, in addition, they were reinforced by our former allies, Italy and Roumania, while America showed herself more and more clearly a secret ally of the Entente Powers, rendering the most valuable services by furnishing them with all manner of requisites of war and pecuniary loans, long before she openly took up her stand against us in February, 1917, by severing diplomatic relations and in April by declaring a state of war. However valuable to Germany and Austria-Hungary has been the alliance of Turkey and later of Bulgaria, an equilibrium of forces could not, of course, be effected by means of these States. England has been successful in keeping the Entente together, and has utilised the fact that the destruction of the Central Powers proved to be far more difficult than had been anticipated in order to strengthen the bond between herself and her Allies. They had involved themselves in a common undertaking, which had not prospered according to expectations. Now there was no alternative but to carry it through, for to give it up would be equivalent to a confession of utter failure and defeat. The ties which bound the Continental Allies to England were constantly reinforced by the promise held out of territorial acquisitions, as well as by monetary aids. In this connection England's favourable position in world-politics and world-economics stood her in noticeably good stead. The more the prospect vanished of inflicting on us a military defeat with the aid of the blockade, the more England strengthened her endeavour to secure that we should at any rate find ourselves after the War in an unfavourable economic position, both geographically and in respect of commercial treaties. England gave expression to her desire for war and victory by creating a strong land-army, finally adopting the system of universal service. In so doing she broke with her traditional custom of waging Continental wars to all intents and purposes by means of the armies of her Allies. In the wars against Louis XIV England had already raised herself to the position of a great Colonial Power and had won for herself supremacy on the sea. As a result of the Seven Years' War, she became a World-Power. It was not, however, until the American War of Independence that she entered upon a period of world-policy and world-economics. It has justly been said:[2] "World-trade there had long been, but not world-policy. Not even England possessed the latter, in spite of her world-embracing settlements and dominions. In fact there existed only European policy. World-policy could only come into being when in the other continents, as well as in our own, independent and permanent centres, capable of asserting themselves against the European Great Powers, had shaped for themselves a State existence. This happened in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the case of America, and in the twentieth century in the case of Japan."