CHAPTER VI

THE BAGDAD RAILWAY BECOMES AN IMPERIAL ENTERPRISE

POLITICAL INTERESTS COME TO THE FORE

It was asserted times without number that the Bagdad Railway was an independent financial enterprise, unconnected with the political aims of the German Government in Turkey and in no sense associated with an imperialist policy in the Near East. At the time the concession of 1903 was granted Dr. Rohrbach expressed the belief that political and diplomatic considerations were quite outside the plans and purposes of the promoters of the Railway.[1] Herr Bassermann, leader of the National Liberal Party, announced to the Reichstag that, although German capital was predominant in the Railway, there was no intent on the part of the owners or on the part of the Government to build with any political _arrière-pensée_. Baron von Schoen, Imperial Secretary for Foreign Affairs, reiterated this idea with emphasis. He pointed out that the Bagdad convention of 1903 was _not a treaty_ between Germany and Turkey, _but a contract_ between the Ottoman Government and the Anatolian Railway Company. He maintained that if the railway were considered, properly, as a purely economic enterprise, “all the fantastic schemes that are from time to time being attached to it would evaporate.”[2] A British journalist wrote in 1913: “Gwinner, it may be assumed, is not building the Bagdad Railway for the purposes of the German General Staff. What chiefly keeps him awake of nights is how to extract dividends from it for the _Deutsche Bank_ and how best to promote the golden opportunities which await the strategists of the German trading army in the Near East.”[3]

The German Government, nevertheless, had been interested in the Bagdad plan almost from its inception. The visits of the Emperor to Constantinople and Palestine; the appointment of German military and consular officers to the technical commission which surveyed the line in 1899; the enthusiastic support of the German ambassador all contributed to the success of the enterprise. In fact, the German Government was almost too solicitous of the welfare of the concessionaires; assistance, it was said, bordered upon interference. During the early stages of the negotiations of 1898–1899 Dr. von Siemens complained that the German embassy was jeopardizing the success of the project by insisting that the issuance of the concessions should be considered a diplomatic, as well as a business, triumph. Dr. von Gwinner, also, was discontented with the tendency of the German Government to urge strategic, rather than purely economic, considerations. There was a widespread belief in Germany, as well as elsewhere in Europe, that the Imperial Foreign Office nurtured the Bagdad Railway and its affiliated enterprises with a full realization that “the skirmishes of the political advance guard are fought on financial ground, although the selection of the time and the enemy, as well as the manner in which these skirmishes are to be fought, depends upon those responsible for our foreign policy. Much more than ever before Germans will have to bear in mind that industrial contracts, commercial enterprises, and capital investments are conveying from one country to another not only capital and labor, but also political influence.”[4]

Had the German Government been disposed to pursue a different policy in the Near East, had it refused to link its political power with the economic interests of its nationals, it would have been standing out against an accepted practice of the Great Powers. Lord Lansdowne, British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, informed the House of Lords, in May, 1903, that it was impossible for the Foreign Office to dissociate commercial and political interests. He doubted whether British success in the Middle and Far East could have been achieved without careful diplomatic promotion of British economic interests in those regions.[5] Through financial control Russia and Great Britain effectually throttled Persian reform and nationalist aspirations. The pioneer activities of French capital in Tunis and Morocco are outstanding instances of modern imperial procedure. Such also is the use by the Government of the French Republic of its power to deny listings on the Paris Bourse for the purpose of forcing political concessions—a procedure which a French banker described to the author as “a species of international blackmail.”[6] A prominent historian and economist has described the Franco-Russian alliance as a “bankers’ creation.”[7] What other powers had been doing it was to be expected that Germany would do. The ownership and operation of the Bagdad Railway by a predominantly German company was an important factor in a notable expansion of German commercial and financial activities in the Near East. In an age of keen competition for economic influence in the so-called backward areas of the world, this growth of German interests in Turkey was almost certain to influence the diplomatic policy of Germany toward the Ottoman Empire. The political aspirations of the diplomatists were reënforced by the economic interests of the bankers.

Had the German Government not voluntarily taken the Bagdad enterprise under its wing, it might have been compelled to do so. Popular dissatisfaction with a “weak” policy toward investments in backward countries may force the hand of an unwilling government. Whether this dissatisfaction be spontaneous or created by an interested press or both, it is certain to be powerful, for there are few governments which can resist for long the clamor for vigorous fostering of the nation’s interests and rights abroad. And there was no lack of popular enthusiasm in Germany for the Bagdad Railway. The fact that French capital had been invested in the undertaking was usually forgotten. The grand design came to be referred to, affectionately, as _unser Bagdad_ and, somewhat flamboyantly, as the “B. B. B.” (Berlin-Byzantium-Bagdad). German publicists of imperial inclinations contemplated the Railway with reverent amazement, as though hypnotized. The project speedily became an integral part of the national _Weltanschauung_—a means of enabling Germans to compete for the rich commerce of the Orient, to appropriate some of its enormous wealth, to develop some of its apparently boundless possibilities. As a branch of _Weltpolitik_ it held out alluring inducements for the exercise of political influence in the East—an influence which would serve at once to discomfit the Continental rivals of Germany and to promote the _Drang nach Osten_ of her Habsburg ally.

The political aims of the German Empire in Turkey, however, were not concerned with colonization or conquest. It was not proposed, for example, to encourage German colonization of the regions traversed by the Bagdad Railway. During the last two decades of the nineteenth century, it is true, attempts had been made to stimulate German settlements in Syria and Mesopotamia. But later, when the problem of German oversea migration had become less acute, all proposals for German colonization in the Near East were abandoned.[8]

The difficulties in the way of European settlement of Asiatic Turkey were almost insurmountable. Mesopotamia is unbearably hot during the summer and is totally unfit for colonization by Europeans. During July and August the thermometer registers between 100 and 120 almost every day, and the heat is particularly oppressive because of the relatively high humidity. The total number of Europeans resident in Mesopotamia before the War was not in excess of 200, who were almost all missionaries, engineers, consuls, or archæologists. Palestine is more suitable as a place of residence, but the country is not particularly alluring; a few German agricultural colonies, chiefly Jewish, were established there, but they were comparatively unimportant in size, wealth, and political influence. In Anatolia the climate is tolerable, but not healthful for western Europeans. The plateau is subject to sudden and extreme changes in temperature in both winter and summer, and, consequently, pneumonia and malaria are almost epidemic among foreigners. To the German who was considering leaving the Fatherland to seek his fortune abroad, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Anatolia were by no means as attractive as Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Dakotas. Turkey offered few inducements to compare with the lure of the United States or of South America.[9]

In addition to these natural difficulties, there existed the pronounced opposition of the Turks to foreign colonization of their homeland. This opposition was so deep-rooted that General von der Goltz warned his fellow countrymen not to migrate to the Near East if friendly relations were to be maintained with the Ottoman Empire. Paul Rohrbach said that colonization of Turkey-in-Asia by Europeans was quite out of the question. H. F. B. Lynch, of the English firm of Lynch Brothers, one of the most pronounced opponents of the Bagdad Railway, declared that fear of German settlement of Asia Minor was sheer nonsense, that no such plan was in contemplation by the promoters of the Bagdad enterprise, and that the reports of such intentions were the work of ignorant chauvinists. It will be recalled, also, that a secret annex to the concession of 1903 pledged the _Deutsche Bank_ not to encourage German or other foreign immigration into Turkey.[10]

Germans denied, likewise, that they had any intention of utilizing the Bagdad Railway as a means of acquiring an exclusive sphere of economic interest in the Ottoman Empire. Attention was continually directed to Articles 24 and 25 of the Specifications of 1903, which decreed that rates must be applicable to all travelers and consignors without discrimination, and which prohibited the concessionaires from entering into any contract whatever with the object of granting preferential treatment to any one. Arthur von Gwinner, President of the Bagdad Railway, stated that his company had loyally abided by its announced policy of equality of treatment for all, regardless of nationality or other considerations, and he challenged the critics of the enterprise to cite a single instance in which the contrary had been the case. Dr. Rohrbach wrote, in 1903, that it was “unthinkable that Germans should seek to monopolize the territories of the Turkish Empire for the purposes of economic exploitation.” Somewhat later he again stressed this point: “Germany’s political attitude to Turkey is unlike that of all other European powers because, in all sincerity, we ask not a single foot of Turkish territory in Europe, Asia, or Africa, but have only the wish and the interest to find in Turkey—whether its domination be in future restricted to Asia or not—a market and a source of raw materials for our industry; and in this respect we advance no claim on other nations than that of the unconditional open door.” Baron von Schoen pledged the Government to a policy of equal and unqualified opportunity for all in the regions to be opened up by the Railway.[11]

Furthermore, there is little reason to believe that the Germans had any intention of establishing a protectorate over Asiatic Turkey. Their determination to respect the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire was due, of course, not to magnanimity on their part as much as to expediency. Protectorates are expensive. For the same reason it may be doubted that there was any intention of maintaining an extensive military control over Turkey. German aims were to be served by the economic, military, and political renaissance of Turkey-in-Asia. A strong Turkey economically would be a Turkey so much the better able to increase the production of raw materials for the German market as well as to provide an ever more prosperous market for the products of German factories. A powerful Turkish military machine might strike some telling blows, in alliance with German arms, in a general European war; in the event of a Near Eastern conflict it might be utilized to menace the southern frontier of Russia or to strike at British communications with India. A politically strong Ottoman Empire might offer serious resistance to the Russian advance in the Middle East and might menace Britain’s hold on her Mohammedan possessions.

On the other hand, a Turkey in subjection would be an unwilling producer and a poor customer. The occupation of Turkey by German armed forces would seriously deplete the ranks of the German armies on the Russian and French frontiers, and in time of war would confront the German General Staff with the additional problem of maintaining order in hostile Mohammedan territory. The conquering of Turkey would bring the German Empire into the ranks of European powers with Mohammedan subjects, thus exposing it to the menace, common to Great Britain, France, and Russia, of a Pan-Islamic revival. For all of these reasons the obvious German policy was not only to respect the territorial integrity of Turkey, but to defend it against the encroachments of other powers. “Not a penny for a weak Turkey,” said Rohrbach, “but for a strong Turkey everything we can give!”[12]

In its political aspects the Bagdad Railway was something more than a railway. It was one phase of the great diplomatic struggle for the predominance of power, one pawn in the great game between the Alliance and the Entente, one element of the Anglo-German rivalry on the seas. The development of closer relations, political and economic, between Germany and Turkey was in accord with the spirit of an era of universal preparedness—preparedness for pressing economic competition, preparedness for the expected great European war in which every nation would be obliged to fight for its very existence. Through control of the economic resources of the Ottoman Empire, German diplomacy sought to arrive at an _entente cordiale_ or a formal military alliance with the Sultan. Through support of the chief Mohammedan power Germany might throw tempting “apples of discord” into the colonial empires of her chief European rivals, for Great Britain ruled about eighty-five million subject Mohammedans, Russia about seventeen million, France about fifteen million; but Germany possessed almost none.[13] Friedrich Naumann wrote in 1889, in connection with the Kaiser’s pilgrimage to the Near East: “It is possible that the world war will break out before the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. Then the Caliph of Constantinople will once more uplift the standard of the Holy War. The Sick Man will raise himself for the last time to shout to Egypt, the Soudan, East Africa, Persia, Afghanistan, and India, ‘War against England.’ It is not unimportant to know who will support him on his bed when he utters this cry.”[14]

This menace to the British Empire was no more serious than another which was frankly espoused by certain supporters of the Bagdad plan—the possibility, even without a preponderance of naval power, of severing the communications of the empire in time of war. Dr. Rohrbach, for example, put it this way: “If it comes to war with England, it will be for Germany simply a question of life and death. The possibility that events may turn out favorably for us depends wholly and solely upon whether we can succeed in putting England herself in a precarious position. That cannot be done by a direct attack in the North Sea; all idea of invading England is purely chimerical. We must, therefore, seek other means which will enable us to strike England in a vulnerable spot.... England can be attacked and mortally wounded by land from Europe in only one place—Egypt. The loss of Egypt would mean not only the end of her dominion over the Suez Canal and of her communications with India and the Far East, but would probably entail, also, the loss of her possessions in Central and East Africa. We can never dream, however, of attacking Egypt until Turkey is mistress of a developed railway system in Asia Minor and Syria, and until, through the extension of the Anatolian Railway to Bagdad, she is in a position to withstand an attack by England upon Mesopotamia.... The stronger Turkey grows the more dangerous does she become for England.”[15]

It is only fair to add, however, that Dr. Rohrbach was not an authorized spokesman of the German people, the German Government, or the Bagdad Railway Company. His views were personal and are to be given weight only in so far as they influenced or reflected public opinion in Germany; to estimate their importance by such a standard is no simple task. But whatever its true significance, Dr. Rohrbach’s interest in the Bagdad Railway was certainly a source of great annoyance to Dr. von Gwinner, who was constantly called upon to explain irresponsible, provocative, and bombastic statements from Rohrbach’s pen. It is well to recall that the writings of publicists are sometimes taken too seriously.[16]

It would have been foolhardy, nevertheless, to discard these possibilities as purely imaginary. Once the Bagdad Railway was constructed and its subsidiary enterprises developed, there would have existed the great temptation to utilize economic influence for the promotion of strategic and diplomatic purposes. In an era of intensive military and economic preparedness for war the observance of the niceties of international relationships is not always to be counted upon. In such circumstances the wishes of the business men—whether they were imperialistic or anti-imperialistic—may be over-ruled by the statesmen and the soldiers. The chance to strike telling blows at French prestige in the Levant; the opportunity to embarrass Russia by strengthening Turkey; the possibility of menacing the communications of the British Empire; the likelihood of recruiting Turkish military and economic strength in the cause of Germany,—these were alluring prospects for discomfiting the Entente rivals of the German Empire.

At the same time it should be mentioned that promotion of the Bagdad Railway would serve to weld firmer the Austro-German alliance. Austrian ambitions in the Near East centered in the Vienna-Salonica railway and were distinct from the Berlin-to-Bagdad plan of the Germans; nevertheless circumstances served to promote a community of interest. First, the routes of the railways through the Balkans coincided in part: the Austrian railway ran _via_ Belgrade and Nish to Salonica; traffic “from Berlin to Bagdad” followed the same line to Nish, where it branched off to Sofia and Constantinople. Second, Austrian, as well as German, trade would be carried over the Bagdad lines to the Orient, and Austrian industries would be able to secure raw materials from Anatolia and Mesopotamia. If the railway was to run from Berlin to Bagdad, it also was to run from Vienna to Bagdad. Third, similarly, German industry was to profit by the Austrian railway to Salonica, for it opened a new route to German commerce to the Aegean. “Germany’s road to the Orient lay, literally as well as figuratively, across the Balkan Peninsula.”[17] The _Drang nach Osten_ was near to the hearts of both allies!

It was not without warning that the German nation permitted itself to be drawn into the imperial ramifications of the Bagdad Railway. Anti-imperialists sensed the dangers connected with such an ambitious project. Herr Scheidemann, leader of the Social Democrats in the Reichstag, for example, warned the German people that the railway was certain to raise increasingly troublesome international difficulties, and he expressed the fear that the German protagonists of the plan would come to emphasize more and more its political and military, rather than its economic and cultural, phases.[18] Karl Radek, also a Socialist, wrote that “The Bagdad Railway possessed great political significance from the very moment the plan was conceived.” He prophesied that German economic penetration in Turkey would prove to be only the first step toward a formal military alliance, which, in turn, would heighten the fear and animosity of the Entente Powers. “The Bagdad Railway,” he said, “constitutes the first great triumph of German capitalistic imperialism.”[19] Business men and politicians of imperialist inclinations did not deny the charges of their pacifist opponents. Herr Bassermann, so far from deprecating a greater political influence in the Ottoman Empire, came to glory in it. Baron von Schoen qualified his earlier statements with the following enunciation of policy: “With reference to the attitude of the Imperial Government, it goes without saying that we are giving the enterprise our full interest and attention and will make every effort to further it.”[20]

The political potentialities of the Bagdad Railway aroused the fear and opposition of the other European Powers. Exaggerated charges were made as to the intentions of the German promoters and the German Government, and there was a widespread feeling that there was something sinister about the plan. Professor Sarolea sounded a prophetic warning when he wrote, “The trans-Mesopotamian Railway ... will play in the Near East the same ominous part which the Trans-Siberian played in the Far East; with this important difference, however, that whilst the Far Eastern conflict involved only one European Power and one Asiatic Power, the Near Eastern conflict, if it breaks out, must needs involve all the European powers, must force the whole Eastern Question to a crisis, and once begun, cannot be terminated until the map of Europe and Asia shall be reconstructed.”[21]

RELIGIOUS AND CULTURAL INTERESTS REËNFORCE POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC MOTIVES

Along with economic and political motives for imperialist ventures there frequently goes a religious motive. That such should be the case in the Near East was to be expected because of the religious appeal of the Ottoman Empire as the homeland of the Jews, the birthplace of Christianity, the cradle of Mohammedanism. It was small wonder, then, that the Bagdad Railway, which promised to link Central European cities with the holy places of Syria and Palestine, should have been supported enthusiastically by German missionaries and other German Christians.

German Protestant missions were represented in the Holy Land as early as 1860, when the Kaiserswerth Deaconesses established themselves in Jerusalem. Shortly thereafter the _Jerusalems-Verein_ began work in Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and about this same time, 1869, Lutheran missionaries calling themselves Templars settled near Jaffa. Under William II additional impetus was given to German religious activities in the Near East. The _Jerusalems-Verein_, which was taken under the special patronage of the Kaiserin Auguste Victoria, supported a Lutheran clergyman in Jerusalem and was responsible for the erection in the Holy City of the Church of the Redeemer. This same society rapidly spread its activities throughout all of Palestine, and in 1910 it dedicated the famous Kaiserin Auguste Victoria _Stiftung_,[22] erected on the Mount of Olives by the Hohenzollern family at a cost in excess of half a million dollars. The Evangelical Union, organized in 1896, established a large orphanage in Jerusalem, together with schools and related institutions, and proved to be a very useful auxiliary to the work of the Deaconesses in maintaining schools, dispensaries, and hospitals. Also in 1896 there was founded the _Deutsche Orient Mission_, which rendered its services particularly in Cilicia, and which kept up the interest of its supporters at home by the publication in Berlin of a monthly periodical, _Der Christliche Orient_. It was estimated that, during the early years of the twentieth century, the German Protestant societies maintained in Turkey-in-Asia about 450 missionaries and several hundred native assistants at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars. By 1910 the Germans occupied a conspicuous position in evangelical missions in the Near East.[23]

The German Catholics were no less zealous than their Protestant compatriots. Although for centuries Italian and French members of the Franciscan order had been preëminent in Catholic missions in Turkey, there was a marked tendency during the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth for German members of other religious orders to take an interest in the Near East. This may have been merely the result of a general increase in missionary activity connected with the increasing imperial activities of the German Government. It may have been due to the announced intention of the German Foreign Office to protect Christian missions and missionaries and to the vigorous fulfilment of that promise after the murder of two German Catholic priests in the Chinese province of Shantung. It may have been a natural consequence of the fact that the Prefect of the Propaganda from 1892–1902 was a famous German cardinal.[24] In any event, under the guiding ægis of the _Palästinaverein_, a society for the promotion of Catholic missions in the Holy Land, German Lazarists, Benedictines, and Carmelites established and maintained schools, hospitals, and dispensaries, as well as churches, in Syria and Palestine.[25]

Even Jewish religious interests in Palestine promoted Teutonic peaceful penetration in Turkey. As part of the Zionist activities of _L’Alliance Israelite Universelle_, agricultural colonies were founded by German Jews in the vicinity of Jaffa, Jerusalem, and Haifa. These colonists appeared to be proud of their German nationality and were an integral part of the German community in the Holy Land.[26]

The German Government had no intention of overlooking the political possibilities of this religious penetration. Promotion of missionary activities might be made to serve a twofold purpose: first, to win the support, in domestic politics, of those interested in the propagation of their faith in foreign lands—more particularly to hold the loyalty of the Catholic Centre party; second, to further one other means of strengthening the bonds between Germany and the Ottoman Empire.

An excellent illustration of the inter-relation among economic, political, and religious aspects of modern imperialism is to be found in the visit of William II to Turkey in 1898. On the morning of October 31—the anniversary of the posting of Luther’s ninety-five theses at Wittenberg—the Emperor participated in the dedication of the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer in Jerusalem. During the afternoon of the same day he presented the supposed site of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary to the German Catholics of the Holy City, for the construction thereon of a Catholic memorial church, and he telegraphed the Pope expressing his hope that this might be but one step in a steady progress of Catholic Christianity in the Near East. The Kaiser likewise might have visited the German Jewish communities in the vicinity of Jerusalem, but perhaps he felt, as a French writer put it, that such a visit “between his devotions at Gethsemane and at Calvary would have created a public scandal.”[27] Nevertheless he did not hesitate, a week later, at Damascus, to assure “three hundred million Mohammedans” that the German Emperor was their friend. Yet with all this pandering to religious interests—to the Protestants of Prussia, to the Catholics of South Germany, to his Moslem hosts—the Kaiser found time ostentatiously to promote the German Consul at Constantinople to the rank of Consul General. And upon his return home he justified all of these activities on the ground that his visit “would prove to be a lasting source of advantage to the German name and German national interests.”[28]

This curious admixture of religion and diplomacy was made the more complicated when the Imperial Chancellor informed the Reichstag, on December 7, 1898, that one of the purposes of the Emperor’s visit to His Ottoman Majesty was to make it plain that the German Government did not propose to recognize anywhere “a foreign protectorate over German subjects.” This served notice to France that Germany would not respect the French claim to exclusive protection of Catholic missionaries in the Ottoman Empire. “We do not lay claim,” said Prince von Bülow, “to a protectorate over all Christians in the East. But only the German Emperor can protect German subjects, be they Catholics or Protestants.”[29] This pronouncement was received in France with undisguisedly poor grace. One writer in a prominent fortnightly magazine frankly expressed his disgust: “Germany possesses military power; she possesses economic power; she proposes to acquire maritime power. But she needs the support of moral power. On the world’s stage she aspires to play the part of Principle. To base her world-wide prestige upon the protection of Christianity, Protestant and Catholic; to centralize the divergent sources of German influence; to have all over the globe a band of followers, at once religious and economic in their interests, who will propagate the German idea, consume German products, and, while professing the gospel of Christ, will preach the gospel of the sacred person of the Emperor—these are the ultimate ends of the world policy of William II.”[30]

Closely allied with the spread of German missions was the propagation of _das Deutschtum_—that is, the spread of the German language, instruction in German history and ideals, appreciation of the character of German civilization. German religious schools in the Near East were dynamos of German cultural influence. The _Jerusalems-Verein_ alone, for example, maintained, in 1902, eight schools with more than 430 pupils. In these schools German was taught. This also was the case with the Catholic schools, under German influence. Even the Jews—a large number of whom had emigrated from Germany because of anti-Semitic feeling there—carried with them their German patriotism. The _Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden_, the German section of _L’Alliance Israélite Universelle_, not only taught German in its own schools, but made a strenuous effort to have German adopted as the official language of all Zionist schools in the Near East.[31]

It should be pointed out that this injection of nationalism into religious education was an obvious imitation of the French method of spreading imperial influence in Syria and Palestine. And it was frankly admitted to be an imitation. “A policy of German-Turkish culture,” wrote Dr. Rohrbach, “deserves to be pressed with renewed ardor. We must endeavor to make the German language, and German science, and all the great positive values of our energetic civilization, duties faithfully fulfilled—active forces for the regeneration of Turkey by transplanting them into Turkey. To do this we need above everything else a system of German schools, which need not rival the French in magnitude, but which must be planned on a larger scale than that of the now existing schools. No lasting and secure cultural influences are possible without the connecting link of language. The intelligent and progressive young men of Turkey should have an abundant opportunity to learn German.... We can give the Turks an impression of our civilization and a desire to become familiar with it only when we teach them our language and thus open the door for them to all of our spiritual possessions. In doing this we are not aiming to Germanize Turkey politically or economically or to colonize it, but to introduce the German spirit into the great national process of development through which that nation, which has a great future, happens to be passing.”[32] French methods were to be paid the compliment of imitation.

The sentimental appeal of the Bagdad Railway was more than a religious and cultural appeal alone. The Great Plan was assiduously promoted by a patriotic and Pan-German press. It caught the interest of the ordinary workaday citizen, whose imagination was fired by the sweeping references to “our” trade, “our” investments, “our” religious interests in the Near East; the Bagdad Railway was the very heart of all these interests. Here was a railway which was to revive a medieval trade route to the East, which was to traverse the route of the Crusades. Here was a country which had been the much-sought-after empire of the great nations of antiquity, Assyria, Chaldea, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome. Here had risen and fallen the great cities of Nineveh, Babylon, and Hit. To these regions had turned the longing of the great conquerors, Sargon, Sennacherib, Nebuchadnezzar, Alexander, Saladin. With such materials some German Kipling might evolve phrases far more alluring than Fuzzy Wuzzy, and Tommy Atkins, and the White Man’s Burden.[33]

SOME FEW VOICES ARE RAISED IN PROTEST

Not all Germans were dazzled by the Oriental glamor of the Bagdad Railway plan. Herr Scheidemann, leader of the Social Democrats in the Reichstag, time and time again sounded warnings against the complications almost certain to result from the construction of the railway. Speaking before the Reichstag in March, 1911, for example, he said: “We are the last to misjudge the great value of this road to civilization. We know its economic significance: we know that it traverses a region which in antiquity was a fabulously fertile country, and we welcome it as a great achievement if the Bagdad Railway opens up that territory. And if, by gigantic irrigation projects, the land can be made into a granary for Europe, as well as a land to which we could look for an abundant supply of raw materials, such as cotton, that would be doubly welcome.” But that is not all, continued Herr Scheidemann. German capitalists would not be able to overlook the military-strategic interests of the line, for only the establishment of a strong centralized government in Turkey “can offer European capitalism the necessary security for the realization of its great capitalistic plans.” This military strengthening of Turkey would be almost certain, he pointed out, to arouse the opposition of Great Britain, Russia, and France. Particularly was he desirous of avoiding any additionally irritating relations with Great Britain, for the traditional friendship with that nation had already been seriously compromised by colonial and naval rivalries.[34] Similar warnings were uttered by other Socialists and anti-imperialists.

Quite different in character was the objection raised to the Bagdad Railway by a certain type of more conservative German. An aggressive policy in the Near East naturally would have been distasteful to the diplomatists of the old school, who were disposed to adhere to the Bismarckian principles of isolating France on the Continent and avoiding commercial and colonial conflicts overseas. According to their point of view, German ventures in the Ottoman Empire were certain to lead to two complications: first, the support of Austrian imperial ambitions in the Balkans; second, a German attempt to maintain a dominant political position at Constantinople. Under such circumstances, of course, it would not be possible to bring about a divorce of the newly married France and Russia, for Russian interests in the Near East would brook no compromise on the part of the Tsar’s Government. In addition, it was feared, the establishment of German ports on the Mediterranean and on the Persian Gulf would strengthen British antipathy to Germany, already augmented by naval and commercial rivalry. The final outcome of such a situation undoubtedly would be the formation of a Franco-British-Russian coalition against the Central Powers.

During the Great War these views were given wide publicity by Prince Lichnowsky, former German ambassador to Great Britain. In a memorandum, written for a few friends but subsequently published broadcast in Europe and America,[35] the Prince vehemently denounced the _Drang nach Osten_ as the greatest of German diplomatic mistakes and as one of the principal causes of the Great War. “We should have abandoned definitely the fatal tradition of pushing the Triple Alliance policies in the Near East,” he said; “we should have realized that it was a mistake to make ourselves solidary with the Turks in the south and with the Austro-Magyars in the north; for the continuance of this policy ... was bound in time, and particularly in case the requisite adroitness should be found wanting in the supreme directing agencies, to lead to the collision with Russia and the World War. Instead of coming to an understanding with Russia on the basis of the independence of the Sultan; ... instead of renouncing military and political interference, confining ourselves to economic interests in the Near East, ... our political ambition was directed to the attainment of a dominant position on the Bosporus. In Russia the opinion arose that the way to Constantinople ran _via_ Berlin.” This was the “fatal mistake, by which Russia, naturally our best friend and neighbor, was driven into the arms of France and England.” Furthermore, maintained the Prince, a policy of Near Eastern expansion is contrary to the best commercial and industrial interests of the empire. “‘Our future lies on the water.’ Quite right”; therefore it does not lie in an overland route to the Orient. The _Drang nach Osten_ “is a reversion to the Holy Roman Empire.... It is the policy of the Plantagenets, not that of Drake and Raleigh.... Berlin-Bagdad is a blind alley and not the way into the open, to unlimited possibilities, to the universal mission of the German nation.”[36]

There may have been another reason for the opposition of Prince Lichnowsky to the Bagdad Railway. As the owner of large Silesian estates he was agrarian in his point of view. If it were true, as was maintained, that after the opening of Mesopotamia to cultivation, the Railway would be able to bring cheap Turkish grain to the German market, the results would not be to the liking of the agricultural interests of the empire. As Herr Scheidemann informed the Reichstag, there was something anomalous in the Conservative support of the Bagdad Railway on this score, because it was “in most violent contrast to their procedure in their own country, where they have artificially raised the cost of the necessaries of life by incredibly high protective tariffs, indirect taxation, and similar methods.”[37] Perhaps Prince Lichnowsky was somewhat more intelligent and far-sighted than his land-owning associates!

There were some Germans who were not opposed to the Bagdad Railway enterprise, but who were opposed to the extravagant claims made for it by some of its friends and protagonists. A typical illustration of this is the following statement of Count zu Reventlow, shortly before the outbreak of the war: “Great Britain, Russia, and France, in order to interpose objections, made use of the expedient of identifying the _Deutsche Bank_ with the German Government. To this there was added the difficult and complicating factor that in Germany itself, in many quarters, the aim and the significance of the railway plan were proclaimed to the world, partly in an inaccurate and grossly exaggerated manner.... In this respect great mistakes were made among us, which it was in no way necessary to make. The more quietly the Railway could have been constructed the better.... That it would be possible to make Turkey a dangerous threat against Egypt and India, after the development of its railway system, was correct, to be sure, but it was imperative not to say anything of that kind as long as Great Britain still had means to hinder and prevent the construction of the railway.” Similar opinions were expressed from time to time on the floor of the Reichstag.[38]

The Bagdad Railway, however, was a triumphant enterprise which would brook no opposition. In the army of its followers marched the stockholders and directors of the _Deutsche Bank_—such men as Edward B. von Speyer, Wolfgang Kapp, Karl von Siemens, Karl Helfferich, Arthur von Gwinner—good patriots all, with a financial stake in the Railway. Then there came the engineers and contractors who furnished the materials and constructed the line and who shared in the profits of its subsidiary enterprises—mines, oil wells, docks, wharves, irrigation works. Next came the shipping interests—the subsidized services of Herr Ballin and the Hamburg-American Line included—which were at once the feeders and the fed of the Railway. There were also the German traders who sought in the Near East a market for their products and the German manufacturers who looked to this newly opened territory for an uninterrupted supply of raw materials. In the line of march, too, were the missionaries, Catholic and Protestant, who sought to promote a renaissance of the Holy Land through the extension of German influence there. Bringing up the rear, although by no means the least important, were the soldiers and the diplomatic and consular officers, those “parasites” of modern imperialism who almost invariably will be found in cordial support of any movement for political and economic expansion. In the reviewing stand, cheering the marchers, were the great mass of average patriotic citizens who were thrilled with “their” Bagdad Railway and “their” _Drang nach Osten_. And the chief of the reviewers was His Imperial Majesty, William II.[39]

If there was a preponderance of opinion in Germany favorable to the Bagdad Railway, there was by no means a similar favorable sentiment in the rest of Europe. Statesmen in the other imperial nations were not unaware of the potentialities of railways constructed in the backward nations of the world. They knew that “railways are the iron tentacles of latter-day expanding powers. They are stretched out caressingly at first. But once the iron has, so to say, entered the soul of the weaker nation, the tentacles swell to the dimensions of brawny arms, and the embrace tightens to a crushing grip.”[40] Russia, Great Britain and France, therefore, were gradually led to obstruct the progress of the railway by political and economic means—at least until such time as they could purge the project of its political possibilities or until they could obtain for themselves a larger share of the spoils.

Thus the Bagdad Railway was an imperial enterprise. It became an important concern of the Foreign Office, a matter of national prestige. It was one of the stakes of pre-war diplomacy. Its success was associated with the national honor, to be defended, if need be, by military force and military alliances. The Railway was no longer a railway alone, but a state of mind. Professor Jastrow called it “the spectre of the twentieth century”![41]

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES

[1] _Die Bagdadbahn_, p. 46.

[2] _Stenographische Berichte, XII Legislaturperiode, 1 Session_,