CHAPTER VII

RUSSIA RESISTS AND FRANCE IS UNCERTAIN

RUSSIA VOICES HER DISPLEASURE

Russian objections to the Bagdad Railway were put forth as early as 1899, the year in which the Sultan announced his intention of awarding the concession to the _Deutsche Bank_. The press of Petrograd and Moscow roundly denounced the proposed railway as inimical to the vital economic interests of Russia. It was claimed that the new line would offer serious competition to the railways of the Caspian and Caucasus regions, that it would menace the success of the new Russian trans-Persian line, and that it might prove to be a rival even of the Siberian system.[1] The extension of the existing Anatolian Railway into Syria, it was asserted, would interfere with the realization of a Russian dream of a railway across Armenia to Alexandretta—a railway which would give Russian goods access to an all-year warm water port on the Mediterranean. The Mesopotamian sections of the line, with their branches, might open to German competition the markets of Persia and, later, of Afghanistan. If German capital should develop the grain-growing possibilities of the Tigris and Euphrates valleys, what would happen to the profits of the Russian landed aristocracy? And if the oil-wells of Mesopotamia were as rich as they were said to be, what would be the fate of the South Russian fields? The Tsar was urged to oppose the granting of the kilometric guarantee to the concessionaires, on the ground that the increased charges on the Ottoman Treasury would interfere with payment of the indemnity due on account of the War of 1877.[2]

Russian objections to the Bagdad Railway did not meet with a sympathetic reception in England. _The Engineer_, of August 11, 1899, in an editorial “Railways in Asia Minor,” for example, expressed its firm opinion that many of the demands for the protection of Russian economic interests in Turkey were specious. “The world has yet to learn,” ran the editorial, “that Russia allows commercial considerations to play any great part in her ideas of constructing railways; the Imperial authorities are influenced mainly by the policy of political expediency. The commercial competition thus foreseen by Russia is put forward merely as a stop-gap until Russia can get time and money to repeat in Asia Minor the methods of which she has made such success in Persia and the Far East.” Other British opinion was of like character.

The Russian claim for exclusive control of railway construction in northern Anatolia met with equally bitter denunciation. The London _Globe_, of August 10, 1899, characterized as “impudence” the intention of the Russian Government “to regard Asiatic Turkey as a second Manchuria, on the pretence that the whole country has been mortgaged to Russia for payment of the Turkish war indemnity. If this preposterous claim were admitted, not only the development of Asia Minor but the opening of another short-cut to the East might be delayed until the end of the next century. Russia had so many ambitious and costly projects on hand at present that her nearly bankrupt treasury could not meet any fresh drain, and especially one of such magnitude as that in question. The policy of her Government, therefore, is to preserve Asia Minor as a _tabula rasa_ on which the Russian pen can write as it pleases hereafter. It is a cool project, truly, but the success which has attended similar Russian endeavors in the Far East will not, we undertake to predict, meet with repetition.”

The Russian Government, meanwhile, was interposing serious objections to the Bagdad Railway. M. Zinoviev, the Tsar’s minister at Constantinople, informed the Sublime Porte that the proposed extension of the Anatolian Railways from Angora across Armenia to Mosul and Bagdad would be a strategic menace to the Caucasus frontier and, as such, could not be tolerated. If Russian wishes in the matter were not respected, immediate measures would be taken to collect all arrears—amounting to over 57,000,000 francs—of the indemnity due the Tsar under the Treaty of Berlin (1878). The outcome of these demands was submission by the Sultan’s Government. The proposed Angora-Kaisarieh-Diarbekr route was abandoned in favor of one extending from Konia, through the Cilician Gates of the Taurus Mountains, to Adana, Aleppo, and Mosul—the latter being the route over which the Bagdad Railway actually was constructed. The discussions between the Russian and Ottoman Governments subsequently were crystallized and confirmed by the so-called Black Sea Agreement of 1900, which pledged the Sultan to award no further concessions for railways in northern Anatolia or Armenia except to Russian nationals or to syndicates approved by the Tsar, and, furthermore, to award such Russian concessionaires terms at least as favorable as those to be granted the Bagdad Railway Company.[3]

The agreement thus reached, however, satisfied Russia only temporarily. In December, 1901, M. Witte, Imperial Minister of Finance at Petrograd, stated categorically that he considered the construction of the Bagdad Railway by any Power other than Russia a menace to the imperial interests of the Tsar. Proposals for the internationalization of the line he asserted to be chimerical; in his opinion the nationals of one Power would be certain to control the administration of the enterprise. The Tsar was determined that Russian capitalists should have nothing to do with the Railway; Russian capital, for a time at least, should be conserved for industrial development at home. “The Government of Russia,” he concluded, “is more interested in devoting its available resources to the construction of new railways within the Empire than it is in promoting an enterprise destined to offer competition to Russia’s railways and industries.”[4] In 1902 and again in 1903, M. Witte made similar statements, asserting that he saw no reason for changing his point of view.[5]

Witte’s words carried weight in Russia. As an erstwhile railway worker he knew the great economic importance of railways. During his régime as Minister of Finance (1893–1903) an average of 1,400 miles of rails was laid down annually in Russia; the Transcaspian and Transcaucasian systems were constructed, and the Siberian Railway was pushed almost to completion. He foresaw that one day these railways would be powerful weapons in the commercial and political expansion of an industrialized Russia. As an official in charge of troop movements during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877 he had learned to understand the function of railways in offensive and defensive warfare. Although he considered it wasteful to construct railways for military purposes alone, he believed that every railway was of strategic value; in fact, he looked upon railways as the most important single factor in national preparedness. As the foremost protagonist of Russia’s tariff war with the German Empire he was opposed to any plan which promised to promote German commerce and to open up new resources and new markets to German industry. As a native of the Caucasus region and as an ardent advocate of colonial expansion Witte looked forward to the time when Russia herself—possessed of capital for the purpose—should dominate the transportation system of Asiatic Turkey.[6]

It is questionable, however, if the Bagdad Railway really threatened any important Russian economic interests. The railways of southern Russia, so far from being injured by competition with the proposed new railways of Turkey, would be almost certain to profit from any increase of trade in the region of the Black Sea. The Russian dream of a railway to Alexandretta was still very much of a dream; but even if the contrary had been the case, its construction for peaceful purposes would not have been hindered by the Bagdad plan. The claim that a trans-Mesopotamian railway would compete with the Far Eastern traffic of the Siberian Railways was purely fantastic; it overlooked the obvious fact that an ideal shipping route, like a straight line, is the shortest distance between two points. It would be at least a generation before Mesopotamian grain and oil could play a prominent part in the Russian market.[7]

But with Russian political interests the case was different. Ever since the days of Peter the Great, the Russian Tsars had persistently and relentlessly continued their efforts to obtain a “window” on the Mediterranean. This historical trend toward the open sea led to a well-defined intention on the part of Russia, in one way or another, to take Constantinople from the Turks. The dynastic interests of Russia were reënforced by commercial considerations. “Most of Russia’s southern trade is bound to pass through the Bosporus. Her wheat and hides, her coal and oil cannot reach the European markets any other way; her manganese and petroleum are inaccessible to other nations if they cannot find an outlet from the Caucasus to the Dardanelles.” During the Turco-Italian War the closing of the Straits for a few days was said to have cost Russian shipping about eight million francs.[8] Bonds of religion and race enlisted Russian sympathy in the struggle of the Balkan states to win independence from Turkey—a cause which harmonized with the Russian ambition to bring about the disintegration of Turkey-in-Europe. The rise of German influence at Constantinople—of which the Anatolian and Bagdad Railway concessions were a tangible manifestation—had been a source of annoyance to Russia, not only because it prevented Russian domination of Turkish affairs and because it strengthened the position of Austria-Hungary in the Balkans, but also because it tended to strengthen Turkish military power. It was annoying enough to witness the rising political and economic power of Germany in the Near East; it was more annoying to realize that, under German guidance, the Turks might experience an economic and military renaissance which would end once and for all the Russian hope of possessing ancient Byzantium.

Strategically the construction of the Bagdad Railway was a real menace to Russian ambitions in the Near East. The completion of the line would enable the Ottoman Government to effect a prompt mobilization along the Armenian front. For example, the Fifth Turkish Army Corps, from Damascus, and the Sixth Corps, from Bagdad—which in the War of 1877 arrived on the field after a series of forced marches, minus a large number of its effectives, too late to save Kars or to raise the siege of Erzerum—could be brought quickly by rail from Syria and Mesopotamia to Angora for the defence of northern Anatolia. In the event of a Russo-Turkish war such a maneuver would render extremely precarious a Russian invasion of Armenia or a Russian advance on Constantinople along the south shore of the Black Sea. In a general European war in which both Russia and Turkey might be involved the existence of this railway line would make possible a Turkish stroke at the southern frontier of Russia, thus diverting troops from the European front. That the German General Staff was not ignorant of these possibilities is certain because of the presence in Turkey, during this time, of General von der Goltz.[9]

The Russian Government and the Russian press were fully aware of the menace of the Bagdad Railway to Russian imperial interests. That the Tsar did not offer serious resistance to the construction of the line was due to the rise of serious complications in the Far East, the crushing defeats of his army and navy in the War with Japan, friction with Great Britain in Persia and in Central Asia, and the outbreak of a revolutionary movement at home. But the Russian press called upon French citizens to show their loyalty to the Alliance by refusing to participate in the financing of the Railway.[10]

The plaintive call of the Russians, however, did not fall on altogether sympathetic ears in the Republic; a conflict of interests led some French citizens to invest in the Railway even though it was denounced by their Government.

THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT HESITATES

The position of France in the Bagdad Railway controversy was anomalous. In addition to political, economic, and religious reasons for opposing the construction of the trans-Mesopotamian railway, the French had many historical and sentimental interests which influenced the Government of the Republic to resist German penetration in the Near East. French patriots recalled with pride the rôle of France in the Crusades; they remembered that Palestine itself was once a Latin kingdom; they believed that Christians in the Levant looked to France as their protector and that this protection had received formal recognition under the Capitulations, negotiated by Francis I and renewed and extended by his successors from Henry IV to Louis XV. They knew that the French language was the language not only of the educated classes in Turkey, but, also, in Syria, of the traders, so that it could be said that a traveler in Syria might almost consider himself in a French dependency. They were proud of the fact that the term “Frank” was the symbol of Western civilization in the Near East. They were aware of the far-reaching educational work of French missionaries. France, to their mind, had done a great work of Christian enlightenment in the Moslem stronghold, Turkey. Was the Government of the Republic to be backward in asserting the interests of France, when Bourbons and Bonapartes had so ably paved the way for the extension of French civilization in the Holy Land? Reasoning of this kind was popular in France during 1898 and 1899, when the Kaiser’s visit to Abdul Hamid was still under discussion and when the first indications were given that a German company was to be awarded a concession for the construction of a railway from Constantinople to the Persian Gulf.

On the other hand, however, there was a considerable and a powerful group in France which urged the French Government, if not to support the project of the Bagdad Railway, at least to put no obstacles in its way. The members of this group were French financiers with investments in Turkey. They believed that the construction of the Railway would usher in a new era of prosperity in the Ottoman Empire which would materially increase the value of the Turkish securities which they owned. If the interests of these financiers were not supported by historical traditions and nationalist sentiment, they were tangible and supported by imposing facts. It was estimated, in 1903, that French investors controlled three-fifths, amounting to a billion and a half of francs, of the public obligations of the Imperial Ottoman Treasury. French promoters owned about 366 million francs in the securities of Turkish railroads and over 162 millions in various industrial and commercial enterprises in Asia Minor. French banks had approximately 176 million francs invested in their branches in the Near East. The total of all French investments in Turkey was more than two and a half billion francs.[11] The French-controlled Imperial Ottoman Bank, the French-owned Smyrna-Cassaba Railway, and the French-administered Ottoman Public Debt Council all favored the promotion of the Bagdad Railway idea.

For a time, the French Government decided to follow the lead of the financial interests. French bankers, in 1899, had entered into an agreement with the _Deutsche Bank_ to operate the Anatolian and Smyrna-Cassaba systems under a joint rate agreement, to coöperate in the construction of the Bagdad Railway, and to attempt to secure diplomatic support for their respective enterprises.[12] At the request of the Imperial Ottoman Bank, M. Constans, the French Ambassador at Constantinople, adopted a policy of “benevolent neutrality” toward the negotiations of the _Deutsche Bank_ with the Ottoman Ministry of Public Works. This course was approved by M. Delcassé, Minister of Foreign Affairs, who considered the Bagdad Railway harmless because French capitalists were to participate in its construction and operation. Just how much this diplomatic non-interference assisted the _Deutsche Bank_ in obtaining the concessions of 1899 and 1903 is an open question. It is extremely doubtful if French objections could have blocked the award of the concessions, although M. Chéradame subsequently maintained that the consummation of the plans of the _Deutsche Bank_ would have been impossible without the tacit coöperation of the French embassy at Constantinople.[13]

Between 1899 and 1902 the proposed Bagdad Railway was discussed occasionally by French publicists, but it could not have been considered a matter of widespread popular interest. In the spring of the latter year, however, immediately after the award of the first Bagdad concession by the Sultan, a bitter protest was voiced in the Chamber of Deputies against the policy of the French Government. M. Firmin Fauré, a deputy from Paris, introduced a resolution that “the issue of debentures, stocks, or bonds designed to permit the construction of the Bagdad Railway shall not be authorized in French territory except by vote of the Chamber of Deputies.” In a few words M. Fauré denounced the Bagdad Railway plan as a menace to French prestige in the Near East and as a threat against Russian security in the Caucasus. He believed, furthermore, that Bagdad Railway bonds would be an unsafe investment: “It is a Panama that is being prepared down there. Do you choose, perchance, my dear colleagues, to allow French capital to be risked in this scheme without pronouncing it foolhardy? Do you choose to allow the great banks and the great investment syndicates to realize considerable profits at the expense of the small subscribers? If that is how you attend to the defence of French capital, well and good, but you will permit me to disagree with you.” He warned the members of the Chamber that they would not dare to stand for reëlection if they thus allowed the interests of their constituents to be prejudiced.[14]

M. Delcassé, Minister of Foreign Affairs, objected to the resolution. He denied that French diplomacy had assisted the German bankers in securing the Bagdad Railway concession.[15] But the concession was a _fait accompli_, and it also was a fact that French financiers felt they could not afford to refuse the offer of participation with the German concessionaires. “I venture to ask how it can be prevented, and I inquire of the Chamber whether, when such an enterprise has been arranged and decided upon, it is not preferable that French interests, so considerable in the East, should be represented therein.” He promised that every possible precaution would be taken to assure French capitalists a share in the enterprise equal to that of any other power. The Minister was upheld, the motion being defeated by a vote of 398 to 72.[16]

Less than two years later, in October, 1903, the Paris Bourse, at the instigation of the French Government, excluded all Bagdad Railway securities from the privileges of the Exchange. This change in policy was not so much the result of a _volte face_ on the part of M. Rouvier and M. Delcassé as it was a consequence of a persistent clamor on the part of the French press that the construction of the Bagdad Railway, which was popularly considered a serious menace to French interests, should be obstructed by every effective method at the disposal of the Government.[17]

FRENCH INTERESTS ARE BELIEVED TO BE MENACED

The commercial interests of southern France were opposed to participation in the Bagdad Railway by the French Government or by French capitalists. Business men were fearful, for example, lest “the new route to India” should divert traffic between England and the East from the existing route across Europe _via_ Calais to Marseilles and thence by steamer to Suez, to a new express service from Calais to Constantinople _via_ Ostend, Cologne, Munich, and Vienna. Thus the importance of the port of Marseilles would be materially decreased, and French railways would lose traffic to the lines of Central Europe. Also, there was some feeling among the manufacturers of Lyons that the rise of German economic power in Turkey might interfere with the flow to France of the cheap raw silk of Syria, almost the entire output of which is consumed in French mills. The fears of the silk manufacturers were emphasized by one of the foremost French banks, the _Crédit Lyonnais_, which maintained branches in Jaffa, Jerusalem, and Beirut, for the purpose of financing silk and other shipments. This bank had experienced enough competition at the hands of the _Deutsche Palästina Bank_ to assure it that further German interference was dangerous.[18]

From the political point of view there was more to be said for the French objections. Foremost among serious international complications was the strategic menace of the Railway to Russia. The Bagdad enterprise was described as the “anti-Russian maneuver _par excellence_.” To weaken Russia was to undermine the “foundation stone of French foreign policy,” for it was generally conceded that “the Alliance was indispensable to the security of both nations; it assured the European equilibrium; it was the essential counterbalance to the Triple Alliance.”[19] Then, too, the question of prestige was involved! In the great game of the “balance of power” an imperial advance by one nation was looked upon as a humiliation for another! Thus a German success in Turkey, whether gained at the expense of important French interests or not, would have been considered as reflecting upon the glory of France abroad! There was also a menace to France in a rejuvenated Turkey. A Sultan freed from dependence upon the Powers might effectively carry on a Pan-Islamic propaganda which would lead to serious discontent in the French colonial empire in North Africa. What would be the consequences if the Moors should answer a call to a Holy War to drive out the infidel invaders?[20]

Still more fundamental, perhaps, than any of these reasons was the fear among far-sighted French diplomatists that the Bagdad Railway would be but the first step in a formal political alliance between Germany and Turkey. The French, more than any other European people, have been schooled in the political ramifications of foreign investments. The very foundations of the Russian Alliance, for example, were loans of French bankers to Russian industries and to the Tsar. Might not Baron Marschall von Bieberstein and Karl Helfferich, Prince von Bülow and Arthur von Gwinner, tear a leaf out of the book of French experience? Certainly the way was being paved for a Turco-German alliance, and M. Deschanel eloquently warned his colleagues in the Chamber of Deputies that there were limitless possibilities in the situation. Speaking in the Chamber on November 19, 1903, he said: “Behold a railway that can divert from the Suez Canal a part of the traffic of the Far East, so that the railways of Central Europe will become the competitors of Marseilles and of our French railways! Behold a new colonial policy which, instead of conquering territories by force of arms, makes war with funds; possesses itself of the means of communication; crushes out the life of states, little by little, by the artifices of the financiers, leaving them only a nominal existence! And we, who possess the world’s greatest fund of _capital, that supreme weapon of modern conquest_, we propose to place it at the disposal of foreign interests hostile to our fundamental and permanent foreign policies! Alas, it is not the first time that our capital has gone to nourish rival, even hostile, schemes!”[21]

Religious interests supported the political and economic objections to the construction of the Bagdad Railway. French Clericals were fearful lest this railway become the very backbone of German interests in the Ottoman Empire, thus strengthening German missionary activities and jeopardizing the time-honored protectorate of France over Catholics in the Near East. As early as 1898 an anonymous writer sounded a clarion call to Catholics and nationalists alike that German economic penetration in Turkey was a matter of their common concern: “Preeminent in the Levant, thanks to the friendship of the Sultan and to the progress of the commerce of her nationals, Germany, if she gathers in, besides, our religious heritage, will crown her formidable material power with an enormous moral power; she will assume in the world the eminent place which Charlemagne, St. Louis, Francis I, Richelieu, Louis XIV, and Napoleon have assured to our country. The ‘nationalization’ of missions will inaugurate a period of German supremacy in the Orient, where the name of France has been so great and where it still is so loved.”[22]

France occupied a unique position in the Near East. For centuries she had been recognized as shouldering a special responsibility in the protection of Catholics and of Catholic missions in the Ottoman Empire. This protectorate—which as late as 1854 had provided the occasion for a war between the empire of Napoleon III and Russia—had been acquired not by military conquest alone, but by outstanding cultural and religious services as well.[23]

Certainly at the end of the nineteenth century French missions held a preëminent position in Turkey. French Jesuits and Franciscans maintained elementary, secondary, and vocational schools in Aleppo, Damascus, Beirut, Jerusalem, and numerous smaller towns throughout Syria and Palestine. A Jesuit school established at Beirut in 1875 rapidly expanded its curricula until it obtained recognition as a university, its baccalaureate degree being accredited by the French Ministry of Public Instruction early in the decade of the eighties. The medical faculty of this Jesuit University—said to have been founded under the patronage of Jules Ferry and Léon Gambetta—was given authority to grant degrees, which were recognized officially by France in 1888 and by Turkey in 1898. In addition to the classical and medical courses, instruction was given in law, theology, philosophy, and engineering. A preparatory school, conducted in connection with the university, had an enrollment of about one thousand pupils. By 1907 it was estimated that over seventy thousand Syrian children were receiving instruction in French religious schools. In addition to these educational accomplishments mention should be made of the work of the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Apparition and the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, who made Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and other towns centers of French religious and philanthropic activity.[24]

The progress of German missions and schools was a challenge to the paramount position of France in the cultural development of the Near East. And it was not a challenge which was passed unanswered. To counteract the influence of German schools established, with the aid of the Railway Company, at a few of the more important points along the Anatolian lines, French missionary schools were established at Eski Shehr, Angora, and Konia.[25]

Furthermore, German missions seemed to bring with them an additional threat—an attempt to discredit the French claim to an exclusive protectorate over Catholics in the Ottoman Empire. As early as 1875 the German Government declared that “it recognized no exclusive right of protection of any power in behalf of Catholic establishments in the East,” and that “it reserved its rights with regard to German subjects belonging to any of these establishments.”[26] This position appeared to be strengthened by Article 62 of the Treaty of Berlin (1878), which affirmed that “ecclesiastics, pilgrims, and monks of all nationalities traveling in Turkey shall enjoy the same rights, advantages, and privileges. The official right of protection of the diplomatic and consular agents of the Powers in Turkey is recognized, with regard both to the above-mentioned persons and to their religious, charitable, and other establishments in the Holy Places and elsewhere.”[27]

In 1885 it was proposed that the Sultan should appoint his own emissary to the Vatican, thus rendering supererogatory the time-honored procedure of transacting all affairs of the Church through the French embassy at Constantinople. French Catholics immediately charged that this proposal emanated from Berlin and did everything possible to oppose its acceptance. Italian and German influences in Rome heartily supported the idea of direct communications between the Vatican and the Porte, but Pope Leo XIII and Cardinal Rampolla finally decided against maintaining diplomatic relations with the Infidel.[28]

Largely as a result of Italian insistence that the rights of the diplomatic and consular agents of the Kingdom be given recognition, it was considered advisable for the Pope to state definitely his position on the French protectorate. This he did in an encyclical of May 22, 1888, _Aspera rerum conditio_, which informed all Catholic missionaries in the Levant that “the Protectorate of the French Nation in the countries of the East has been established for centuries and sanctioned even by treaties between the empires. Therefore there must be absolutely no innovation in this matter; this Protectorate, wherever it is in force, is to be religiously preserved, and the missionaries are warned that, if they have need of any help, they are to have recourse to the consuls and other ministers of France.”[29] In a letter dated August 1, 1898, addressed to Cardinal Langénieux, Archbishop of Rheims, Leo XIII again confirmed this opinion: “France has a special mission in the East confided to her by Providence—a noble mission consecrated not alone by ancient usage, but also by international treaties.... The Holy See does not wish to interfere with the glorious patrimony which France has received from its ancestors, and which beyond a doubt it means to deserve by always showing itself equal to its task.”[30] No more sweeping confirmation of French rights could have been desired.

The German Government, however, was by no means willing to accept these pronouncements as final. In the name of nationalism German unification was accomplished; in the name of nationalism German missionaries abroad must look to their own Government for protection. To admit a foreign claim to the protectorate of Germans was to stain the national honor. To accede to the French pretension that Catholic Germans occupied an inferior position in the East was to decrease the prestige of German citizenship. The Shantung incident was a noisy demonstration of the intention of the German Empire to recognize no such distinctions. The visit of the Kaiser to the Sultan in the same year, 1898, was directly concerned with the determination of _Wilhelmstrasse_ to assert the secular rights of German missionaries, Catholics as well as Protestants.[31]

French Catholics denied the German claims and worked upon national sentiment at home to add to the growing fear of German imperial aggrandizement. “Catholic missions,” it was asserted, “by their very nature and purpose are a supra-national institution, similar to the sovereign majesty of the Pope.” What could be the purpose of the Germans in asserting the doctrine of the “nationalization of missions,” if it were not to undermine French influence in Turkey? How great would be the national humiliation if the protectorate of the Faithful in the East should pass from the hands of Catholic France to Protestant Prussia! The Germans, too, were prejudicing the Holy See against the Republic. A notoriously pro-German party at the Vatican, supported by their political allies, the Italians, were winning the sympathies of the Pope by insinuating references to “red France,” “schismatic Russia,” and “heretical England”! Thus was a dark plot being hatched against France and against the unity of Christendom![32]

This situation was not without its advantages to the French Clericals. Between the years 1899 and 1905, when the Bagdad Railway controversy was at its height, a serious domestic controversy was raging in France. In a bitter fight to extirpate Clericalism the Republican ministries of Waldeck-Rousseau and Émile Combes had put through law after law to curb the power of the Church and to break up the influence of the religious orders. The Clericals were waging a losing battle. But perhaps the last crushing blows might be warded off by resorting to a favorite maneuver of Louis Napoleon—the diversion of popular attention from domestic affairs to foreign policy. If Republicans and Monarchists, Socialists and bourgeois Liberals, Radicals and Conservatives, Free-Masons and Clericals, could be aroused against the German advance in Turkey, a common outburst of national pride might obscure, for a time at least, the domestic war on organized Catholicism. Therefore Clerical writers in France warned of the menace of the Bagdad Railway to the Russian Alliance, to the advance of French commerce, and to the ancient prerogatives in the East. “It is Germany, preëminent at Constantinople,” said an anonymous writer in the _Revue des deux mondes_, “which blocks the future of Pan-Slavism in the East; it is Germany, installed in Kiao-chau, which can forestall Muscovite expansion toward the Pacific; it is Germany which, in the East and Far East, seeks to undermine our religious protectorate. Faced by the same adversary, it is natural that France and Russia should build up a common defence.” That France should not desert her ally Russia or her own prerogatives in the protectorate of Near Eastern missions is self-evident. “The protectorate over Catholics is for us, in short, a source of material advantage!”[33]

THE BAGDAD RAILWAY CLAIMS FRENCH SUPPORTERS

The Bagdad Railway was not without friends in France. The French chairman of the Ottoman Public Debt Administration was an enthusiastic supporter of the project and served on the Board of Directors of the Bagdad Railway Company, for he believed that widespread railway construction was essential to the establishment, upon a firm basis, of Turkish credit. The French-controlled Imperial Ottoman Bank, as early as 1899, had agreed to participate in the financing of the Bagdad line, and an officer of the bank had accepted the position of vice-president of the Bagdad Railway Company at the time of its incorporation in 1903. The French owners of important railways in Anatolia and Syria believed it would be suicidal for them to obstruct the plans of the _Deutsche Bank_ and preferred to coöperate with the German concessionaires. Unless the French opponents of the Bagdad Railway were prepared to offer these interests material compensation for resisting its construction, it was hardly likely that, hard-headed business men as they were, they would jeopardize the security of their investments for the sake of such intangible items as international prestige and protectorates of missions.

There were two important groups of French-owned railways in Turkey-in-Asia. In Anatolia there was the important Smyrna-Cassaba system, extending east and north-east from the French-developed port of Smyrna. At Afiun Karahissar the main line of this system from Smyrna connected with the Anatolian line from Constantinople to Konia. Therefore a route for French trade already existed to all of Asia Minor; and when the Bagdad Railway was completed, direct service could be instituted from Smyrna to Adana, Aleppo, Mosul, Bagdad, and Basra. The second group of French railways was the Syrian system, owned by _La Société Ottomane du Chemin de fer Damas-Hama et Prolongements_. This company operated railway lines from Aleppo to Damascus, from Tripoli to Homs, from Beirut to Damascus, from Jaffa to Jerusalem, and between other less important points. After the completion of the Bagdad Railway this group of railways would have direct connections, at Aleppo, with all of Europe _via_ Constantinople and with the Indies _via_ Basra and the Persian Gulf. Perhaps the French interests controlling these railways were chagrined at their inability to secure the trans-Mesopotamian concession for themselves. But faced with the _fait accompli_ of the German concession, they realized that coöperation with the Bagdad Railway would make their lines an integral part of a greater system of rail communications within Turkey and also between Turkey and the nations of Europe and Farther Asia. Refusal to coöperate would be cutting off their noses to spite their faces.[34]

French bankers were disposed to look at the Bagdad enterprise in much the same light. The economic renaissance of Turkey, which it was hoped would be an effect of improved rail communications, would increase the value of their earlier investments in that country. But, in addition, the Bagdad Railway offered handsome profits in itself: profits of promoting the enterprise and floating the various bond issues; profits of the construction company, in which French capital was to participate; profits of the shareholders when the Railway should become a going concern. True, the Council of Ministers had requested the Bourse to outlaw the Bagdad securities. But, after all, when profits are at stake, what is a mere resolution of the Cabinet among friends? A syndicate of French financiers invested heavily in the bonds and stock of the Bagdad Railway Company, the hostility of their Government notwithstanding. And it was said that one of the bankers who participated in the syndicate was none other than M. Rouvier, Minister of Finance in the Cabinet of M. Combes, and subsequently Prime Minister.[35]

Many intelligent French students of foreign affairs felt that a merely obstructionist policy on the part of France toward the Bagdad Railway would be futile and, in the end, disastrous. In spite of the many historical and sentimental attachments of France in the Near East, she really had no vital interests which were jeopardized by the Bagdad enterprise. It was urged, therefore, that she should play the rôle of conciliator of the divergent interests of Russia, Great Britain, Germany, and Turkey. A forward-looking program, it was suggested, would be to urge these nations to reach a full and equitable agreement in the promotion of “a project unquestionably valuable in the progress of the whole human race.” National material interests should be merged in “the superior interests of civilization.” Mere self-interest demanded this of France, because, should a war break out over the Near Eastern question, France would most certainly become involved.[36]

As regards the claims of Russia to influence French policy in the Bagdad Railway affair, there was a considerable amount of irritability exhibited by French publicists. It was pointed out, for example, that M. Witte was unwilling to accept “internationalization” of the Railway at a time when the German and French bankers were prepared to effect a satisfactory settlement on that basis. It was asserted, also, that Russian strategic interests were adequately safeguarded when the northern route was abandoned by the Black Sea Basin Agreement of 1900. So far from decreased difficulties of Turkish mobilization constituting a menace to Russia, “Russia still had both the power and, apparently, the inclination to be a formidable menace to Turkey.”[37] How could the Colossus of the Caucasus tremble before the Sick Man!

One French writer was frank in advocating that France should pursue a course independent of Russia in this instance. “The St. Petersburg press,” he wrote, “has asserted vehemently that we are unjust to support an enterprise which will injure considerably the economic interests of Russia, which will seriously prejudice its grain trade, and create a ruinous competitor to Russian railways now projected. Of what use is the Franco-Russian Alliance if our policy runs counter to Russian interests?

“We are particularly pleased to answer the question. The Franco-Russian Alliance does not imply complete servility on the part of France toward Russia, or annihilation of all free will, or perpetual agreement on matters of finance. After having furnished our ally with almost seven billion francs, we find ourselves called upon to support her policies in the Far East, although we ourselves were abandoned and isolated in the Fashoda affair. It will be well for us now to think of ourselves somewhat, although respecting scrupulously, even cordially, the clauses of the contract of alliance.... It is in our own interests to coöperate with Germany in the Bagdad enterprise. It is extremely regrettable that we cannot carry it out ourselves; but since it is otherwise, we should make the most of the conditions.”[38]

It is said that M. Delcassé, French Minister of Foreign Affairs, certainly no friend of German imperial designs, never really was hostile to the Bagdad Railway and its affiliated enterprises. As Bismarck welcomed French colonial activities in Africa and China as a means of diverting French attention from the Rhine and the Vosges, so Delcassé hoped that the colossal Bagdad plan would absorb all German imperial inclinations, leaving Morocco an exclusive sphere of French influence. In the construction of railways in the Ottoman Empire, Germany might satisfy her “irresistible need for expansion,” without menacing vital French interests. And all the while the _Quai d’Orsay_, through the French representatives on the Board of Directors of the Bagdad Railway Company, could be kept fully informed of the progress of the German concessionaires and the purpose of the German diplomatic agents interested in the success of the project.[39]

There were other ardent French nationalists who felt very much the same way about it. However, in their opinion, it would be unwise to gamble on the complete absorption of Germany in her _Bagdadbahn_. It would be wiser, perhaps, to withhold financial support until such time as the German Foreign Office was willing to execute a formal treaty conferring upon France an exclusive sphere of interest in Morocco. Bagdad was to be had for the asking—but in exchange for Morocco! It is said that in 1905, after the fall of Delcassé and on the eve of the Algeciras Conference, M. Rouvier, Prime Minister of France, approached the German ambassador in Paris with a view to negotiating a Franco-German agreement granting Germany a free hand in Turkey in return for recognition of the special interests of France in Morocco.[40]

M. André Tardieu revived this suggestion two years later. “Germany needs capital,” he said. “And when one needs capital, it is to France that one comes in search of it. It is inevitable, necessary, therefore, that Germany come to us. She will be obliged to come to us sooner or later to seek our capital for the Bagdad enterprise. Germany has the concession. She has commenced the lines. But all the sections requiring the greatest engineering skill are still to be constructed, and she has not the money to construct them.” If France agrees to let Germany have the necessary funds, it will be on the condition that Germany allow France important compensations. “Where will these compensations be sought? I have no hesitation in saying, in Morocco. The Act of Algeciras must be set aside, and France must have a free hand in Morocco! An agreement upon the Bagdad question would be mischievous if it concerned Bagdad alone, for, the Germans having the concession in their pockets, the positions of the negotiators would not be equal. On the other hand, if the agreement is for two purposes, if it refers to Bagdad _and_ Morocco, I believe, I repeat, it would be both practicable and desirable.”[41]

The proposal that French consent to the Bagdad Railway could be purchased with compensations in North Africa met with no enthusiasm in Germany. Herr Bassermann, leader of the National Liberals in the Reichstag, urged the Foreign Office to meet any such diplomatic maneuver on the part of France with a sharp rebuff.[42] At the time of the Agadir crisis, furthermore, Baron Marschall von Bieberstein is said to have warned Bethmann-Hollweg that Germany would have to stand firm on Morocco, for “if, notwithstanding Damascus and Tangier, we abandon Morocco, we lose at one blow our position in Turkey, and with it the advantages and prospects for the future which we have acquired painfully by years of toil.”[43]

It was not until 1914 that an agreement was reached between France and Germany on Asiatic Turkey. For more than ten years, then, the Bagdad Railway was a stinging irritant in the relations between the Republic and the Empire. It aggravated an open wound which needed, not salt, but balm. We shall return later to consider its consequences. But in the meantime we must turn our attention to Great Britain, standing astride the Persian Gulf and blocking the way.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES

[1] Regarding Russian railways in the Near East _cf._ the article “Russia—Railways,” in the _Encyclopedia Britannica_, 11th edition,