Page:Russian Realities and Problems - ed. James Duff (1917).djvu/19

 the expanding nations. If Germany does not let slip her chance, but puts it into her pocket before the Cossacks can dip their hands into it, she will soon have the best share in the partition of the world. As soon as some thousand armed German colonists begin to till the splendid soil, the fate of near Asia will be in the hands of the Emperor." This was written in 1886. I will not detain you by recalling how these ideas were realised. I suppose you know all about the friendship of William with the "Red Sultan," about the Emperor's theatrical journeys in 1898 to the tomb of Saladin in Damascus and to the Holy Places in Jerusalem, with all that display of German splendour, and with the profession by the Emperor that he is the only and the best friend of the Sultan, the only one who does not think of any partition of Turkey—and that because he wants her all for himself—the Emperor, the true and faithful protector of the Moslem all over the world. And then, after the Emperor, came the Krupps and von der Goltz: instructors for the Turkish army and concessions for German capital. The railway line—very short at first—from Haidar-Pasha to Ismid; then just a little further to Angora; then by a short cut down to the south to Konieh; and finally, in 1899, from Konieh to its terminus on the Persian Gulf—this is in a few words the story of the Bagdad railway.

I am not going to dwell on all these developments, which I suppose to be known, and I pass on to my chief point. How did all this expanding policy of Germany in the Near East affect Russia and her policy in the Balkans? Russia as a whole—I do not mean single politicians—paid simply no attention to it for a