Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/300

 292] FOREIGN HISTORY. pa».

upon their export trade. Ultimately the Reichstag authorised the Government to extend the most-favoured-nation treatment to Great Britain and the British colonies in return for similar treatment; but it limited this authorisation in respect of time to the date July 30, 1900.

Another success achieved by Prussian diplomacy was the grant by the Sultan on November 27 to the Deutsche Bank syndicate of a concession for the extension of the Anatolian Rail- way from Eonieh to Basra on the Persian Gulf. This railway will connect one of the most fertile districts of Asia with the traffic of Eastern and Central Europe, and will bring Persia and the country bordering on the Persian Gulf within nearer reach of German enterprise. The line is to pass through Bagdad and along the valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates, and is to be completed within eight years. Meanwhile steps had been taken to accelerate the communications of Germany with Constantinople. On March 1 a treaty was signed between Germany and Roumania providing that an express train should be run between Berlin and Bucharest, with a fortnightly direct service to the Roumanian harbour of Kustendji, whence Rou- manian mail steamers ply direct to Constantinople. This reduces the journey from Berlin to Constantinople, which took sixty-four hours by the Orient express, to forty-eight hours. Provision was also made for the construction of a new telegraph wire from Berlin to Bucharest by way of Galicia.

In June the Caroline Islands, the Pelew Islands, and the Spanish Ladrones Islands were ceded to Germany by Spain for a sum of 25,000,000 pesetas. European plantations had for some time existed on these islands, and the majority of them were in German hands. This acquisition was thus de- scribed by Herr von Bulowin the Reichstag: "For Spain the islands are only fragments of an edifice that has collapsed. For us they are pillars and buttresses for a new and promising building " ; and he went on to show that the islands had har- bours which would serve as naval bases and ports of call for Germany's naval communications between South-Eastern Asia (Kiao-Chau) and South America. The following were the terms of the agreement between the two Governments: —

1. Spain is to cede to Germany the Caroline Islands, to- gether with the Pelews and the Mariannes, with the exception of Guam, for a compensation fixed at 25,000,000 pesetas.

2. Germany is to grant to Spanish trade and Spanish agri- cultural enterprise in the Carolines, Pelews, and Mariannes the same treatment and the same facilities as to German trade, and is to grant to the Spanish religious orders in the above- named islands the same rights and the same liberties as to the German religious orders.

3. Spain is to have the right to establish a coal dej>6t for her war and trading fleet in the Carolines, a second in the

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