Page:The Rebirth Of Turkey 1923.pdf/86

 taken secretly from the Sultan in 1876. Aleppo became the most vulnerable spot in the Berlin-to-Bagdad scheme, protected in case of war only by the fact that prior Russian and French claims upon it might tie the British hands. Here the Bagdad Railway was to effect a junction with the French railways which drop down the Syrian corridor to Damascus, and the Caliph's inland Hejaz Railway dropped from Damascus down the back of the Syrian corridor to Medina whence it overlooked Mecca. Had the British been free in case of war to occupy Aleppo from Cyprus, the Berlin-to-Bagdad scheme would not only have been cut, but the Ottoman Empire would have fallen at once into two parts and ultimately into three. Deprived of the use of the sea, Constantinople would have been cut off from Syria and the Hejaz immediately and its communication with Mesopotamia would have been driven north into the heart of Asia Minor where the inevitable Russian advance from Trans-Caucasia would have imperilled it. Aleppo became the Achilles' heel of the Empire, pointed out to all who know their maps by the tell-tale finger of Cyprus.

When finally adopted, the route of the Bagdad Railway began at Konia on the Anatolian plateau, 3,300 feet above sea level, and well back into the hinterland approached the Taurus whose peaks rear their snow-clad summits against the sky at an altitude of 12,000 feet. Once through the Taurus, its route descended to the low plain of Cilicia and rose again to surmount the 5,000-foot Amanus Range which rims off the top of the Syrian corridor. Thence it dropped to the 1,200-foot level of