Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/100

 above ten thousand francs was to be divided sixty per cent to the Government, forty per cent to the Railway. The Government also agreed to reimburse the Company, in thirty annual payments of three hundred fifty thousand francs, for such improvements as might be necessary to prepare the Anatolian Railways for the initiation of a through express service to the Persian Gulf and, furthermore, to subsidize that express service at the rate of three hundred fifty thousand francs annually from the date of the completion of the main line to Aleppo.[49]

Closely connected with these financial guarantees were grants of public lands. Lands owned by the Government and needed for right-of-way were transferred to the concessionaires free of any charge. Additional land required for construction purposes might be occupied without rental as well as worked by the Company for sand and gravel. Wood and timber necessary for the construction and operation of the railway might be cut from State-owned forests without compensation. The concessionaires were permitted to operate mines within a zone twenty kilometres each side of the line, subject to such regulations as might be laid down by the Ministry of Public Works. As a public utility, the railway was granted the right of expropriation of such privately owned land as might be essential for the right-of-way, as well as quarries, gravel-pits, or other properties necessary for purposes of construction. The Company was authorized, also, to conduct researches for objects of art and antiquity along the route of the railway![50]

In the foregoing respects the Bagdad Railway Convention was by no means revolutionary in character. In issuing its bonds for the purpose of financing railway construction, in pledging public revenues as a guarantee of traffic receipts, in granting public lands for right-of-way, the Imperial Ottoman Government was following well