Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/126

 that the great majority of the unskilled laborers were Italians.[26]

Ultra-patriotic Germans, furthermore, denounced Dr. von Gwinner and his associates for not making the Bagdad Railway an exclusively Teutonic enterprise. A speaker at a Berlin branch of the Pan German League had this to say of the situation: "The Bagdad Railway, which in its origins was entirely German, has, thanks to the criminal negligence of the Deutsche Bank, become almost wholly French. The German schools along the line of the Railway, which were established by von Siemens, have fallen into decay. The officials of the Railway speak French. The ordinary language for transacting the business of the Railway is French, although the French share of the capital is only thirty per cent. The German engineers may as well be called home to-day as to-morrow."[27]

Nevertheless, the rapid expansion of German financial interests in the Near East and the established policy of the German banks to encourage and assist export trade were factors in a remarkable development of German trade in the Ottoman Empire, as will be indicated by the following table:[28]

Exports from   Imports to          Turkey to      Turkey from Year   Germany—Marks  Germany—Marks

1900    30,400,000       34,400,000 1901     30,000,000       37,500,000 1902     36,500,000       43,300,000 1903     37,700,000       50,200,000 1904     43,500,000       75,300,000 1905     51,600,000       71,000,000 1906     55,000,000       68,200,000 1907     55,100,000       81,500,000 1908     47,600,000       64,000,000 1909     57,300,000       78,900,000 1910     67,400,000      104,900,000 1911     70,100,000      112,800,000