Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/144

 its political power with the economic interests of its nationals, it would have been standing out against an accepted practice of the Great Powers. Lord Lansdowne, British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, informed the House of Lords, in May, 1903, that it was impossible for the Foreign Office to dissociate commercial and political interests. He doubted whether British success in the Middle and Far East could have been achieved without careful diplomatic promotion of British economic interests in those regions.[5] Through financial control Russia and Great Britain effectually throttled Persian reform and nationalist aspirations. The pioneer activities of French capital in Tunis and Morocco are outstanding instances of modern imperial procedure. Such also is the use by the Government of the French Republic of its power to deny listings on the Paris Bourse for the purpose of forcing political concessions—a procedure which a French banker described to the author as "a species of international blackmail."[6] A prominent historian and economist has described the Franco-Russian alliance as a "bankers' creation."[7] What other powers had been doing it was to be expected that Germany would do. The ownership and operation of the Bagdad Railway by a predominantly German company was an important factor in a notable expansion of German commercial and financial activities in the Near East. In an age of keen competition for economic influence in the so-called backward areas of the world, this growth of German interests in Turkey was almost certain to influence the diplomatic policy of Germany toward the Ottoman Empire. The political aspirations of the diplomatists were reënforced by the economic interests of the bankers.

Had the German Government not voluntarily taken the Bagdad enterprise under its wing, it might have been compelled to do so. Popular dissatisfaction with a "weak"