Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/146

 Asiatic Turkey were almost insurmountable. Mesopotamia is unbearably hot during the summer and is totally unfit for colonization by Europeans. During July and August the thermometer registers between 100 and 120 almost every day, and the heat is particularly oppressive because of the relatively high humidity. The total number of Europeans resident in Mesopotamia before the War was not in excess of 200, who were almost all missionaries, engineers, consuls, or archæologists. Palestine is more suitable as a place of residence, but the country is not particularly alluring; a few German agricultural colonies, chiefly Jewish, were established there, but they were comparatively unimportant in size, wealth, and political influence. In Anatolia the climate is tolerable, but not healthful for western Europeans. The plateau is subject to sudden and extreme changes in temperature in both winter and summer, and, consequently, pneumonia and malaria are almost epidemic among foreigners. To the German who was considering leaving the Fatherland to seek his fortune abroad, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Anatolia were by no means as attractive as Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Dakotas. Turkey offered few inducements to compare with the lure of the United States or of South America.[9]

In addition to these natural difficulties, there existed the pronounced opposition of the Turks to foreign colonization of their homeland. This opposition was so deep-*rooted that General von der Goltz warned his fellow countrymen not to migrate to the Near East if friendly relations were to be maintained with the Ottoman Empire. Paul Rohrbach said that colonization of Turkey-in-Asia by Europeans was quite out of the question. H. F. B. Lynch, of the English firm of Lynch Brothers, one of the most pronounced opponents of the Bagdad Railway, declared that fear of German settlement of Asia Minor was