Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/147

 sheer nonsense, that no such plan was in contemplation by the promoters of the Bagdad enterprise, and that the reports of such intentions were the work of ignorant chauvinists. It will be recalled, also, that a secret annex to the concession of 1903 pledged the Deutsche Bank not to encourage German or other foreign immigration into Turkey.[10]

Germans denied, likewise, that they had any intention of utilizing the Bagdad Railway as a means of acquiring an exclusive sphere of economic interest in the Ottoman Empire. Attention was continually directed to Articles 24 and 25 of the Specifications of 1903, which decreed that rates must be applicable to all travelers and consignors without discrimination, and which prohibited the concessionaires from entering into any contract whatever with the object of granting preferential treatment to any one. Arthur von Gwinner, President of the Bagdad Railway, stated that his company had loyally abided by its announced policy of equality of treatment for all, regardless of nationality or other considerations, and he challenged the critics of the enterprise to cite a single instance in which the contrary had been the case. Dr. Rohrbach wrote, in 1903, that it was "unthinkable that Germans should seek to monopolize the territories of the Turkish Empire for the purposes of economic exploitation." Somewhat later he again stressed this point: "Germany's political attitude to Turkey is unlike that of all other European powers because, in all sincerity, we ask not a single foot of Turkish territory in Europe, Asia, or Africa, but have only the wish and the interest to find in Turkey—whether its domination be in future restricted to Asia or not—a market and a source of raw materials for our industry; and in this respect we advance no claim on other nations than that of the unconditional open door." Baron von Schoen pledged the Government to a policy of equal and unquali