Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/161

 *tion of a Franco-British-Russian coalition against the Central Powers.

During the Great War these views were given wide publicity by Prince Lichnowsky, former German ambassador to Great Britain. In a memorandum, written for a few friends but subsequently published broadcast in Europe and America,[35] the Prince vehemently denounced the Drang nach Osten as the greatest of German diplomatic mistakes and as one of the principal causes of the Great War. "We should have abandoned definitely the fatal tradition of pushing the Triple Alliance policies in the Near East," he said; "we should have realized that it was a mistake to make ourselves solidary with the Turks in the south and with the Austro-Magyars in the north; for the continuance of this policy was bound in time, and particularly in case the requisite adroitness should be found wanting in the supreme directing agencies, to lead to the collision with Russia and the World War. Instead of coming to an understanding with Russia on the basis of the independence of the Sultan;  instead of renouncing military and political interference, confining ourselves to economic interests in the Near East,  our political ambition was directed to the attainment of a dominant position on the Bosporus. In Russia the opinion arose that the way to Constantinople ran via Berlin." This was the "fatal mistake, by which Russia, naturally our best friend and neighbor, was driven into the arms of France and England." Furthermore, maintained the Prince, a policy of Near Eastern expansion is contrary to the best commercial and industrial interests of the empire. "'Our future lies on the water.' Quite right"; therefore it does not lie in an overland route to the Orient. The Drang nach Osten "is a reversion to the Holy Roman Empire It is the policy of the Plantagenets, not that of Drake and Raleigh Berlin-Bagdad is a blind alley