Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/169

 CHAPTER VII

RUSSIA RESISTS AND FRANCE IS UNCERTAIN

Russian objections to the Bagdad Railway were put forth as early as 1899, the year in which the Sultan announced his intention of awarding the concession to the Deutsche Bank. The press of Petrograd and Moscow roundly denounced the proposed railway as inimical to the vital economic interests of Russia. It was claimed that the new line would offer serious competition to the railways of the Caspian and Caucasus regions, that it would menace the success of the new Russian trans-Persian line, and that it might prove to be a rival even of the Siberian system.[1] The extension of the existing Anatolian Railway into Syria, it was asserted, would interfere with the realization of a Russian dream of a railway across Armenia to Alexandretta—a railway which would give Russian goods access to an all-year warm water port on the Mediterranean. The Mesopotamian sections of the line, with their branches, might open to German competition the markets of Persia and, later, of Afghanistan. If German capital should develop the grain-growing possibilities of the Tigris and Euphrates valleys, what would happen to the profits of the Russian landed aristocracy? And if the oil-wells of Mesopotamia were as rich as they were said to be, what would be the fate of the South Russian fields? The Tsar was urged to oppose the granting of the kilometric guarantee to the concessionaires, on the ground that the increased charges on the Ottoman