Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/175

 of Russia, thus diverting troops from the European front. That the German General Staff was not ignorant of these possibilities is certain because of the presence in Turkey, during this time, of General von der Goltz.[9]

The Russian Government and the Russian press were fully aware of the menace of the Bagdad Railway to Russian imperial interests. That the Tsar did not offer serious resistance to the construction of the line was due to the rise of serious complications in the Far East, the crushing defeats of his army and navy in the War with Japan, friction with Great Britain in Persia and in Central Asia, and the outbreak of a revolutionary movement at home. But the Russian press called upon French citizens to show their loyalty to the Alliance by refusing to participate in the financing of the Railway.[10]

The plaintive call of the Russians, however, did not fall on altogether sympathetic ears in the Republic; a conflict of interests led some French citizens to invest in the Railway even though it was denounced by their Government.

The position of France in the Bagdad Railway controversy was anomalous. In addition to political, economic, and religious reasons for opposing the construction of the trans-Mesopotamian railway, the French had many historical and sentimental interests which influenced the Government of the Republic to resist German penetration in the Near East. French patriots recalled with pride the rôle of France in the Crusades; they remembered that Palestine itself was once a Latin kingdom; they believed that Christians in the Levant looked to France as their protector and that this protection had received formal recognition under the Capitulations, negotiated by Fran