Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/192

 later to seek our capital for the Bagdad enterprise. Germany has the concession. She has commenced the lines. But all the sections requiring the greatest engineering skill are still to be constructed, and she has not the money to construct them." If France agrees to let Germany have the necessary funds, it will be on the condition that Germany allow France important compensations. "Where will these compensations be sought? I have no hesitation in saying, in Morocco. The Act of Algeciras must be set aside, and France must have a free hand in Morocco! An agreement upon the Bagdad question would be mischievous if it concerned Bagdad alone, for, the Germans having the concession in their pockets, the positions of the negotiators would not be equal. On the other hand, if the agreement is for two purposes, if it refers to Bagdad and Morocco, I believe, I repeat, it would be both practicable and desirable."[41]

The proposal that French consent to the Bagdad Railway could be purchased with compensations in North Africa met with no enthusiasm in Germany. Herr Bassermann, leader of the National Liberals in the Reichstag, urged the Foreign Office to meet any such diplomatic maneuver on the part of France with a sharp rebuff.[42] At the time of the Agadir crisis, furthermore, Baron Marschall von Bieberstein is said to have warned Bethmann-Hollweg that Germany would have to stand firm on Morocco, for "if, notwithstanding Damascus and Tangier, we abandon Morocco, we lose at one blow our position in Turkey, and with it the advantages and prospects for the future which we have acquired painfully by years of toil."[43]

It was not until 1914 that an agreement was reached between France and Germany on Asiatic Turkey. For more than ten years, then, the Bagdad Railway was a stinging irritant in the relations between the Republic and