Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/205

 offered the British Government an admirable opportunity to retaliate.

The Manchester Guardian, organ of the old Liberalism, likewise was opposed to British participation in the Bagdad Railway. Pleading for continued observance of Britain's time-honored policy of isolation, its leading editorial of April 15 said: "Mr. Balfour expressed his belief that 'this great international artery had better be in the hands of three great countries than in the hands of two or of one great country.' In other words, England is to be mixed up in the domestic broils of Asia Minor; every Kurdish or Arab attack on the railway will raise awkward diplomatic questions, and any disaster to the Turkish military power will place the whole enterprise in jeopardy. What is far more important, English participation in railway construction in Asia Minor will certainly strengthen the suspicions which Russia entertains regarding our policy. It is the fashion with certain English politicians to abuse Russia for building railways in Manchuria and for projecting lines across Persia. Yet Mr. Balfour seems more than half inclined to pay her policy the compliment of imitation by helping to build a railway across Mesopotamia to the Persian Gulf—and, worse still, of imperfect imitation, since the Government is certainly not prepared to occupy the territory through which the railway will pass, as Russia does in Manchuria. What vital interests of our own shall we strengthen by this sudden ardour for railways in Turkey to counterbalance the certain weakening of our friendly relations with Russia?"

Violent as was the opposition of the press to any coöperation with the Germans in the Bagdad Railway, the opposition would have been still more violent had all of the facts been public property. Mr. Balfour, however, was keeping the House and the country in complete igno