Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/210

 is a monument to the German Emperor's activity, built on the ruins of the influence which we threw away, and we do not precisely see what our locus standi in the matter is. If the interests of the Ottoman Government and of the German concessionaires be served by the construction of the line, constructed the line will be, and there's an end. Whether it ever will, or ever can pay its way, is the affair only of capitalists who are contemplating investment in it. It is not the slightest use barking when we cannot bite, and our power of biting in the present instance is excessively small The Emperor William, like Jack Jones, has 'come into 'is little bit of splosh' in Asia Minor, and it is quite useless to be soreheaded about it. It is childish to be ever carping and nagging and 'panicking.' We question whether the Bagdad Railway—while the rule of the Sultan endures—is going to do much good or much harm to anybody. The vision which some Germans have of peaceful Hans and Gretchen swilling Löwenbrau in the Garden of Eden to the strains of a German band, is little likely of fulfilment. If trade develops, a fair share of it will come our way, provided we send good wares and such as the inhabitants want to buy." This minority opinion, however, was unheeded in the outburst of anti-German feeling which followed Mr. Balfour's first statement to the House of Commons.

As events turned out, the failure of the Balfour Government to effect the internationalization of the Bagdad Railway was a colossal diplomatic blunder. If the proposed agreement of 1903 had been consummated, the entente of 1904 between France and England would have taken control of the enterprise out of the hands of the Germans, who would have possessed, with their Turkish collaborators, only fourteen of the thirty votes in the Board of Directors. Sir Henry Babington Smith assures the author that there was nothing in the arrangement sug