Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/211

 *gested by the Deutsche Bank which would have prevented eventual Franco-British domination of the line. Surely, as Bismarck is said to have remarked, every nation must pay sooner or later for the windows broken by its bellicose press!

In addition to the pressure which was brought to bear on the Balfour Cabinet by the newspapers, there were important vested business interests which quietly, but effectively, made themselves heard at Downing Street during the critical days of the Bagdad negotiations of 1903.

It already has been noted that in 1888, as part of the plans of the Public Debt Administration for the improvement of transportation facilities in Turkey, the British-owned Smyrna-Aidin Railway Company was granted permission to construct several important branches to its main line. For a time this new concession thoroughly satisfied the owners and directors of the Company, and there was no objection on their part to the extension and development of the German-owned Anatolian system. By 1903, however, when the Bagdad concession was under discussion, the Smyrna-Aidin line demanded the protection of the British Government against the undue extension of German railways in the Near East. In particular, it objected to the agreement between the Anatolian Railway and the Smyrna-Cassaba Railway, by which the latter joined its tracks with the Anatolian system at Afiun Karahissar and accepted a schedule of tariffs satisfactory to both lines.[13] The Smyrna-Aidin Company feared that the Bagdad Railway would develop the ports of Haidar Pasha, Alexandretta, and Mersina at the expense of the prosperity of Smyrna, thereby decreasing the relative importance of the Smyrna-Aidin line and cutting down