Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/215

 wrote: "The Bagdad Railway taken as a whole is of importance only for through passenger and postal traffic (in which respect, therefore, it is of greatest value to the British in their communications with India) and occasionally for fast freight. The great bulk of the freight traffic, on the other hand, carrying the import and export trade of the East, hardly can fall to the Bagdad Railway, which, for a long time at least, must content itself with the local traffic of certain sections of the line," particularly in Cilicia, Syria, and northern Mesopotamia.[18]

The assertion that the cost of constructing and operating the line would be borne by British commerce was based upon specious reasoning. Higher customs duties would not be paid by the British merchant, but by the Turkish consumer. The only harmful effect of the increased duties would be a general increase of prices of imported commodities in Turkey, leading, perhaps, to a lesser demand for foreign goods. It was probable, on the other hand, that this slight disadvantage would be more than offset by the wider prosperity which the Railway was almost certain to bring the districts traversed. In any event, whatever burden might be saddled upon the import trade would have to be borne, in proportion to the volume of business transacted, by the competitors of British merchants as well as by British merchants themselves.

Many British business men were shrewd enough to foresee that the Bagdad Railway might prove to be far from disadvantageous to their interests. Where was the menace to British prosperity in a railway, German or otherwise, which promised improved communication with the British colonies in the Orient? The facilitation of mail service to India; the development of rapid passenger service to the East; the reduction of ocean freight rates as a result of healthy competition—all of these injured