Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/218

 with friendly relations with Arabia, turned the Red Sea into a British lake. Menaced by the Russian advance toward India, Great Britain proceeded to dominate the entire Middle East: the foreign affairs of Afghanistan were placed under British tutelage and protection; Baluchistan was compelled to submit to the control of British agents; parts of Persia were brought within the sphere of British influence.[23]

Great Britain, apparently, was determined to control every important route to India. What, then, would be her attitude toward a trans-Mesopotamian railway, terminating at the only satisfactory deep-water port on the Persian Gulf? Was the possession of such a short-cut to India consistent with the exigencies of imperial defence?

Without a satisfactory terminus on the Persian Gulf the Bagdad Railway would lose its greatest possibilities as a great transcontinental line; with such a terminus it might become a menace to vital British interests in that region. British imperialists had been interested in control of the Persian Gulf since the seventeenth century, when the East India Company established trading posts along its shores. The British navy cleared the Gulf of pirates; it buoyed and beaconed the waters of the Gulf and the Shatt-el-Arab. A favorable treaty with the Emir of Muscat, in the latter part of the nineteenth century, provided Great Britain with a "sally port" from which to organize the defence of the entrance to the Gulf; later, Muscat became a protectorate of Great Britain. From time to time treaties were negotiated with the Arab chieftains of southern Mesopotamia, extending British influence up the Shatt-el-Arab and the Tigris and Euphrates to Bagdad. Under these circumstances, it was apparent from the very beginning that, whether or not the Balfour Government consented to British participation in the Bagdad enterprise, there would be no surrender of the