Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/219

 privileged position enjoyed by Great Britain in the Persian Gulf. Foreign merchants might be admitted to a share in the Gulf trade, but the existence of a port under foreign control hardly could be approved.[24]

Lord Lansdowne, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, speaking before the House of Lords, on May 5, 1903, made the position of the Government clear: "I do not yield to the noble Lord [Lord Ellenborough] in the interest which I take in the Persian Gulf or in the feeling that this country stands, with regard to the navigation of the Persian Gulf, in a position different from that of any other power The noble Lord has asked me for a statement of our policy with regard to the Persian Gulf. I think I can give him one in a few simple words. It seems to me that our policy should be directed in the first place to protect and promote British trade in those waters. In the next place I do not think that he suggests, or that we would suggest, that those efforts should be directed towards the exclusion of the legitimate trade of other powers. In the third place—I say it without hesitation—we should regard the establishment of a naval base, or of a fortified port, in the Persian Gulf by any other power as a very grave menace to British interests, and we should certainly resist it with all the means at our disposal. I say that in no minatory spirit, because, as far as I am aware, no proposals are on foot for the establishment of a foreign naval base in the Persian Gulf."[25]

Lord Lansdowne might have reminded his hearers that, although the British Government was disposed to be friendly toward the Bagdad Railway, measures already had been taken which effectively precluded any possibility of the construction by the concessionaires, without British consent, of terminal and port works at Koweit. In 1899, when the first announcements came from Constantinople regarding the Bagdad project, Lord Curzon, then Viceroy