Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/221

 In March, 1911, shortly after the Kaiser and the Tsar had reached an agreement at Potsdam on the Bagdad Railway question, Lord Curzon vigorously denounced the enterprise as a blow at the heart of Britain's empire in India and called upon the Foreign Office to persist in its policy of blocking construction of the final sections of the line.[29] This was in accord with a caustic criticism of German and Russian activities in the Near East, delivered by Mr. Lloyd George to the House of Commons, during which the future Premier made it plain that, whatever course Russia might pursue, Great Britain would not compromise her vital imperial interests in the region of the Persian Gulf.[30] The German concessionaires learned, to their disappointment and chagrin, that, on this point, in any event, the British Government stood firm. Even in 1914, when an international agreement was reached permitting the construction of the Bagdad Railway, Great Britain subscribed to the arrangement with the express proviso that the terminus of the line should be Basra and that the port to be constructed at Basra should be jointly owned and controlled by German and British capitalists. Construction of the line beyond Basra was not to be undertaken without the permission of the British Government.[31]

Although fear of foreign interference in the Persian Gulf region was the chief political objection raised by Great Britain to the construction of the Bagdad Railway, it was supplemented by a number of other objections—all associated, directly or indirectly, with the defence of India. The Bagdad Railway concession of 1903 provided for the construction of a branch line from Bagdad to Khanikin, on the Turco-Persian border. This proposed railway not only would compete with the British caravan trade between these cities, amounting to about three-quarters of a million pounds sterling annually, but would,