Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/247

 gretted this incident as one likely to strain the future relations between the two countries."

From Paris Djavid Bey went to London. Sir Ernest Cassel appeared to be willing to negotiate a loan to Turkey of the desired amount, but, upon representations from M. Cambon, the French ambassador at London, Sir Edward Grey persuaded Cassel not to put in a bid for the bonds. This decision was reached largely, as Djavid Bey was informed by the British Foreign Office, because the Bagdad Railway was considered to be "an enterprise which under the existing concession has not been conceived in the best interests of the Ottoman Empire, while it offers, as at present controlled, an undoubted menace to the legitimate position of British trade in Mesopotamia." To the Turkish Government this statement was a piece of gratuitous impertinence, for, as Djavid Bey replied, "It was a prerogative only of the Ottoman Government to determine whether the conditions of construction and management of the Bagdad Railway were beneficial or detrimental to Turkey. England had no more right to object to the Bagdad Railway than Germany had to object to the British and French lines in operation in Turkey."

The collapse of the financial negotiations in Paris and London offered the Deutsche Bank an opportunity which its directors were too shrewd to overlook. Dr. Helfferich was despatched to Constantinople and within a few weeks had secured the contract for the entire issue of $30,000,000 of the Ottoman Four Per Cent Loan of 1910, upon terms almost identical with those agreed upon with the French syndicate before M. Pichon's interference. "On this occasion," writes Djavid Bey, "the Germans handled the business with great intelligence and tact. They brought up no points which were not related directly or indirectly to the loan, and they made no conditions which would have been inconsistent with the dignity of Turkey. This