Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/262

 words, there was to be no change in the status quo. 2. Russia recognized the rights of the Deutsche Bank in the Bagdad Railway and agreed to withdraw all diplomatic opposition to the construction of the line and to the participation of foreign capital therein. 3. Russia agreed to obtain from Persia, as soon as possible, a concession for the construction of a railway from Teheran, the capital city, to Khanikin, an important commercial city on the Turco-Persian frontier. This new railway was to be linked with a branch of the Bagdad system to be constructed in accordance with the terms of the concession of 1903 from Sadijeh, on the Tigris, to Khanikin. Both lines were to be planned for through international traffic. If, for any reason, the Russian Government should fail to build the proposed railway from Teheran to Khanikin, it was understood that German promoters might then apply for the concession. 4. The policy of the economic open door was to be observed by both nations. Russia agreed not to discriminate against German trade in Persia, and the two nations pledged reciprocal equality of treatment on the new railway lines from Sadijeh to Teheran.[1]

Russia had a great deal to gain and little to lose by the Potsdam Agreement. Whether Russia liked it or not, the Bagdad Railway had become a going concern, and there was every indication that another decade would see its completion. When finished, the Bagdad system, together with projected Persian lines, would provide Russian trade with direct communications with the Indies (via Bagdad and the Persian Gulf) and with the Mediterranean (via Mosul, Aleppo, and the Syrian coast). By the entente of 1907 with Great Britain the Tsar had renounced his imperial interests in southern Persia; therefore he had little to gain by a dog-in-the-manger attitude toward the development of Mesopotamia by the Germans. Under these circumstances continued resistance to the