Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/266

 and I hope the Foreign Office will approach Turkey with a view to an arrangement for the completion of the Bagdad Railway which might be agreeable to Turkey, Germany and ourselves."[9]

The hope of Mr. Pickersgill was fulfilled, for the agreement of November 4, 1910, proved to be the first of a series of conventions regarding the Near East negotiated between 1911 and 1914 by Germany, Turkey, Great Britain and France. On the eve of the Great War the Bagdad Railway controversy had been all but settled!

France, relieved of the necessity of supporting Russia's strategic objections to the Bagdad Railway, was glad to compromise with Turkey—in return for compensatory concessions to French investors. The sharp rebuff given M. Pichon by the Young Turks in the loan negotiations of the spring and summer of 1910 had convinced French diplomatists and business men alike that a policy of bullying the new administration at Constantinople would be futile.[10] Continued obstruction of Ottoman economic rehabilitation could have but two effects: to injure French prestige and prejudice the interests of French business; to drive the Young Turks into still closer association with the German Government and still greater dependence upon German capitalists. On the other hand, a conciliatory policy might be rewarded by profitable participation of French bankers in the economic development of Turkey-in-Asia and by a revival of French political influence at the Sublime Porte.

Even before the negotiation of the Potsdam Agreement the Young Turks had smiled upon French financial interests in the hope that the French Government might adopt a more friendly attitude toward the new régime in Turkey.