Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/267

 In June, 1910, for example, the Smyrna-Cassaba Railway was authorized to extend its existing line from Soma, in western Anatolia, to Panderma, on the Sea of Marmora. The concession carried with it the highest kilometric guarantee (18,800 francs) ever granted a railway in the Ottoman Empire, although the construction of the line offered fewer engineering and financial difficulties than other railways which had been constructed under less favorable terms. From the standpoint of the Turkish Government, however, the Soma-Panderma railway offered economic and strategic returns commensurate with the investment, for it was part of a comprehensive plan for the improvement of commercial and military communications in Asia Minor.[11]

The acceptance of this concession by French capitalists—presumably with the approval, certainly without the opposition, of their Government—was an interesting commentary on the official attitude of the French Republic toward the Bagdad Railway. If it was unprincipled for Germans to accept a guarantee for the construction and operation of their railways in Turkey, it is difficult to ascertain what dispensation exempted Frenchmen from the same stigma. If the Anatolian and Bagdad systems were anathema because of their possible utilization for military purposes, little justification can be offered for the Soma-Panderma line, which, completed in 1912, was one of the principal factors in the stubborn defence of the Dardanelles three years later.

Shortly after the promulgation of the Soma-Panderma convention additional steps were taken by the Ottoman Government toward the further extension of French railway interests in Anatolia and Syria. Negotiations were initiated with the Imperial Ottoman Bank for the award to a French-owned company, ''La Société pour la Construction et l'Exploitation du Réseau de la Mer Noire'',