Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/272

 danger of eventual German control of all communications in the Ottoman Empire. The Imperial Ottoman Bank was relieved of the risk of carrying an investment of almost seventy million francs in the Bagdad enterprise—an investment which had been a "frozen asset" because of the persistent refusal of the French Government to admit the Bagdad securities to the Bourse. In return, the Bank received a large block of Imperial Ottoman bonds, which were readily negotiable and which materially increased French influence in the Ottoman Public Debt Administration. Furthermore, as a result of a tacit agreement with the Deutsche Bank, the Imperial Ottoman Bank was awarded the Imperial Ottoman Five Per Cent Loan of 1914, amounting to $100,000,000, upon terms affording a handsome profit to the underwriters.[16] As for the French Government, it was enabled to emerge gracefully from the difficult situation in which it found itself after the Potsdam Agreement. France no longer was obliged to pursue a purely Russian policy in the Near East, for the Tsar's Government—in addition to withdrawing its objections to German railways in Asiatic Turkey—gave its consent to the construction of the French Black Sea Railways with the sole proviso that the system should not be completed in its entirety until Russia had constructed certain strategic railways necessary to assure the safety of the Caucasus frontier.[17]

German diplomacy, on the other hand, had strengthened its position in the Near East by securing definite recognition of central and southern Anatolia, northern Syria and Mesopotamia as German spheres of interest. German financiers acquired exclusive control of the Bagdad enterprise and were assured that there would be no further obstruction of their plans by the French Government. The French promise to coöperate in improving the financial situation in Turkey meant that funds would be forthcom