Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/284

 Prince Lichnowsky initialed an important convention regarding the delimitation of English and German interests in Asiatic Turkey. The following day The Times announced that the terms of an Anglo-German agreement had been incorporated in a draft treaty, and on June 29, Sir Edward Grey informed the House of Commons that formal ratification of the convention was being postponed only "until Turkey and Germany have completed their own separate negotiations." By mid-July all was in readiness for the definitive signing of the treaty, but the widening importance of the Austro-Serbian dispute and the outbreak of the Great War put an end to the Bagdad Railway conversations.[31]

The terms of the convention of June 15, 1914—which might have meant so much to the future of Anglo-German relations—constituted a complete settlement of the controversy which had waged for more than ten years over German railway construction in the Mesopotamian valley. The reconciliation of the divergent interests of the two Powers was based upon the following considerations:[32]

1. "In recognition of the general importance of the Bagdad Railway in international trade" the British Government bound itself not "to adopt or to support any measures which might render more difficult the construction or management of the Bagdad Railway by the Bagdad Railway Company or to prevent the participation of capital in the enterprise." Great Britain further agreed that under no circumstances would it "undertake railway construction on Ottoman territory in direct competition with lines of the Bagdad Railway Company or in contravention of existing rights of the Company or support the efforts of any persons or companies directed to this end," unless in accord with the expressed wishes of the German Government.

2. His Britannic Majesty's Government pledged itself to support an increase in the customs duties of the Ottoman Empire from 11% to 15% ad valorem and, furthermore, to "raise no objection to the assignment to the Bagdad Railway Company of already existing Turkish State revenues, or of revenues from the