Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/299

 maintenance of Ottoman neutrality. "To Germany the 'sphere of influence' in Turkey was of far greater economic and political importance than all her 'colonies' in Africa and in the South Seas put together. The latter, under the German flag, were an obvious and quick prey to Great Britain's naval superiority, but so long as Turkey remained out of the war the German sphere of influence in Anatolia and Mesopotamia was protected by the neutral Crescent flag. As soon as Turkey entered the war, however, Great Britain's naval superiority could be brought to bear upon Germany's interests in the Near East as well as upon her interests in Africa and Oceanica. If German imperialists were devoted to a Berlin-to-Bagdad Mittel-Europa project, there were British imperialists whose hearts and minds were set upon a Suez-to-Singapore South-Asia project. The Ottoman Empire occupied a strategic position in both schemes. A neutral Turkey, on the whole, was favorable to German imperialism. A Turkey in armed alliance with Germany presented a splendid opportunity for British imperialism."[1]

Turkish mobilization, furthermore, was a tediously slow process. The construction of the Bagdad Railway, as we have seen, had not been completed before the outbreak of the Great War.[2] There were wide gaps in northern Mesopotamia and in the Amanus mountains which made difficult the transportation of troops for the defence of Irak, an attack on the Suez, an offensive in the Caucasus, or the fortification of the Dardanelles. The entry of Turkey into the war before the completion of mobilization would have been of no material advantage to Germany and would almost certainly have brought disaster to the Ottoman Empire. Therefore, while the war went well for Germany on the French and Russian fronts, German influence at Constantinople was more concerned with creating sentiment for war and with