Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/337

 the reconstruction of the German merchant marine. But the Drang nach Osten has become a thing of the past. The dismemberment of the Austrian Empire and the erection of the Jugoslav Kingdom have shut off German access, through friendly states, to the Balkan Peninsula and Asiatic Turkey. Formidable customs barriers will stand in the way of overland trade with the Near East and render railway traffic from "Berlin to Bagdad" unprofitable. Defeat and disarmament have destroyed German prestige in the Moslem world. Democratization of both Germany and Turkey, it is hoped, will render increasingly difficult the kind of secret intrigue that characterized Turco-German relations during the régime of William II and of Abdul Hamid. If Germany returns to the Near East in the next generation or two, it is not likely to be in the rôle of an Imperial Germany promoting railway enterprises of great economic and strategic importance.

Russian diplomatic policy toward Turkey has likewise undergone important changes. Imperial Russia had been a bitter opponent of Imperial Germany in the Bagdad Railway project. Imperial Russia had conspired with Great Britain and France to bring about the collapse and dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire. Imperial Russia was the "traditional enemy" of the Turk. But Imperial Russia was destroyed in 1917 by military defeat and social revolution. Regardless of the pronunciamentos of bourgeois imperialists like Professor Milyukov, revolutionary Russia was certain to look upon the Near Eastern question in a new light. Political and economic disorganization incidental to the war and the revolution would have made it imperative for any government in Russia to curtail its imperialistic pretensions. And with the advent of Bolshevism the outcome was certain. A government which was anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist