Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/369

 The present opportunities for development of American commerce in the Near East are very great, and its permanent success will depend largely upon the continued influence of the Navy in that region."[51] This is the situation as diagnosed by the Navy Department itself.

"With the assistance of a small force of destroyers based on Constantinople," according to an instructor in the United States Naval Academy, "our commercial representatives are establishing themselves firmly in a trade which means millions of dollars to the farmers of the American Middle West. By utilizing the wireless of destroyers in Turkish ports, at Durazzo, and elsewhere, commercial messages have been put through without delay Destroyers are entering Turkish ports with 'drummers' as regular passengers, and their fantails piled high with American samples. An American destroyer has made a special trip at thirty knots to get American oil prospectors into a newly opened field." Here is "dollar diplomacy" with a vengeance! "If this continues, we shall cease to take a purely academic interest in the naval problems of the Near East. These problems are concerned with the protection of commerce, the control of narrow places in the Mediterranean waterways, and the naval forces which the interested nations can bring to bear. They cannot be discussed without constant reference to political and commercial aims."[52]

Americans would do well to take stock of this Near Eastern situation. Mustapha Kemal Pasha invites the participation of American capital in railway construction in Anatolia for substantially the same reasons which prompted Abdul Hamid to award the Bagdad Railway concession to German bankers. In 1888, Abdul Hamid considered Germany economically powerful but politically disinterested. Today, Mustapha Kemal Pasha believes that American promoters, engineers, and industrialists