Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/41

 of the peasantry; the hinterland of the ports of Constantinople, Smyrna, Mersina, Alexandretta, and Basra would be opened up; heretofore inaccessible mineral resources would be exploited. Foreign commerce might be restored to the prosperity it had once enjoyed before the Commercial Revolution of the sixteenth century replaced the caravan routes of the Near East by the new sea routes to the Indies. Mesopotamia might be transformed into a veritable economic paradise. The railways also would insure political stability, for rapid mobilization and transportation of the gendarmerie to danger points would enable the Sultan's Government to suppress rebellions of the turbulent tribesmen of Kurdistan, Mesopotamia, and Arabia. Peace and prosperity were goals within easy reach, thought von Pressel, if Turkey could be provided with a comprehensive system of railways.[17]

To the Ottoman Public Debt Administration peace and prosperity were means to reaching another goal—a full treasury. Greater income for the Turkish farmer, miner, artisan, and trader would mean greater opportunities for the extension of tax levies. And the greater the tax receipts the greater would be the payments to the European bondholders and the greater the value of the bonds themselves. Obviously, railway construction would improve Turkish credit in the financial centers of the world. But, for the time, the Ottoman Government had at its disposal neither the capital nor the technical skill to carry into execution the plans for an ambitious program of railway building, and private enterprise showed no disposition to interest itself without substantial guarantees. It was under these circumstances, therefore, that the Ottoman Public Debt Administration recommended to the Sultan that certain revenues of his empire should be set aside for the payment of subsidies to railway companies.[18]

The Public Debt Administration were not unaware that