Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/45

 Germans and Turkish Nationalists contended that there was a certain amount of cant in the righteous indignation of the Powers that Turkey should become militaristic. Was Russia, they said, as much interested in the welfare of Turkey as she was angered at the active measures of the Sultan to prevent a Russian drive at Constantinople via the southern shore of the Black Sea? Was France as much concerned with the safety of Turkey as she was solicitous of the imperial interests of her ally? Was Great Britain engaged in preserving the peace of the Near East, or was she fearful of a stiffened Turkish defence of Mesopotamia or of a Turkish thrust at Egypt?[25] For the Sultan to have admitted that foreign powers had the right to dictate what measures he might or might not take for the defence of his territories would have been equivalent to a surrender of the last vestige of his sovereignty. Obviously this was an admission he could not afford to make.

Whatever else Abdul Hamid may have been, he was no fool. To assume that this shrewd and unscrupulous autocrat walked into a German trap when he granted the Bagdad Railway concession is naïve and absurd. Abdul Hamid was not in the habit of giving things away, if he could avoid it, without adequate compensation for himself and his empire. As Lord Curzon said, there was no axiom dearer to the Sultan's heart than that charity not only begins, but stays, at home.[26] Abdul Hamid knew that the granting of railway subsidies would mortgage his empire. He knew that mortgages have their disadvantages, not the least of which is foreclosure. But mortgages also have their advantages. Abdul Hamid granted extensive railway concessions, carrying with them heavy subsidies, because he hoped the new railways would strengthen his authority within the Ottoman Empire and improve the political position of Turkey in the Near East.