Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/54

 which the railway was to pass. Thus came into existence the Anatolian Railway Company (La Société du Chemin de Fer Ottomane d'Anatolie), the first of the German railway enterprises in Turkey.[5]

The German concessionaires were not slow to realize the possibilities of their concession. They elected Sir Vincent Caillard to the board of directors of their Company, in order that they might receive the enthusiastic coöperation of the Ottoman Public Debt Administration and in order that they might interest British capitalists in their project. With the assistance of Swiss bankers they incorporated at Zurich the ''Bank für orientalischen Eisenbahnen'', which floated in the European securities markets the first Anatolian Railways loan of eighty million francs—more than one fourth of the loan being underwritten in England. Shortly thereafter this same financial group, under the leadership of the Deutsche Bank, acquired a controlling interest in more than 1500 kilometres of railways in the Balkan Peninsula, by purchasing the holdings of Baron Hirsch in the Oriental Railways Company. The Bank für orientalischen Eisenbahnen became a holding company for all of the Deutsche Bank's railway enterprises in the Near East.[6]

Under the direction of German engineers, in the meantime, construction of the Anatolian Railway proceeded at so rapid a rate that the 485 kilometres of rails were laid and trains were in operation to Angora by January, 1893. About the same time a German engineering commission, assisted by two technical experts representing the Ottoman Ministry of Public Works and by two Turkish army officers, submitted a report on their preliminary survey of the proposed railway to Bagdad. This was enthusiastically received by the Sultan, who reiterated his intention of constructing a line into Mesopotamia at the earliest practicable date.[7]