Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/64

 what he could to allay Russian suspicions of the purposes of the journey. Describing an interview which he had with the Tsar, in October, 1889, Bismarck wrote, in a memorandum recently taken from the files of the Foreign Office: "As to the approaching journey of the Kaiser to the Orient, I said that the reason for the visit to Constantinople lay only in the wish of our Majesties not to come home from Athens without having seen Constantinople; Germany had no political interests in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean; and it was accordingly impossible that the visit of our Majesties should take on a political complexion. The admission of Turkey into the Triple Alliance was not possible for us; we could not lay on the German people the obligation to fight Russia for the future of Bagdad."[23] In 1890, however, Prince Bismarck was dismissed, and the chief obstacle to the Emperor's Turkish policy was removed.

During the succeeding decade the German diplomatic and consular representatives in the Ottoman Empire rendered yeoman service in furthering investment, trade, and commerce by Germans in the Near East. It became proverbial among foreign business men in Turkey that no service was too menial, no request too exacting, to receive the courteous and efficient attention of the German governmental services. German consular officers were held up as models for others to pattern themselves after. The British Consul General at Constantinople, for example, informed British business men that his staff was at their disposal for any service designed to expedite British trade and investments in Turkey. "If," he wrote, "any merchant should come to this consulate and say, 'The German consulate gives such and such assistance to German traders, do the same for me,' his suggestion would be welcomed and, if possible, acted on at once."[24]

A judicious appointment served to reinforce the already