Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/92

 had been granted to the Anatolian Railway Company without privilege of assignment to any other corporation. This meant that any participation of outside capital in the new Bagdad Railway would, of necessity, involve participation in the profits of the Anatolian lines already in operation—a prospect by no means pleasing to the original promoters. Furthermore, there was some question as to the advisability of placing under a single administrative head all of the line and branches from Constantinople to the Gulf.[29]

It was because of these difficulties, financial and administrative, that the Deutsche Bank marked time until March 5, 1903, when a revised Bagdad Railway convention was executed and plans were perfected for the financing of the first section of the line. It is to this Great Charter of the Berlin-to-Bagdad plan that we now must turn our attention.[30]

The definitive convention of 1903 provided that the existing Anatolian lines were to continue in the possession of their owners; the construction and operation of the new railway beyond Konia was to be vested—without right of cession, transfer, or assignment—in a new corporation, the Bagdad Railway Company. This new company was incorporated under Turkish law on March 5, 1903, with a capital stock of fifteen million francs, of which the Anatolian Railway Company subscribed ten per cent. Continued Turco-German control of the railway enterprise was assured by a provision of the charter that of the eleven members of the Board of Directors, three should be appointed by the directors of the Anatolian Railway Company, and at least three others should be Ottoman subjects.[31]

It was apparent that the Ottoman Government expected big things of the German concessionaires and their French associates. The new convention provided, first, for the