Political Interests Come to the Fore
It was asserted times without number that the Bagdad Railway was an independent financial enterprise, unconnected with the political aims of the German Government in Turkey and in no sense associated with an imperialist policy in the Near East. At the time the concession of 1903 was granted Dr. Rohrbach expressed the belief that political and diplomatic considerations were quite outside the plans and purposes of the promoters of the Railway.[1] Herr Bassermann, leader of the National Liberal Party, announced to the Reichstag that, although German capital was predominant in the Railway, there was no intent on the part of the owners or on the part of the Government to build with any political arrière-pensée. Baron von Schoen, Imperial Secretary for Foreign Affairs, reiterated this idea with emphasis. He pointed out that the Bagdad convention of 1903 was not a treaty between Germany and Turkey, but a contract between the Ottoman Government and the Anatolian Railway Company. He maintained that if the railway were considered, properly, as a purely economic enterprise, “all the fantastic schemes that are from time to time being attached to it would evaporate.”[2] A British journalist wrote in 1913: “Gwinner, it may be assumed, is not building the Bagdad Railway for the purposes of the German General Staff. What chiefly keeps him awake of nights is how to extract dividends from it for the Deutsche Bank and how best to promote the golden opportunities which await the strategists of the German trading army in the Near East.”[3]
The German Government, nevertheless, had been interested in the Bagdad plan almost from its inception. The visits of the Emperor to Constantinople and Palestine; the appointment of German military and consular officers to the technical commission which surveyed the line in 1899; the enthusiastic support of the German ambassador all contributed to the success of the enterprise. In fact, the German Government was almost too solicitous of the welfare of the concessionaires; assistance, it was said, bordered upon interference. During the early stages of the negotiations of 1898–1899 Dr. von Siemens complained that the German embassy was jeopardizing the success of the project by insisting that the issuance of the concessions should be considered a diplomatic, as well as a business, triumph. Dr. von Gwinner, also, was discontented with the tendency of the German Government to urge strategic, rather than purely economic, considerations. There was a widespread belief in Germany, as well as elsewhere in Europe, that the Imperial Foreign Office nurtured the Bagdad Railway and its affiliated enterprises with a full realization that “the skirmishes of the political advance guard are fought on financial ground, although the selection of the time and the enemy, as well as the manner in which these skirmishes are to be fought, depends upon those responsible for our foreign policy. Much more than ever before Germans will have to bear in mind that industrial contracts, commercial enterprises, and capital investments are conveying from one country to another not only capital and labor, but also political influence.”[4]
Had the German Government been disposed to pursue a different policy in the Near East, had it refused to link its political power with the economic interests of its nationals, it would have been standing out against an accepted practice of the Great Powers. Lord Lansdowne, British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, informed the House of Lords, in May, 1903, that it was impossible for the Foreign Office to dissociate commercial and political interests. He doubted whether British success in the Middle and Far East could have been achieved without careful diplomatic promotion of British economic interests in those regions.[5] Through financial control Russia and Great Britain effectually throttled Persian reform and nationalist aspirations. The pioneer activities of French capital in Tunis and Morocco are outstanding instances of modern imperial procedure. Such also is the use by the Government of the French Republic of its power to deny listings on the Paris Bourse for the purpose of forcing political concessions—a procedure which a French banker described to the author as “a species of international blackmail.”[6] A prominent historian and economist has described the Franco-Russian alliance as a “bankers’ creation.”[7] What other powers had been doing it was to be expected that Germany would do. The ownership and operation of the Bagdad Railway by a predominantly German company was an important factor in a notable expansion of German commercial and financial activities in the Near East. In an age of keen competition for economic influence in the so-called backward areas of the world, this growth of German interests in Turkey was almost certain to influence the diplomatic policy of Germany toward the Ottoman Empire. The political aspirations of the diplomatists were reënforced by the economic interests of the bankers.
Had the German Government not voluntarily taken the Bagdad enterprise under its wing, it might have been compelled to do so. Popular dissatisfaction with a “weak” policy toward investments in backward countries may force the hand of an unwilling government. Whether this dissatisfaction be spontaneous or created by an interested press or both, it is certain to be powerful, for there are few governments which can resist for long the clamor for vigorous fostering of the nation’s interests and rights abroad. And there was no lack of popular enthusiasm in Germany for the Bagdad Railway. The fact that French capital had been invested in the undertaking was usually forgotten. The grand design came to be referred to, affectionately, as unser Bagdad and, somewhat flamboyantly, as the “B. B. B.” (Berlin-Byzantium-Bagdad). German publicists of imperial inclinations contemplated the Railway with reverent amazement, as though hypnotized. The project speedily became an integral part of the national Weltanschauung—a means of enabling Germans to compete for the rich commerce of the Orient, to appropriate some of its enormous wealth, to develop some of its apparently boundless possibilities. As a branch of Weltpolitik it held out alluring inducements for the exercise of political influence in the East—an influence which would serve at once to discomfit the Continental rivals of Germany and to promote the Drang nach Osten of her Habsburg ally.
The political aims of the German Empire in Turkey, however, were not concerned with colonization or conquest. It was not proposed, for example, to encourage German colonization of the regions traversed by the Bagdad Railway. During the last two decades of the nineteenth century, it is true, attempts had been made to stimulate German settlements in Syria and Mesopotamia. But later, when the problem of German oversea migration had become less acute, all proposals for German colonization in the Near East were abandoned.[8]
The difficulties in the way of European settlement of Asiatic Turkey were almost insurmountable. Mesopotamia is unbearably hot during the summer and is totally unfit for colonization by Europeans. During July and August the thermometer registers between 100 and 120 almost every day, and the heat is particularly oppressive because of the relatively high humidity. The total number of Europeans resident in Mesopotamia before the War was not in excess of 200, who were almost all missionaries, engineers, consuls, or archæologists. Palestine is more suitable as a place of residence, but the country is not particularly alluring; a few German agricultural colonies, chiefly Jewish, were established there, but they were comparatively unimportant in size, wealth, and political influence. In Anatolia the climate is tolerable, but not healthful for western Europeans. The plateau is subject to sudden and extreme changes in temperature in both winter and summer, and, consequently, pneumonia and malaria are almost epidemic among foreigners. To the German who was considering leaving the Fatherland to seek his fortune abroad, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Anatolia were by no means as attractive as Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Dakotas. Turkey offered few inducements to compare with the lure of the United States or of South America.[9]
In addition to these natural difficulties, there existed the pronounced opposition of the Turks to foreign colonization of their homeland. This opposition was so deep-rooted that General von der Goltz warned his fellow countrymen not to migrate to the Near East if friendly relations were to be maintained with the Ottoman Empire. Paul Rohrbach said that colonization of Turkey-in-Asia by Europeans was quite out of the question. H. F. B. Lynch, of the English firm of Lynch Brothers, one of the most pronounced opponents of the Bagdad Railway, declared that fear of German settlement of Asia Minor was sheer nonsense, that no such plan was in contemplation by the promoters of the Bagdad enterprise, and that the reports of such intentions were the work of ignorant chauvinists. It will be recalled, also, that a secret annex to the concession of 1903 pledged the Deutsche Bank not to encourage German or other foreign immigration into Turkey.[10]
Germans denied, likewise, that they had any intention of utilizing the Bagdad Railway as a means of acquiring an exclusive sphere of economic interest in the Ottoman Empire. Attention was continually directed to Articles 24 and 25 of the Specifications of 1903, which decreed that rates must be applicable to all travelers and consignors without discrimination, and which prohibited the concessionaires from entering into any contract whatever with the object of granting preferential treatment to any one. Arthur von Gwinner, President of the Bagdad Railway, stated that his company had loyally abided by its announced policy of equality of treatment for all, regardless of nationality or other considerations, and he challenged the critics of the enterprise to cite a single instance in which the contrary had been the case. Dr. Rohrbach wrote, in 1903, that it was “unthinkable that Germans should seek to monopolize the territories of the Turkish Empire for the purposes of economic exploitation.” Somewhat later he again stressed this point: “Germany’s political attitude to Turkey is unlike that of all other European powers because, in all sincerity, we ask not a single foot of Turkish territory in Europe, Asia, or Africa, but have only the wish and the interest to find in Turkey—whether its domination be in future restricted to Asia or not—a market and a source of raw materials for our industry; and in this respect we advance no claim on other nations than that of the unconditional open door.” Baron von Schoen pledged the Government to a policy of equal and unqualified opportunity for all in the regions to be opened up by the Railway.[11]
Furthermore, there is little reason to believe that the Germans had any intention of establishing a protectorate over Asiatic Turkey. Their determination to respect the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire was due, of course, not to magnanimity on their part as much as to expediency. Protectorates are expensive. For the same reason it may be doubted that there was any intention of maintaining an extensive military control over Turkey. German aims were to be served by the economic, military, and political renaissance of Turkey-in-Asia. A strong Turkey economically would be a Turkey so much the better able to increase the production of raw materials for the German market as well as to provide an ever more prosperous market for the products of German factories. A powerful Turkish military machine might strike some telling blows, in alliance with German arms, in a general European war; in the event of a Near Eastern conflict it might be utilized to menace the southern frontier of Russia or to strike at British communications with India. A politically strong Ottoman Empire might offer serious resistance to the Russian advance in the Middle East and might menace Britain’s hold on her Mohammedan possessions.
On the other hand, a Turkey in subjection would be an unwilling producer and a poor customer. The occupation of Turkey by German armed forces would seriously deplete the ranks of the German armies on the Russian and French frontiers, and in time of war would confront the German General Staff with the additional problem of maintaining order in hostile Mohammedan territory. The conquering of Turkey would bring the German Empire into the ranks of European powers with Mohammedan subjects, thus exposing it to the menace, common to Great Britain, France, and Russia, of a Pan-Islamic revival. For all of these reasons the obvious German policy was not only to respect the territorial integrity of Turkey, but to defend it against the encroachments of other powers. “Not a penny for a weak Turkey,” said Rohrbach, “but for a strong Turkey everything we can give!”[12]
In its political aspects the Bagdad Railway was something more than a railway. It was one phase of the great diplomatic struggle for the predominance of power, one pawn in the great game between the Alliance and the Entente, one element of the Anglo-German rivalry on the seas. The development of closer relations, political and economic, between Germany and Turkey was in accord with the spirit of an era of universal preparedness—preparedness for pressing economic competition, preparedness for the expected great European war in which every nation would be obliged to fight for its very existence. Through control of the economic resources of the Ottoman Empire, German diplomacy sought to arrive at an entente cordiale or a formal military alliance with the Sultan. Through support of the chief Mohammedan power Germany might throw tempting “apples of discord” into the colonial empires of her chief European rivals, for Great Britain ruled about eighty-five million subject Mohammedans, Russia about seventeen million, France about fifteen million; but Germany possessed almost none.[13] Friedrich Naumann wrote in 1889, in connection with the Kaiser’s pilgrimage to the Near East: “It is possible that the world war will break out before the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. Then the Caliph of Constantinople will once more uplift the standard of the Holy War. The Sick Man will raise himself for the last time to shout to Egypt, the Soudan, East Africa, Persia, Afghanistan, and India, ‘War against England.’ It is not unimportant to know who will support him on his bed when he utters this cry.”[14]
This menace to the British Empire was no more serious than another which was frankly espoused by certain supporters of the Bagdad plan—the possibility, even without a preponderance of naval power, of severing the communications of the empire in time of war. Dr. Rohrbach, for example, put it this way: “If it comes to war with England, it will be for Germany simply a question of life and death. The possibility that events may turn out favorably for us depends wholly and solely upon whether we can succeed in putting England herself in a precarious position. That cannot be done by a direct attack in the North Sea; all idea of invading England is purely chimerical. We must, therefore, seek other means which will enable us to strike England in a vulnerable spot.... England can be attacked and mortally wounded by land from Europe in only one place—Egypt. The loss of Egypt would mean not only the end of her dominion over the Suez Canal and of her communications with India and the Far East, but would probably entail, also, the loss of her possessions in Central and East Africa. We can never dream, however, of attacking Egypt until Turkey is mistress of a developed railway system in Asia Minor and Syria, and until, through the extension of the Anatolian Railway to Bagdad, she is in a position to withstand an attack by England upon Mesopotamia.... The stronger Turkey grows the more dangerous does she become for England.”[15]
It is only fair to add, however, that Dr. Rohrbach was not an authorized spokesman of the German people, the German Government, or the Bagdad Railway Company. His views were personal and are to be given weight only in so far as they influenced or reflected public opinion in Germany; to estimate their importance by such a standard is no simple task. But whatever its true significance, Dr. Rohrbach’s interest in the Bagdad Railway was certainly a source of great annoyance to Dr. von Gwinner, who was constantly called upon to explain irresponsible, provocative, and bombastic statements from Rohrbach’s pen. It is well to recall that the writings of publicists are sometimes taken too seriously.[16]
It would have been foolhardy, nevertheless, to discard these possibilities as purely imaginary. Once the Bagdad Railway was constructed and its subsidiary enterprises developed, there would have existed the great temptation to utilize economic influence for the promotion of strategic and diplomatic purposes. In an era of intensive military and economic preparedness for war the observance of the niceties of international relationships is not always to be counted upon. In such circumstances the wishes of the business men—whether they were imperialistic or anti-imperialistic—may be over-ruled by the statesmen and the soldiers. The chance to strike telling blows at French prestige in the Levant; the opportunity to embarrass Russia by strengthening Turkey; the possibility of menacing the communications of the British Empire; the likelihood of recruiting Turkish military and economic strength in the cause of Germany,—these were alluring prospects for discomfiting the Entente rivals of the German Empire.
At the same time it should be mentioned that promotion of the Bagdad Railway would serve to weld firmer the Austro-German alliance. Austrian ambitions in the Near East centered in the Vienna-Salonica railway and were distinct from the Berlin-to-Bagdad plan of the Germans; nevertheless circumstances served to promote a community of interest. First, the routes of the railways through the Balkans coincided in part: the Austrian railway ran via Belgrade and Nish to Salonica; traffic “from Berlin to Bagdad” followed the same line to Nish, where it branched off to Sofia and Constantinople. Second, Austrian, as well as German, trade would be carried over the Bagdad lines to the Orient, and Austrian industries would be able to secure raw materials from Anatolia and Mesopotamia. If the railway was to run from Berlin to Bagdad, it also was to run from Vienna to Bagdad. Third, similarly, German industry was to profit by the Austrian railway to Salonica, for it opened a new route to German commerce to the Aegean. “Germany’s road to the Orient lay, literally as well as figuratively, across the Balkan Peninsula.”[17] The Drang nach Osten was near to the hearts of both allies!
It was not without warning that the German nation permitted itself to be drawn into the imperial ramifications of the Bagdad Railway. Anti-imperialists sensed the dangers connected with such an ambitious project. Herr Scheidemann, leader of the Social Democrats in the Reichstag, for example, warned the German people that the railway was certain to raise increasingly troublesome international difficulties, and he expressed the fear that the German protagonists of the plan would come to emphasize more and more its political and military, rather than its economic and cultural, phases.[18] Karl Radek, also a Socialist, wrote that “The Bagdad Railway possessed great political significance from the very moment the plan was conceived.” He prophesied that German economic penetration in Turkey would prove to be only the first step toward a formal military alliance, which, in turn, would heighten the fear and animosity of the Entente Powers. “The Bagdad Railway,” he said, “constitutes the first great triumph of German capitalistic imperialism.”[19] Business men and politicians of imperialist inclinations did not deny the charges of their pacifist opponents. Herr Bassermann, so far from deprecating a greater political influence in the Ottoman Empire, came to glory in it. Baron von Schoen qualified his earlier statements with the following enunciation of policy: “With reference to the attitude of the Imperial Government, it goes without saying that we are giving the enterprise our full interest and attention and will make every effort to further it.”[20]
The political potentialities of the Bagdad Railway aroused the fear and opposition of the other European Powers. Exaggerated charges were made as to the intentions of the German promoters and the German Government, and there was a widespread feeling that there was something sinister about the plan. Professor Sarolea sounded a prophetic warning when he wrote, “The trans-Mesopotamian Railway ... will play in the Near East the same ominous part which the Trans-Siberian played in the Far East; with this important difference, however, that whilst the Far Eastern conflict involved only one European Power and one Asiatic Power, the Near Eastern conflict, if it breaks out, must needs involve all the European powers, must force the whole Eastern Question to a crisis, and once begun, cannot be terminated until the map of Europe and Asia shall be reconstructed.”[21]