This situation was not without its advantages to the French Clericals. Between the years 1899 and 1905, when the Bagdad Railway controversy was at its height, a serious domestic controversy was raging in France. In a bitter fight to extirpate Clericalism the Republican ministries of Waldeck-Rousseau and Émile Combes had put through law after law to curb the power of the Church and to break up the influence of the religious orders. The Clericals were waging a losing battle. But perhaps the last crushing blows might be warded off by resorting to a favorite maneuver of Louis Napoleon—the diversion of popular attention from domestic affairs to foreign policy. If Republicans and Monarchists, Socialists and bourgeois Liberals, Radicals and Conservatives, Free-Masons and Clericals, could be aroused against the German advance in Turkey, a common outburst of national pride might obscure, for a time at least, the domestic war on organized Catholicism. Therefore Clerical writers in France warned of the menace of the Bagdad Railway to the Russian Alliance, to the advance of French commerce, and to the ancient prerogatives in the East. “It is Germany, preëminent at Constantinople,” said an anonymous writer in the Revue des deux mondes, “which blocks the future of Pan-Slavism in the East; it is Germany, installed in Kiao-chau, which can forestall Muscovite expansion toward the Pacific; it is Germany which, in the East and Far East, seeks to undermine our religious protectorate. Faced by the same adversary, it is natural that France and Russia should build up a common defence.” That France should not desert her ally Russia or her own prerogatives in the protectorate of Near Eastern missions is self-evident. “The protectorate over Catholics is for us, in short, a source of material advantage!”[33]
The Bagdad Railway Claims French Supporters
The Bagdad Railway was not without friends in France. The French chairman of the Ottoman Public Debt Administration was an enthusiastic supporter of the project and served on the Board of Directors of the Bagdad Railway Company, for he believed that widespread railway construction was essential to the establishment, upon a firm basis, of Turkish credit. The French-controlled Imperial Ottoman Bank, as early as 1899, had agreed to participate in the financing of the Bagdad line, and an officer of the bank had accepted the position of vice-president of the Bagdad Railway Company at the time of its incorporation in 1903. The French owners of important railways in Anatolia and Syria believed it would be suicidal for them to obstruct the plans of the Deutsche Bank and preferred to coöperate with the German concessionaires. Unless the French opponents of the Bagdad Railway were prepared to offer these interests material compensation for resisting its construction, it was hardly likely that, hard-headed business men as they were, they would jeopardize the security of their investments for the sake of such intangible items as international prestige and protectorates of missions.
There were two important groups of French-owned railways in Turkey-in-Asia. In Anatolia there was the important Smyrna-Cassaba system, extending east and north-east from the French-developed port of Smyrna. At Afiun Karahissar the main line of this system from Smyrna connected with the Anatolian line from Constantinople to Konia. Therefore a route for French trade already existed to all of Asia Minor; and when the Bagdad Railway was completed, direct service could be instituted from Smyrna to Adana, Aleppo, Mosul, Bagdad, and Basra. The second group of French railways was the Syrian system, owned by La Société Ottomane du Chemin de fer Damas-Hama et Prolongements. This company operated railway lines from Aleppo to Damascus, from Tripoli to Homs, from Beirut to Damascus, from Jaffa to Jerusalem, and between other less important points. After the completion of the Bagdad Railway this group of railways would have direct connections, at Aleppo, with all of Europe via Constantinople and with the Indies via Basra and the Persian Gulf. Perhaps the French interests controlling these railways were chagrined at their inability to secure the trans-Mesopotamian concession for themselves. But faced with the fait accompli of the German concession, they realized that coöperation with the Bagdad Railway would make their lines an integral part of a greater system of rail communications within Turkey and also between Turkey and the nations of Europe and Farther Asia. Refusal to coöperate would be cutting off their noses to spite their faces.[34]
French bankers were disposed to look at the Bagdad enterprise in much the same light. The economic renaissance of Turkey, which it was hoped would be an effect of improved rail communications, would increase the value of their earlier investments in that country. But, in addition, the Bagdad Railway offered handsome profits in itself: profits of promoting the enterprise and floating the various bond issues; profits of the construction company, in which French capital was to participate; profits of the shareholders when the Railway should become a going concern. True, the Council of Ministers had requested the Bourse to outlaw the Bagdad securities. But, after all, when profits are at stake, what is a mere resolution of the Cabinet among friends? A syndicate of French financiers invested heavily in the bonds and stock of the Bagdad Railway Company, the hostility of their Government notwithstanding. And it was said that one of the bankers who participated in the syndicate was none other than M. Rouvier, Minister of Finance in the Cabinet of M. Combes, and subsequently Prime Minister.[35]
Many intelligent French students of foreign affairs felt that a merely obstructionist policy on the part of France toward the Bagdad Railway would be futile and, in the end, disastrous. In spite of the many historical and sentimental attachments of France in the Near East, she really had no vital interests which were jeopardized by the Bagdad enterprise. It was urged, therefore, that she should play the rôle of conciliator of the divergent interests of Russia, Great Britain, Germany, and Turkey. A forward-looking program, it was suggested, would be to urge these nations to reach a full and equitable agreement in the promotion of “a project unquestionably valuable in the progress of the whole human race.” National material interests should be merged in “the superior interests of civilization.” Mere self-interest demanded this of France, because, should a war break out over the Near Eastern question, France would most certainly become involved.[36]
As regards the claims of Russia to influence French policy in the Bagdad Railway affair, there was a considerable amount of irritability exhibited by French publicists. It was pointed out, for example, that M. Witte was unwilling to accept “internationalization” of the Railway at a time when the German and French bankers were prepared to effect a satisfactory settlement on that basis. It was asserted, also, that Russian strategic interests were adequately safeguarded when the northern route was abandoned by the Black Sea Basin Agreement of 1900. So far from decreased difficulties of Turkish mobilization constituting a menace to Russia, “Russia still had both the power and, apparently, the inclination to be a formidable menace to Turkey.”[37] How could the Colossus of the Caucasus tremble before the Sick Man!
One French writer was frank in advocating that France should pursue a course independent of Russia in this instance. “The St. Petersburg press,” he wrote, “has asserted vehemently that we are unjust to support an enterprise which will injure considerably the economic interests of Russia, which will seriously prejudice its grain trade, and create a ruinous competitor to Russian railways now projected. Of what use is the Franco-Russian Alliance if our policy runs counter to Russian interests?
“We are particularly pleased to answer the question. The Franco-Russian Alliance does not imply complete servility on the part of France toward Russia, or annihilation of all free will, or perpetual agreement on matters of finance. After having furnished our ally with almost seven billion francs, we find ourselves called upon to support her policies in the Far East, although we ourselves were abandoned and isolated in the Fashoda affair. It will be well for us now to think of ourselves somewhat, although respecting scrupulously, even cordially, the clauses of the contract of alliance.... It is in our own interests to coöperate with Germany in the Bagdad enterprise. It is extremely regrettable that we cannot carry it out ourselves; but since it is otherwise, we should make the most of the conditions.”[38]