[13] Chéradame, op. cit., pp. 267 et seq.; The Times, August 10, 1899; K. Helfferich, Die Vorgeschichte des Weltkrieges, p. 124.
[14] Journal Officiel, Débats parlementaires, Chambre des Députés, March 25, 1902, p. 1468.
[15] According to M. Deschanel, this was sophistry. The French Government, if it was not guilty of an error of commission, certainly was guilty of a sin of omission. It was the opinion of M. Deschanel that the French Ambassador at Constantinople should have done something to put the French Government on record as opposed to the Bagdad Railway. M. Deschanel was not certain, however, that the French Ministry had not consented to the participation of French capital in the plan. “How can one imagine,” he said, “that an institution such as the Ottoman Bank became involved in an enterprise of such great political and military importance without the approval of our Foreign Office?... How is it that the Ottoman Bank is a party to this enterprise, and how is it that the Board of Directors for the first section of the line has French representatives, when only a word from the Government could have prevented it?” Ibid., November 20, 1903, p. 2798.
[16] Ibid., March 25, 1902, pp. 1468 et seq.
[17] Victor Bérard, “Le Discours du Chancelier,” in the Revue de Paris, December 15, 1906.
[18] The Revue Bleue, April 6, 1907, p. 429; Syria and Palestine, p. 126. Many of the claims that the Bagdad Railway jeopardized French prosperity were purely fantastic. It was maintained that the opening of the great Mesopotamian granary would cripple French agriculture, already seriously handicapped by the competition of the new world. To this was added the suggestion that development of cotton-growing in Turkey would stifle the infant efforts at the cultivation of cotton in the French colonies. It is incredible that Mesopotamian grain and cotton would have interfered with the flourishing prosperity of the French peasantry; in any event, any such danger was at least a generation removed. France raised high tariff barriers against foreign competition in the home market for agricultural products; she was not an exporter of grain.
[19] Journal Officiel, Débats parlementaires, Chambre des Députés, March 25, 1902, pp. 1467 et seq.
[20] Cf., M. Montbel, “Les puissances coloniales devant l’Islam,” in Questions diplomatiques et coloniales, Volume 37 (1914), pp. 348–362.
[21] Journal Officiel, Débats parlementaires, Chambre des Députés, November 20, 1905, p. 2798. The italics are mine.
[22] Revue des deux mondes, Volume 149 (1898), p. 29.