The proposed—in fact the only feasible—terminus on the Persian Gulf was at Koweit. Like the Sultan of Muscat, the Sheik of Koweit was practically independent of Turkey. While showing deference to the Sultan as Khalif, Sheik Mobarek resisted every effort of the Vali of Bassorah to exercise even the semblance of authority over his small domain. In 1899, Colonel Meade, the British resident of the Persian Gulf, signed with Mobarek a secret convention which assured to him "special protection," if he would make no cession of territory without the knowledge and consent of the British Government. The following year, a German mission, headed by the Kaiser's Consul General at Constantinople, arrived in Koweit to arrange the concession for the terminus of the Bagdadbahn. They were too late. The door to the Persian Gulf was shut in the face of Germany.
Wilhelm II set into motion the Sultan. The Sublime Porte suddenly remembered that Koweit was Ottoman territory, and began to display great interest in forcing the Sheik to recognize the fact. A Turkish vessel appeared at Koweit in 1901. But British warships and British bluejackets upheld the independence of Koweit! Since the Constitution of 1908, all the efforts of the Young Turks at Koweit have been fruitless. Germany remains blocked.
British opposition to the German schemes was not limited to the prevention of an outlet of the Bagdadbahn at Koweit. In 1798, the East India Company established a resident at Bagdad to spy upon and endeavour to frustrate the influence of the French, just beginning to penetrate towards India through the ambition of Napoleon to inherit the empire of Alexander. Since that time, British interests have not failed to be well looked after in Lower Mesopotamia. After the Lynch Brothers, in 1860, obtained the right of navigating on the Euphrates, the development of their steamship lines gradually gave Great Britain the bulk of the commerce of the whole region, in the Persian as well as the Ottoman hinterland of the Gulf. In 1895, German commerce in the port of Bushir was non-existent, while British commerce surpassed twelve million francs yearly. In 1905, the market was shared about equally between Great Britain and Germany. In 1906, the Hamburg-American Line established a service to Bassorah. British merchants began to raise the cry that if the Bagdadbahn appeared the Germans would soon have not only the markets of Mesopotamia but also that of Kermanshah. The Lynch Company declared that the Bagdadbahn would ruin their river service, and their representations were listened to at London, despite the absurdity of their contention. The Lynches were negotiating with Berlin also. This mixture of politics and commerce in Mesopotamia is a sordid story, which does not improve in the telling.
The revolution of 1908 did not injure the German influence at Constantinople as much as has been popularly supposed. The Germans succeeded during the first troubled year in keeping in with both sides through the genius of Baron Marschall von Bieberstein, in spite of the Bosnia-Herzegovina affair. Germany was fortunately out of the Cretan and Macedonian muddles, in which her rivals were hopelessly entangled. Mahmud Shevket pasha was always under German influence, and the Germans had Enver bey, "hero of liberty," in training at Berlin. German influence at Constantinople succeeded also in withstanding the strain of the Tripolitan War, although it grew increasingly embarrassing as the months passed to be Turkey's best friend and at the same time the ally of Italy! During the first disastrous period of the war of the Balkan Allies against Turkey, it seemed for the time that the enemies of Germany controlled the Sublime Porte. But the revolver of Enver bey in the coup d'état of January, 1913, brought once more the control of Turkish affairs into hands friendly to Germany. They have remained there ever since.
Germany strengthened her railway scheme, and her hold on the territories through which it was to pass, by the accord with Russia at Potsdam in 1910.
The last clever attack of British diplomacy on the Bagdadbahn was successfully met. In tracing the extension of the railway beyond Adana, it was suggested to the Department of Public Works that the cost of construction would be greatly reduced and the usefulness of the line increased, if it passed by the Mediterranean littoral around the head of the Gulf of Alexandretta. Then the control of the railway would have been at the mercy of the British fleet. When the "revised" plans went from the Ministry of Public Works to the Ministry of War, it was not hard for the German agents to persuade the General Staff to restore the original route inland across the Amanus, following the old plan agreed upon in the time of Abdul Hamid. More than that, the Germans secured concessions for a branch line from Aleppo to the Mediterranean at Alexandretta, and for the construction of a port at Alexandretta. The Bagdadbahn was to have a Mediterranean terminus at a fortified port, and Germany was to have her naval base in the north-east corner of the Mediterranean, eight hours from Cyprus and thirty-six hours from the Suez Canal! This was the revenge for Koweit.
A month before the Servian ultimatum, Germany had contracted to grant a loan to Bulgaria, one of the conditions of which was that Germany be allowed to build a railway to the Ægean across the Rhodope Mountains to Porto Laghos, and to construct a port there, six hours from the mouth of the Dardanelles. There was a panic in Petrograd.
The events in Turkey since the opening of the war are too recent history and as yet too little understood to dwell upon. But the reception accorded to the Goeben and Breslau at the Dardanelles, their present[[1]] anomalous position in "closed waters" in defiance of all treaties, the abolition of the foreign post-offices, the unilateral decision to abrogate the capitulations—all these straws show in which direction the wind is blowing on the Bosphorus. A successful termination of the German campaign in France, which at this writing seems most improbable (in spite of the fact that the Germans are at Compiègne and their aëroplanes pay us daily visits), would certainly draw Turkey into the war—and to her ruin.[[2]]
[[1]] October, 1914.
[[2]] This chapter was written before the sudden and astonishing acts of war by Turkey in sinking a Russian ship and bombarding Russian Black Sea ports on October 29, 1914.