The Potsdam stipulations brought prominently before Europe the possible significance of Germany's free hand in Anatolian and Mesopotamian railway constructions. It also aroused interest in the possibility of an all-rail route from Calais to Calcutta, in which all the Great Powers except Italy would participate.
The trans-Persian and all other railway schemes in Persia came to nothing. Between 1872 and 1890 twelve district railway projects had received concessions from the Persian Government. One of these, the Reuter group, actually started the construction of a line from the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf. A French project for a railway from Trebizond to Tabriz had gained powerful financial support. All these schemes were frustrated by Russian diplomacy. In 1890, Russia secured from the Persian Government the exclusive right for twenty-one years to construct railways in Northern Persia. Needless to say, no lines were built. Russia had all she could do with her trans-Siberian and trans-Caucasian schemes. But she deliberately acted the dog in the manger. By preventing private groups from building railways in Persia which she would not build herself, Russia has retarded the economic progress, and is largely responsible for the financial, military, and administrative weakness, of contemporary Persia. By the accords of 1907 with Great Britain and 1911 with Germany, Russia secured their connivance in still longer continuing this shameful stagnation. To this day no railroad has been built in the Shah's dominions.
Just a month before the outbreak of the European war, the boy Shah of Persia was solemnly crowned at Teheran. It was an imposing and pathetic ceremony. The Russians and British saw to it that full honour should be given to the sovereign of Persia. The pathos of the event was in the fact that the Russian and British legations at Teheran paid the expenses of the coronation. The Shah received his crown from the hands of his despoilers. A similar farce was enacted a little while before in Morocco. Turkey alone of Moslem nations remains.
The last effort of Persia to shake off the Russian octopus was made on October 8, 1914, when Russia was requested once more to withdraw her troops from the Azerbaijan. The Russian Minister at Teheran, without going through the form of referring the request to Petrograd, answered that the interests of Russia and other foreign countries could be safeguarded only by the continued occupation. To this response his British colleague gave hearty assent.
The importance of the passing of Persia is two-fold. It shows how in one more direction Germany found herself shut out from a possible field of expansion. Through the weakness of Persia, Great Britain and Russia, after fifty years of bitter struggle, were able to come to a satisfactory compromise. It was in Persia that their animosity was buried, and that co-operation of British democracy and Russian autocracy in a war against Germany was first envisaged. The failure of the Persian constitutional Government was a tremendous blow to Germany. It strengthened the bases of the Triple Entente. For the events of 1908 and 1909 put the accord to severe test, and proved that it was built upon a solid foundation. The agony of one people is often the joy of another. Has Persia suffered vicariously that France may be saved?
CHAPTER VI
THE PARTITIONERS AND THEIR POLES[*]
[*] This chapter has not been written without giving consideration to the Russian point of view. There is an excellent book on Russia since the Japanese War (from 1906 to 1912) by Peter Polejaïeff.
When Russia, Austria, and Prussia partitioned Poland at the end of the eighteenth century, there were at the most six million Poles in the vast territory stretching from the Baltic nearly to the Black Sea. Of these a large number, especially in Eastern Prussia and in Silesia, had already lost their sense of nationality. Poland was a country of feudal nobles, whose inability to group under a dynasty for the formation of a modern state, made the disappearance of the kingdom an inexorable necessity in the economic evolution of Europe, and of ignorant peasants, who were indifferent concerning the political status of the land in which they lived.