The most recent events are merely the repetition on a large scale of such as took place thousands of years ago and at frequent intervals since. The weapons have changed, new contestants have arisen to take the place of civilizations that after serving their day faded out of sight, but the issue has ever remained the same. We are confronted by that issue today--the control of the highway that leads to the East. * * * The decisive battlefields for the triumph of democracy are in the West, but the decision for supremacy among European nations lies in the East. The Bagdad Railway is the most recent act in a drama the beginnings of which lie in the remote past. * * * The course of events in the Near East since the entering wedge, represented by Napoleon's expedition to Egypt, is to be interpreted as the irresistible onslaught of the West to break down the barrier created in 1453. As we survey the successive steps in this onslaught, the struggle between France and England, culminating in the Convention of 1904, which gave France a dominant position in Morocco in return for allowing England a free hand in Egypt, the attempts of France and Russia to hedge in England in India, followed by England and Russia in dividing up their "spheres of influence" in Persia, the commercial and railway concessions secured by England, France, and Russia from Turkey, sinking ever deeper into a slough of desperate weakness, we see how these struggles, conventions, and partnerships all lead up to the dramatic climax--the struggle for the historic highway which is the key to the Near East. Its possession will mean in the future--as it always has in the past--dominion over Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and probably Arabia; and the Near East points its finger directly toward the Farther East. Under the modern symbol of railway control, Asia Minor, true to the genius of its history, once more looms up as a momentous factor in the world history. * * * The murder at Serajevo was merely the match applied to the pile all ready to be kindled. * * * [Illustration: MAP SHOWING THE COMPLETED AND PROJECTED SECTIONS OF THE BAGDAD RAILWAY, THE GERMAN ENTERPRISE THAT FIGURED AMONG THE PRIMARY CAUSES OF THE WAR] Full credit should be given to the German brains in which this project was hatched, and there is no reason to suspect that at the outset the German capitalists who fathered the enterprise were actuated by any other motive than the perfectly legitimate one to create a great avenue of commerce. When, however, the German Government entered the field as the backer and promoter of the scheme the political aspect of the railroad was moved into the foreground, and that aspect has since overshadowed the commercial one.