The first phase lasted from the Congress of Berlin of 1878, when Prince Lichnowsky says that Germany began the Triple Alliance policy, and more definitely from the accession of the present Emperor to the throne in 1888 until the Balkan wars. While in using these expressions the ex-Ambassador does not refer only to this period, he says: "The goal of our political ambition was to dominate in the Bosporus," and "instead of encouraging a powerful development in the Balkan States, we placed ourselves on the side of the Turkish and Magyar oppressors." These words contain in essence and in tabulated form an explanation (from the pen of a German whose personal and official positions enabled him to know the truth) of the events which were in progress during this period--events the full importance of which has often been refuted and denied by those who refused to see that from the first the Kaiser was obsessed by a desire for domination from Hamburg to the Persian Gulf. Indeed, from the moment of his accession the sentiments and views of the German ruler became markedly apparent, for one year later his Majesty paid the first of his carpet-bagging visits to Constantinople--a visit more or less connected with the then recent grabbing of Haidar Pasha-Ismid railway--now the first section of the Bagdad line--by the Germans, and with the prolongation of that line to Angora as a German concern, concessions secured by Mr. Kaula, acting on behalf of German interests in 1888. Preparing for Pan-German Project Before and particularly after the appointment of Baron Marschall von Bieberstein, who had then been a personal friend of the Kaiser for many years, the enemy had been carefully preparing the way for the realization of his Pan-German dreams in the Near and Middle East. Although so far as the Balkan States were concerned, up to the outbreak of the war the Kaiser endeavored to screen his intentions behind a nominally Austrian program, for years he had really been making ready his ground for the present occasion by military, political, and economic penetration and by diplomatic intrigues destined to bring about a favorable situation for Germany when the propitious moment for action arrived. The power of von der Goltz Pasha, who introduced the present military system into Turkey in 1886, and of his pupils was gradually increased until the Ottoman Army was finally placed completely under Germanic control.