In the meantime the Teutonic Powers were trying to secure the necessary capital for their stupendous enterprise. From the very beginning of their vast undertaking they, under the lead of Dr. Siemens, president of the Administrative Board of the Anatolian Railway, fully realized the difficulties they would encounter in securing the funds requisite to cover the enormous cost of their colossal work. But to achieve success they had recourse to all the methods of shrewd business and sane diplomacy. And they were quick to perceive that the wisest and safest policy would be to work along the line of least resistance. Instead, therefore, of antagonizing their defeated competitors they would invite them to coöperate with them in the construction and operation of the great steel highway. They would, in a word, internationalize it and make it a purely commercial enterprise, whose sole object would be the expansion of western trade and the development of the fabulous resources of the mysterious East. But, as the concessionaires soon discovered to their surprise and disappointment, this was more easily said than done. The story of their many and long negotiations with foreign capitalists and statesmen is a long one and reveals, as few other things have done, national jealousies, distrusts, and ambitions. Each of the nations concerned desired to have the lion’s share in the building and management of the road, and, when this was impossible, those who had perforce to accept minor parts, or none at all, strove by every means in their power, covertly or openly, to misrepresent the object of the undertaking and damn it in the estimation of those who were counted on to coöperate in carrying the enterprise to a successful conclusion. Neither the French nor the English government was willing to give the Bagdad Railway project official recommendation. This attitude of the two governments deterred many capitalists from investing in an enterprise which they had been disposed to view most favorably. The French Government went so far as to forbid the securities to be listed on the Bourse.[167] But the chief opposition to the project came not so much from the governments in question as from the press. This was particularly the case in England. A letter written in 1903 by the late Sir Clinton Dawkins--one of a group of English capitalists who were eager to coöperate with the Germans in the building of the Bagdad Railway--to Herr Arthur von Gwinner, the successor of Dr. von Siemens as director of the road, leaves no doubt about this whatever. The fact is [Sir Clinton writes] that the business has become involved in politics here, and has been sacrificed to the very violent and bitter feeling against Germany exhibited by the majority of our newspapers and shared in by a large number of people.