The second German suggestion was that the Turkish Army Corps at Bagdad might be moved towards the Persian Gulf with the object of quelling the risings in the neighbourhood of Koweit, which is in an almost perpetual state of unrest. It happens that the Persian Gulf has always admittedly been an English sphere of influence, and that the small Province of Koweit, governed by a Sheik, was not unconnected with the proposed termination of the Bagdad Railway. The status of the Sheik of Koweit has always been obscure and was supposed to have been "regulated" by the Anglo-Turkish agreement, the details of which were under discussion when war broke out. It might conceivably be urged that here again Turkey could move masses of troops to another part of her own territory and thus strike indirectly on Great Britain. In reply to these statements and the dishonourable implications which they conveyed, both the Turkish Ambassadors in London and Paris and the Turkish Department for Foreign Affairs at Constantinople gave explicit assurances that Turkey would not take any step inconsistent with her neutrality. It must be remembered that ever since the revolution in 1908, Turkey had received very little practical assistance from Germany, apart from the tinkering with her army. The best advisory officials and all the money were supplied to the Ottoman Government by France and Great Britain. Further, it was believed that, even in the face of German bribes and threats, Turkey would hold back if only out of regard for the stability of her rather precarious empire of Thrace in Asia Minor. In view of a possible Turkish participation in the war, Russia had taken the precautionary measure of massing, it was said, more than half a million troops on the Turkish frontier; and if the Turks had intervened on behalf of Germany, it was believed that Roumania and Greece would take the field on behalf of England, France, and Russia. The position of Bulgaria was fully realised to be more doubtful, as out of all the countries constituting the Balkan League, Bulgaria had profited least as the result of the campaign in 1912-13; and she had vainly appealed for some kind of "compensation" to both groups of the Great Powers.