As the building of this system of railways closely concerned the French companies of the Smyrna-Kassaba and Beyrut-Damascus railways and the English company of the Smyrna-Aidin railway, the French companies and the Ottoman Imperial Bank concluded arrangements with the holders of the concessions to safeguard French interests as much as possible. Thus a French financial group took up a good many of the Baghdad bonds (22,500 and 21,155 bonds) and numerous shares of the “Société de construction du chemin de fer” established in 1909. On the whole, the share of the French consortium before the war amounted to 4,000,000 francs on the one hand, and 1,950,000 francs on the other; the share of the German consortium was 11,000,000 and 8,050,000 francs. The concessions controlled by English capital were the Smyrna-Aidin line, 380 miles long, with a capital of 114,693,675 francs, and the Smyrna-Kassaba line, which was ceded later on to the company controlled by French capital which has already been mentioned. They were the first two railway concessions given in Turkey (1856 and 1863). In Constantinople the port, the lighthouses, the gasworks, the waterworks, and the tramways were planned and built by French capital and labour. The port of Smyrna, whose concession was given in 1867 to an English company and two years after passed into the hands of some Marseilles contractors, was completed by the “Société des quais de Smyrne,” a French limited company. The diversion of the Ghedis into the Gulf of Phocea in order to prevent the port being blocked up with sand was the work of a French engineer, Rivet. The Bay of Beyrut has also been equipped by a French company founded in 1888 under the patronage of the Ottoman Bank by a group of the chief French shareholders of the Beyrut-Damascus road and other French financial companies. Moreover, according to the 1914 agreements, the ports of Ineboli and Heraclea on the Black Sea, and the ports of Tripoli, Jaffa, and Haïfa in Syria, were to be built exclusively by French capital. So it was with the intended concessions of the ports of Samsun and Trebizond. At Beyrut a French group in 1909 bought up the English concession for the building of the waterworks and pipelines, and formed a new company. French capital, together with Belgian capital, also control the Gas Company, Tramway Company, and Electric Company of Beyrut. Only at Smyrna, where the gasworks are in the hands of an English company and the waterworks are owned by a Belgian company has France not taken part in the organisation of the municipal services. Only the port of Haïdar-Pasha, the terminus of the Anatolian Railway, has been ceded by this company to a financial company whose shares are in German hands.