It would have been foolhardy, nevertheless, to discard these possibilities as purely imaginary. Once the Bagdad Railway was constructed and its subsidiary enterprises developed, there would have existed the great temptation to utilize economic influence for the promotion of strategic and diplomatic purposes. In an era of intensive military and economic preparedness for war the observance of the niceties of international relationships is not always to be counted upon. In such circumstances the wishes of the business men—whether they were imperialistic or anti-imperialistic—may be over-ruled by the statesmen and the soldiers. The chance to strike telling blows at French prestige in the Levant; the opportunity to embarrass Russia by strengthening Turkey; the possibility of menacing the communications of the British Empire; the likelihood of recruiting Turkish military and economic strength in the cause of Germany,—these were alluring prospects for discomfiting the Entente rivals of the German Empire. At the same time it should be mentioned that promotion of the Bagdad Railway would serve to weld firmer the Austro-German alliance. Austrian ambitions in the Near East centered in the Vienna-Salonica railway and were distinct from the Berlin-to-Bagdad plan of the Germans; nevertheless circumstances served to promote a community of interest. First, the routes of the railways through the Balkans coincided in part: the Austrian railway ran _via_ Belgrade and Nish to Salonica; traffic “from Berlin to Bagdad” followed the same line to Nish, where it branched off to Sofia and Constantinople. Second, Austrian, as well as German, trade would be carried over the Bagdad lines to the Orient, and Austrian industries would be able to secure raw materials from Anatolia and Mesopotamia. If the railway was to run from Berlin to Bagdad, it also was to run from Vienna to Bagdad. Third, similarly, German industry was to profit by the Austrian railway to Salonica, for it opened a new route to German commerce to the Aegean. “Germany’s road to the Orient lay, literally as well as figuratively, across the Balkan Peninsula.”[17] The _Drang nach Osten_ was near to the hearts of both allies!