It should be pointed out that this injection of nationalism into religious education was an obvious imitation of the French method of spreading imperial influence in Syria and Palestine. And it was frankly admitted to be an imitation. “A policy of German-Turkish culture,” wrote Dr. Rohrbach, “deserves to be pressed with renewed ardor. We must endeavor to make the German language, and German science, and all the great positive values of our energetic civilization, duties faithfully fulfilled—active forces for the regeneration of Turkey by transplanting them into Turkey. To do this we need above everything else a system of German schools, which need not rival the French in magnitude, but which must be planned on a larger scale than that of the now existing schools. No lasting and secure cultural influences are possible without the connecting link of language. The intelligent and progressive young men of Turkey should have an abundant opportunity to learn German.... We can give the Turks an impression of our civilization and a desire to become familiar with it only when we teach them our language and thus open the door for them to all of our spiritual possessions. In doing this we are not aiming to Germanize Turkey politically or economically or to colonize it, but to introduce the German spirit into the great national process of development through which that nation, which has a great future, happens to be passing.”[32] French methods were to be paid the compliment of imitation. The sentimental appeal of the Bagdad Railway was more than a religious and cultural appeal alone. The Great Plan was assiduously promoted by a patriotic and Pan-German press. It caught the interest of the ordinary workaday citizen, whose imagination was fired by the sweeping references to “our” trade, “our” investments, “our” religious interests in the Near East; the Bagdad Railway was the very heart of all these interests. Here was a railway which was to revive a medieval trade route to the East, which was to traverse the route of the Crusades. Here was a country which had been the much-sought-after empire of the great nations of antiquity, Assyria, Chaldea, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome. Here had risen and fallen the great cities of Nineveh, Babylon, and Hit. To these regions had turned the longing of the great conquerors, Sargon, Sennacherib, Nebuchadnezzar, Alexander, Saladin. With such materials some German Kipling might evolve phrases far more alluring than Fuzzy Wuzzy, and Tommy Atkins, and the White Man’s Burden.[33] SOME FEW VOICES ARE RAISED IN PROTEST