During the Great War these views were given wide publicity by Prince Lichnowsky, former German ambassador to Great Britain. In a memorandum, written for a few friends but subsequently published broadcast in Europe and America,[35] the Prince vehemently denounced the _Drang nach Osten_ as the greatest of German diplomatic mistakes and as one of the principal causes of the Great War. “We should have abandoned definitely the fatal tradition of pushing the Triple Alliance policies in the Near East,” he said; “we should have realized that it was a mistake to make ourselves solidary with the Turks in the south and with the Austro-Magyars in the north; for the continuance of this policy ... was bound in time, and particularly in case the requisite adroitness should be found wanting in the supreme directing agencies, to lead to the collision with Russia and the World War. Instead of coming to an understanding with Russia on the basis of the independence of the Sultan; ... instead of renouncing military and political interference, confining ourselves to economic interests in the Near East, ... our political ambition was directed to the attainment of a dominant position on the Bosporus. In Russia the opinion arose that the way to Constantinople ran _via_ Berlin.” This was the “fatal mistake, by which Russia, naturally our best friend and neighbor, was driven into the arms of France and England.” Furthermore, maintained the Prince, a policy of Near Eastern expansion is contrary to the best commercial and industrial interests of the empire. “‘Our future lies on the water.’ Quite right”; therefore it does not lie in an overland route to the Orient. The _Drang nach Osten_ “is a reversion to the Holy Roman Empire.... It is the policy of the Plantagenets, not that of Drake and Raleigh.... Berlin-Bagdad is a blind alley and not the way into the open, to unlimited possibilities, to the universal mission of the German nation.”[36] There may have been another reason for the opposition of Prince Lichnowsky to the Bagdad Railway. As the owner of large Silesian estates he was agrarian in his point of view. If it were true, as was maintained, that after the opening of Mesopotamia to cultivation, the Railway would be able to bring cheap Turkish grain to the German market, the results would not be to the liking of the agricultural interests of the empire. As Herr Scheidemann informed the Reichstag, there was something anomalous in the Conservative support of the Bagdad Railway on this score, because it was “in most violent contrast to their procedure in their own country, where they have artificially raised the cost of the necessaries of life by incredibly high protective tariffs, indirect taxation, and similar methods.”[37] Perhaps Prince Lichnowsky was somewhat more intelligent and far-sighted than his land-owning associates!