[39] Regarding the Emperor’s personal interest in the Bagdad Railway consider the following Reuter dispatch, published in _The Near East_, December 6, 1911, p. 143: “By desire of the German Emperor, Herr Gwinner, director of the _Deutsche Bank_, will give an address on the Bagdad Railway before the Emperor and a number of invited guests, in the Upper House of the Prussian Diet soon after the Emperor’s return to Berlin, December 8.” [40] E. J. Dillon, quoted by Lothrop Stoddard, _The New World of Islam_, p. 98. [41] Jastrow, _op. cit._, p. 9. CHAPTER VII RUSSIA RESISTS AND FRANCE IS UNCERTAIN RUSSIA VOICES HER DISPLEASURE Russian objections to the Bagdad Railway were put forth as early as 1899, the year in which the Sultan announced his intention of awarding the concession to the _Deutsche Bank_. The press of Petrograd and Moscow roundly denounced the proposed railway as inimical to the vital economic interests of Russia. It was claimed that the new line would offer serious competition to the railways of the Caspian and Caucasus regions, that it would menace the success of the new Russian trans-Persian line, and that it might prove to be a rival even of the Siberian system.[1] The extension of the existing Anatolian Railway into Syria, it was asserted, would interfere with the realization of a Russian dream of a railway across Armenia to Alexandretta—a railway which would give Russian goods access to an all-year warm water port on the Mediterranean. The Mesopotamian sections of the line, with their branches, might open to German competition the markets of Persia and, later, of Afghanistan. If German capital should develop the grain-growing possibilities of the Tigris and Euphrates valleys, what would happen to the profits of the Russian landed aristocracy? And if the oil-wells of Mesopotamia were as rich as they were said to be, what would be the fate of the South Russian fields? The Tsar was urged to oppose the granting of the kilometric guarantee to the concessionaires, on the ground that the increased charges on the Ottoman Treasury would interfere with payment of the indemnity due on account of the War of 1877.[2] Russian objections to the Bagdad Railway did not meet with a sympathetic reception in England. _The Engineer_, of August 11, 1899, in an editorial “Railways in Asia Minor,” for example, expressed its firm opinion that many of the demands for the protection of Russian economic interests in Turkey were specious. “The world has yet to learn,” ran the editorial, “that Russia allows commercial considerations to play any great part in her ideas of constructing railways; the Imperial authorities are influenced mainly by the policy of political expediency. The commercial competition thus foreseen by Russia is put forward merely as a stop-gap until Russia can get time and money to repeat in Asia Minor the methods of which she has made such success in Persia and the Far East.” Other British opinion was of like character.