The Russian claim for exclusive control of railway construction in northern Anatolia met with equally bitter denunciation. The London _Globe_, of August 10, 1899, characterized as “impudence” the intention of the Russian Government “to regard Asiatic Turkey as a second Manchuria, on the pretence that the whole country has been mortgaged to Russia for payment of the Turkish war indemnity. If this preposterous claim were admitted, not only the development of Asia Minor but the opening of another short-cut to the East might be delayed until the end of the next century. Russia had so many ambitious and costly projects on hand at present that her nearly bankrupt treasury could not meet any fresh drain, and especially one of such magnitude as that in question. The policy of her Government, therefore, is to preserve Asia Minor as a _tabula rasa_ on which the Russian pen can write as it pleases hereafter. It is a cool project, truly, but the success which has attended similar Russian endeavors in the Far East will not, we undertake to predict, meet with repetition.” The Russian Government, meanwhile, was interposing serious objections to the Bagdad Railway. M. Zinoviev, the Tsar’s minister at Constantinople, informed the Sublime Porte that the proposed extension of the Anatolian Railways from Angora across Armenia to Mosul and Bagdad would be a strategic menace to the Caucasus frontier and, as such, could not be tolerated. If Russian wishes in the matter were not respected, immediate measures would be taken to collect all arrears—amounting to over 57,000,000 francs—of the indemnity due the Tsar under the Treaty of Berlin (1878). The outcome of these demands was submission by the Sultan’s Government. The proposed Angora-Kaisarieh-Diarbekr route was abandoned in favor of one extending from Konia, through the Cilician Gates of the Taurus Mountains, to Adana, Aleppo, and Mosul—the latter being the route over which the Bagdad Railway actually was constructed. The discussions between the Russian and Ottoman Governments subsequently were crystallized and confirmed by the so-called Black Sea Agreement of 1900, which pledged the Sultan to award no further concessions for railways in northern Anatolia or Armenia except to Russian nationals or to syndicates approved by the Tsar, and, furthermore, to award such Russian concessionaires terms at least as favorable as those to be granted the Bagdad Railway Company.[3]