There was only one London newspaper, the _St. James’s Gazette_, which came out frankly in favor of British participation in the Bagdad Railway. In the issue of April 14, 1903, the editor ridiculed the suggestion of the _Spectator_ that the Foreign Office was obliged to warn bankers of the financial risks involved in the enterprise. “Why our contemporary should be so anxious to save financiers, British or foreign, from making a bad investment of their money, we cannot imagine. Financiers are generally pretty wide-awake, and the City as a rule requires no advice from Fleet Street, the Strand, or Whitehall in transacting its business.” In an editorial entitled “Bagdad and Bag Everything,” April 22, 1903, the _Gazette_ condemned _The Times_ for the “curious and alarmist deductions” which that journal drew from the terms of the Bagdad Railway convention. The suggestion that this was a deliberate attempt on the part of Germany to ruin British trade was characterized “as much a figment of a fevered imagination as the mind-picture of Turkey using ‘this enormous line to pour down troops to reduce the shores of the Persian Gulf to the same happy condition as Armenia and Macedonia,’ about which _The Times_ is so suddenly and unaccountably concerned. The concession is a monument to the German Emperor’s activity, built on the ruins of the influence which we threw away, and we do not precisely see what our _locus standi_ in the matter is. If the interests of the Ottoman Government and of the German concessionaires be served by the construction of the line, constructed the line will be, and there’s an end. Whether it ever will, or ever can pay its way, is the affair only of capitalists who are contemplating investment in it. It is not the slightest use barking when we cannot bite, and our power of biting in the present instance is excessively small.... The Emperor William, like Jack Jones, has ‘come into ’is little bit of splosh’ in Asia Minor, and it is quite useless to be soreheaded about it. It is childish to be ever carping and nagging and ‘panicking.’ We question whether the Bagdad Railway—while the rule of the Sultan endures—is going to do much good or much harm to anybody. The vision which some Germans have of peaceful Hans and Gretchen swilling Löwenbrau in the Garden of Eden to the strains of a German band, is little likely of fulfilment. If trade develops, a fair share of it will come our way, provided we send good wares and such as the inhabitants want to buy.” This minority opinion, however, was unheeded in the outburst of anti-German feeling which followed Mr. Balfour’s first statement to the House of Commons.