Probably there was no group of men more fully aware of the needs of Turkey than the members of the Ottoman Public Debt Administration. They were concerned, it is true, solely with obtaining prompt payment of interest and principal of Ottoman bonds and with improving Ottoman credit in European financial markets. But the accomplishment of this purpose, they realized, was altogether out of the question in the continued presence of political instability and economic stagnation. One must feed the goose which lays the golden eggs. They sought some means, therefore, of establishing domestic order in the Ottoman Empire, of lessening the constant danger of foreign invasion, and of providing a tonic for the economic life of the nation. All of these purposes, it was believed, would be served by the encouragement of railway construction in Turkey. The interest and imagination of the Ottoman Public Debt Administration were stimulated by the plans of the eminent German railway engineer Wilhelm von Pressel, one of the Sultan’s technical advisers. Von Pressel had established an international reputation because of his services in the construction of important railways in Switzerland and the Tyrol. In 1872 he was retained by the Ottoman Government to develop plans for railways in Turkey, and a few years later he assumed a prominent part in the construction of the trans-Balkan lines of the Oriental Railways Company. No one knew more than von Pressel of the railway problems of Turkey; few were more enthusiastic about the rôle which rail communications might play in a renaissance of the Near East. Von Pressel foresaw the possibility of establishing a great system of Ottoman railways extending from the borders of Austria-Hungary to the shores of the Persian Gulf. In this manner the far-flung territories of the empire would be brought into communication with one another and with the capital, and an era would be begun of unprecedented development in agriculture, mining, and commerce. A market would be provided for the crops of the peasantry; the hinterland of the ports of Constantinople, Smyrna, Mersina, Alexandretta, and Basra would be opened up; heretofore inaccessible mineral resources would be exploited. Foreign commerce might be restored to the prosperity it had once enjoyed before the Commercial Revolution of the sixteenth century replaced the caravan routes of the Near East by the new sea routes to the Indies. Mesopotamia might be transformed into a veritable economic paradise. The railways also would insure political stability, for rapid mobilization and transportation of the gendarmerie to danger points would enable the Sultan’s Government to suppress rebellions of the turbulent tribesmen of Kurdistan, Mesopotamia, and Arabia. Peace and prosperity were goals within easy reach, thought von Pressel, if Turkey could be provided with a comprehensive system of railways.[17]