One obvious disadvantage of the solution suggested by Sir Harry Johnston was its total indifference to the wishes of the Ottoman Turks. Apparently it was out of place to consider the welfare of Turkey in a discussion of the Bagdad Railway question! Certainly there were very few European statesmen who cared the least about the opinions of Turks in the disposition of Turkish property. Among the few was Viscount Morley, one of the old Gladstonian Liberals. Answering Lord Curzon, in the House of Lords, March 22, 1911, Lord Morley, a member of the Asquith cabinet, asserted the right of the Turks to determine their own destinies: “A great deal of nonsense,” he said, “is talked about the possible danger to British interests which may be involved some day or other when this railway is completed, and there have been whimsical apprehensions expressed. One is that it will constitute a standing menace to Egypt ... because it would establish [by junction with the Syrian and Hedjaz railways] uninterrupted communication between the Bosporus and Western Arabia. _That would hardly be an argument for Turkey to abandon railway construction on her own soil_, whereas it overlooks the fact that the Sinai Peninsula intervenes. You cannot get over this plain cardinal fact, that this railway is made on Turkish territory by virtue of an instrument granted by the Turkish Government.... I see articles in newspapers every day in which it is assumed that we have the right there to do what we please. That is not so. It is not our soil, it is Turkish soil, and the Germans alone are there because the Turkish Government has given them the right to be there.”[46] BIBLIOGRAPHICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES [1] Sir William Andrew, _Memoir on the Euphrates Valley Route_ (London, 1857), _passim_; also _The Euphrates Valley Route to India_ (London, 1882); F. R. Chesney, _Narrative of the Euphrates Expedition_ (London, 1868); _The Proposed Imperial Ottoman Railway_, a prospectus issued by the promoters (London, 1857); F. von Koeppen, _Moltke in Kleinasien_ (Hanover, 1883). [2] _Cf._ article “Suez Canal” in _Encyclopedia Britannica_, Volume 26, p. 23. How similar were these objections to those subsequently advanced in opposition to the Bagdad Railway! _Cf._, _e. g._, a statement by Lord Curzon, _Parliamentary Debates, House of Lords, fifth series_, Volume 7 (1911), pp. 583 _et seq._ [3] Andrew, _Memoir on the Euphrates Valley Route_, p. 225.