During the summer of 1910, Djavid Bey, as Ottoman Minister of Finance, went to Paris to raise a loan of $30,000,000, secured by the customs receipts of the Ottoman Empire. The negotiations with the Parisian bankers were complicated by a bitter anti-Turk campaign on the part of the press and by the frequent interference of the French Government. Nevertheless, Djavid Bey succeeded in signing a satisfactory contract with a French syndicate, and his task appeared to be accomplished. At this juncture, however, M. Pichon, French Minister of Foreign Affairs, informed the bankers that official sanction for the proposed loan would be withheld unless the Ottoman Government would consent to have its budget administered by a resident French adviser. The Young Turk ministry, determined to tolerate no further foreign intervention in the administrative affairs of the empire, flatly refused to consider any such proposal, and Djavid Bey was instructed to break off all negotiations. “As a true and loyal friend of France,” wrote Djavid, “I regretted this incident as one likely to strain the future relations between the two countries.” From Paris Djavid Bey went to London. Sir Ernest Cassel appeared to be willing to negotiate a loan to Turkey of the desired amount, but, upon representations from M. Cambon, the French ambassador at London, Sir Edward Grey persuaded Cassel not to put in a bid for the bonds. This decision was reached largely, as Djavid Bey was informed by the British Foreign Office, because the Bagdad Railway was considered to be “an enterprise which under the existing concession has not been conceived in the best interests of the Ottoman Empire, while it offers, as at present controlled, an undoubted menace to the legitimate position of British trade in Mesopotamia.” To the Turkish Government this statement was a piece of gratuitous impertinence, for, as Djavid Bey replied, “It was a prerogative only of the Ottoman Government to determine whether the conditions of construction and management of the Bagdad Railway were beneficial or detrimental to Turkey. England had no more right to object to the Bagdad Railway than Germany had to object to the British and French lines in operation in Turkey.”