The Young Turks were not unaware of the true character of the agreements they had entered into with the respective European Powers, but they considered themselves impotent to act otherwise at the time. They knew full well that there was grave danger in an extension of British influence in Mesopotamia, French interests in Syria, and Franco-Russian enterprise in northern Anatolia. They had not forgotten the spoliation of their empire by Austria-Hungary and Italy. They were not altogether unsuspicious about the intentions of Germany. But they believed they could never emancipate their country from foreign domination until they had modernized it. They needed foreign capital and foreign technical assistance, and they had to pay the price. In order to throw off the yoke of European imperialism they had to consent temporarily to be victimized by it.[36] Nationalistic fervor added to the difficulties created by imperialist rivalry. M. André Tardieu, political editor at the time of _Le Temps_, did not let a single opportunity pass during February and March, 1914, to denounce the French Government for its pro-German policy in the Bagdad Railway question. When M. Cambon, French ambassador at Berlin, was asked whether the Franco-German agreement on Turkish railways would improve the relations between his country and the German Empire, he said: “Official relations, yes, perhaps to some extent, but I do not think that the agreement will affect the great body of public opinion on both sides of the Vosges. It will not, unfortunately, change the tone of the French press towards the Germans.... There is no doubt whatever that the majority, both of Germans and Frenchmen, desire to live at peace; but there is a powerful minority in each country that dreams of nothing but battles and wars, either of conquest or revenge. That is the peril that is always with us; it is like living alongside a barrel of gunpowder which may explode on the slightest provocation.” Herr von Jagow, German Minister of Foreign Affairs, expressed a similar opinion when he said that he was watching for a favorable moment for the publication of the Anglo-German convention of June 15, 1914—“an appropriate moment when the danger of adverse criticism was no longer so acute.”[37] Hatred, suspicion, fear, and other unbridled passions were the stock-in-trade of the Continental press during the months preceding the outbreak of the Great War. Patriotic bombast, not international conciliation, was demanded by the imperialist and nationalist minorities, who exerted only too much influence upon the Governments and made politicians fear lest their efforts at peace be misconstrued as treason!