No more complete disavowal of Russian imperialism could be desired by the New Turkey. It is by no means certain, however, that Russia will continue indefinitely to pursue so magnanimous a policy in the Near East. With the development of her natural resources and the extension of industrialism, it is not improbable that Russia—in common with the other Great Powers—will once again feel the urge to imperialism. Raw materials, markets, the maintenance of unimpeded routes of commercial communication, and opportunities for profitable investment of capital are likely to be considered—in the present anarchic state of international relations—as essential to an industrial state under working-class government as to an industrial state under bourgeois administration. If such be the case, Russian economic penetration in Turkey and Persia may be resumed, and Russian eyes may once more be cast covetously at Constantinople. “In Mongolia and Tibet, in Persia and Afghanistan, in Caucasia and at Constantinople, the Russian has been pressing forward for three hundred years,” writes an eminent American geographer, “and no system of government can stand that denies him proper commercial outlets.”[5] Nevertheless, whatever be the future policy of Russia in the Near East, for the present the Russian Republic has no economic or strategic interests which are inconsistent with the national development of the Turkish people. Certainly Russia has neither the economic nor the political resources to demand a share in the Bagdad Railway or to seek for herself other railway concessions in Anatolia. And the Western Powers are little likely to heed the wishes of the Soviet Government until such time as those wishes are rendered articulate in a language the Western Powers understand—the language of power. FRANCE STEALS A MARCH AND IS ACCOMPANIED BY ITALY Those who believed that the defeat of Germany and the withdrawal of Russia would solve all problems of competitive imperialism in the Near East were destined to be disillusioned. For no sooner was the war over than France and Great Britain took to pursuing divergent policies regarding Turkey. The rivalry between these two powers—which had been terminated for a time by the Entente of 1904—was resumed in all its former intensity. The Entente, in fact, had been formed because of common fear of Germany, rather than because of coincidence of colonial interests; and with that fear removed, the foundation of effective coöperation had been undermined.[6] The Great War may be said to have terminated the first episode of the great Bagdad Railway drama—the rise and fall of German power in the Near East; it opened a second episode, which promises to be equally portentous—an Anglo-French struggle for the right of accession to the exalted position which Germany formerly occupied in the realm of the Turks.