Between 1896 and 1899 no further definite steps were taken to extend the Anatolian Railway beyond Angora, as had been provided by the original concession. In the latter year, however, largely because of Russian objections to the further development of railways in northern Asia Minor, the Sultan took under consideration the advisability of projecting and building, instead, a line from Konia to Bagdad _via_ Aleppo and Mosul. Early in 1899 a German commission left Constantinople to make a thorough survey of the economic and strategic possibilities of such a line. Included in the commission were Dr. Mackensen, Director of the Prussian State Railways; Dr. von Kapp, Surveyor for the State Railways of Württemberg; Herr Stemrich, the German Consul-General at Constantinople; Major Morgen, German military attaché; representatives of the Ottoman Ministry of Public Works. It was this commission that finally decided upon the route of the Bagdad Railway.[10] At the close of the nineteenth century, therefore, the sceptre of railway power in the Near East was passing from the hands of Frenchmen and Englishmen into the hands of Germans. In a period of about ten years the German-owned Anatolian Railway Company had constructed almost one thousand kilometres of railway lines in Asia Minor. A German mission was blazing a trail through Syria and Mesopotamia for the extension of the Anatolian Railway to the valley of the Tigris River and the head of the Persian Gulf. German prestige seemed to be in the ascendancy: the Directors of the Anatolian Company reported to the stockholders in 1897 that, “as in former years, our Company has concerned itself continuously with the development of trade, industry, and agriculture in the region served by the Railway. As a result our enterprise has enjoyed in every sense the whole-hearted support and the powerful protection of His Majesty the Sultan. Our relationships with the Imperial Ottoman Government, the local authorities, and all classes of the people themselves are more cordial than ever.”[11] The system of railways thus founded had been conceived by a German railway genius; it had been constructed by German engineers with materials made by German workers in German factories; it had been financed by German bankers; it was being operated under the supervision of German directors. In the minds of nineteenth-century neo-mercantilists this was a matter for national pride. A Pan-German organ hailed the Anatolian Railways and the proposed Bagdad enterprise in glowing terms: “The idea of this railway was conceived by German intelligence; Germans made the preliminary studies; Germans overcame all the serious obstacles which stood in the way of its execution. We should be all the more pleased with this success because the Russians and the English busied themselves at the Golden Horn endeavoring to block the German project.”[12] THE TRADERS FOLLOW THE INVESTORS