In Great Britain, likewise, there was the friendliest feeling toward the German proposals. When the Kaiser made his second visit to the Near East in 1898 the London _Times_ said: “In this country we can have nothing but good wishes for the success of the Emperor’s journey and for any plans of German commercial expansion which may be connected with it. Some of us may perhaps be tempted to regret lost opportunities for our own influence and our own trade in the Ottoman dominions. But we can honestly say that if we were not to have these good things for ourselves, there are no hands we would rather see them in than in German hands.”[20] _The Morning Post_ of August 24, 1899, expressed the hope that no rivalry over the Bagdad Railway would prejudice the good relations between Great Britain and Germany. “So long as there is an efficient railway from Haidar Pasha to Bagdad, and so long as the door there is open, it should not really matter who makes the tunnels or pays the porters. If it should be necessary to insist on an open door, the Foreign Office will probably see to it; while if it should happen to be, as usual, asleep, there are always means of poking it up. As a matter of general politics it may not be at all a bad thing to give Germany a strong reason for defending the integrity of Turkey and for resisting aggression on Asia Minor from the North.” Sympathetic consideration of German expansion in the Near East was not confined to the press. Cecil Rhodes, great apostle of British imperialism, visited Germany in the spring of 1899 and came away from Berlin favorably disposed toward the Bagdad Railway and none the less pleased with the Kaiser’s apparent enthusiasm for the Cape-to-Cairo plan. In November of the same year William II paid a royal visit to England. It was then that Joseph Chamberlain, Secretary for the Colonies, learned the details of German plans in the Ottoman Empire, but, so far from being alarmed, he publicly announced his belief in the desirability of an Anglo-German entente. The almost simultaneous announcement of the award of the preliminary Bagdad Railway concession met with a favorable reception from the British press.[21]