[37] _Stenographische Berichte, XII. Legislaturperiode, 2 Session_, Volume 266 (1911), pp. 5984c _et seq._; _Troisième convention additionelle à la convention du 5 Mars, 1903, relative au chemin de fer de Bagdad_ (Constantinople, 1911); _Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons_, fifth series, Volume 23 (1911), pp. 582–583, statement by Sir Edward Grey. [38] See speeches of Herr Scheidemann and Herr Bassermann before the Reichstag, March 30, 1911. _Stenographische Berichte, XII. Legislaturperiode, 2 Session_, Volume 266 (1911), pp. 5980 _et seq._ [39] _Parliamentary Debates, House of Lords_, fifth series, Volume 23 (1911), p. 589. [40] D. Chatir, “L’État actuel du chemin de fer de Bagdad,” in _Questions diplomatiques et coloniales_, Volume 36 (1913), pp. 279–281; _Report of the Bagdad Railway Company_, 1910, p. 4, 1911, p. 4, 1913, pp. 3–5, 1914, pp. 6–8. [41] _Report of the Deutsche Bank_, 1913, pp. 11–12. [42] _Report of the Bagdad Railway Company_, 1914, pp. 6–8. It was not until September, 1918, that the Amanus tunnels were completed, the first train being operated through to Aleppo just before the capture of that city by Lord Allenby’s army. Von Sanders, _op. cit._, p. 42. CHAPTER VI THE BAGDAD RAILWAY BECOMES AN IMPERIAL ENTERPRISE POLITICAL INTERESTS COME TO THE FORE It was asserted times without number that the Bagdad Railway was an independent financial enterprise, unconnected with the political aims of the German Government in Turkey and in no sense associated with an imperialist policy in the Near East. At the time the concession of 1903 was granted Dr. Rohrbach expressed the belief that political and diplomatic considerations were quite outside the plans and purposes of the promoters of the Railway.[1] Herr Bassermann, leader of the National Liberal Party, announced to the Reichstag that, although German capital was predominant in the Railway, there was no intent on the part of the owners or on the part of the Government to build with any political _arrière-pensée_. Baron von Schoen, Imperial Secretary for Foreign Affairs, reiterated this idea with emphasis. He pointed out that the Bagdad convention of 1903 was _not a treaty_ between Germany and Turkey, _but a contract_ between the Ottoman Government and the Anatolian Railway Company. He maintained that if the railway were considered, properly, as a purely economic enterprise, “all the fantastic schemes that are from time to time being attached to it would evaporate.”[2] A British journalist wrote in 1913: “Gwinner, it may be assumed, is not building the Bagdad Railway for the purposes of the German General Staff. What chiefly keeps him awake of nights is how to extract dividends from it for the _Deutsche Bank_ and how best to promote the golden opportunities which await the strategists of the German trading army in the Near East.”[3]