Its economic interests were potential rather than real; its trade, the result of its strategic position rather than of the interests and the capacity of its population. Normally and naturally the Turk should be a middleman, a distributor rather than a producer. He was placed in control of the continental roads between Asia and Central Europe, and was able to control the overland trade as soon as it emerged from the Caucasus or the Persian Gulf, and maintain that control until the continental highway passed into the defiles of the Balkans beyond Adrianople. Constantinople itself, controlling the narrow passage which formed the exit of the Black Sea, was in a position to foster or hinder the entire trade of southern Russia with the rest of the world. In fact, it was impossible to deny, and the Germans thoroughly well understood it, that the trade of the East with Europe and the trade of Russia with the rest of the world might pass through Turkey, but was not likely to stay there. [Sidenote: Turkey's important strategic position.] In this important strategic position, economically valuable to others but not to its inhabitants, had been collected a peculiar and extraordinary conglomeration of races, creeds, and interests; few of which had much in common, and all of which cherished for each other antipathies and jealousies almost as old as history. The racial problem of Turkey would be less difficult if the races were only located side by side in solid masses. With few exceptions the races interpenetrate one another to a remarkable extent and the Turk himself is numerically in the majority in comparatively few districts of Asia Minor, where the bulk of the Turkish population lives, and in scarcely any part of European Turkey. The Turks are literally overlords, a ruling class. [Sidenote: Turkey's weak political fabric.]