Chapter XX: Designs on Asiatic Turkey

Just as avowedly strategical lines in Africa were to lead the way to the creation of a German African Empire, so, in turn, was that system of economic-political-strategical lines comprised within the scheme of what is known as the "Baghdad Railway" designed to ensure the establishment of a German Middle-Asian Empire, bringing under German control the entire region from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, and providing convenient stepping-off places from which an advance might be made on Egypt in the one direction and India in the other.

The conception of this further programme was spread over (1) the period during which Germany's aspirations were limited to the inheritance of Turkey's possessions in Asia; and (2) the period when such inheritance began to be regarded as a means to the realisation of still greater aims in the domain of Weltpolitik.

For more than half a century Asiatic Turkey has been looked upon as Germany's Land of Promise. Anatolia was thought a most desirable territory for her surplus population. The development, under German influence, of that territory as a whole--especially with a revival of the Babylonian system of irrigation--was considered to offer vast possibilities of commercial prosperity. Wheat, cotton and tobacco, especially, might be raised in prodigious quantities, and there was the prospect, also, of a petroleum industry rivalling that of Baku itself. Turkey was a decadent nation, and as soon as "the Sick Man" succumbed to his apparently inevitable fate--or even before, should circumstances permit--Germany was ready to step into his shoes.

That these aspirations had, indeed, long been cherished is a fact capable of ready proof.

In 1848 Wilhelm Roscher, the leading expounder of the historical school of political economy in Germany, selected Asia Minor as Germany's share in the Turkish spoils, whenever the division thereof should take place; and Johann Karl Robertus (1805-1875), the founder of the so-called scientific socialism in Germany, expressed the hope that he would live long enough to see Turkey fall into the hands of Germany, and, also, to see German soldiers on the shores of the Bosporus.

Coming to a more recent period, we find that Dr. Aloys Sprenger, the German orientalist, published, in 1886, a pamphlet on "Babylonia, the richest land in the past, and the most promising field for colonisation in the present,"[75] in which, after dealing with the history, physical conditions and resources of Babylonia, he predicted that, before the end of the century, not only Babylonia but Assyria, which was inseparable from it, would, if not formally annexed, at least come under the control of some European Power. Assyria and Syria, he declared, were even better adapted for colonisation than Babylonia. He continued:--

The Orient is the only territory on earth which has not yet
been taken possession of by some aspiring nation. It offers the
finest opportunities for colonisation, and if Germany, taking
care not to let the opportunity slip, should act before the
Cossacks come along, she would, in the division of the world,
get the best share.... The German Kaiser, as soon as a few
hundred thousand armed German colonists bring these promising
fields into cultivation, will have in his hand the fate of Asia
Minor, and he can--and will--then become the Protector of Peace
for the whole of Asia.

Dr. Karl Kaerger, traveller and economist, lamented, in his "Kleinasien; ein deutsches Kolonisationsfeld" (Berlin, 1892), the enormous loss sustained by Germany in the migration of so many of her people and of so much capital to Anglo-Saxon lands; but there were, he affirmed, only two countries to which German settlers could go with any hope of retaining alike their nationality and their commercial relations with the _Mutterland_. Those countries were--Africa and Asia Minor. He had been especially impressed, during the course of his travels, by the prospects and possibilities of Anatolia, and he recommended the establishment there of large German companies which would organise schemes of colonisation and land cultivation on a large scale. The colonies so established should be self-governing, free from all taxation for ten years, have the right of duty-free importation of necessaries, and enjoy various other privileges, while Turkey, in return for the concessions she thus made to the settlers, would be assured "the protection of Germany against attack." Not only hundreds of thousands, but millions, of colonists could find a second home on those wide expanses. Germany herself would gain a dual advantage--an economical one, and a political one. Concerning the latter, Dr. Kaerger observed:--

If the German Empire, while maintaining her friendship with
Austria and Italy--which, under all circumstances, the political
situation in Europe undoubtedly requires--can direct the stream
of her emigration to the fertile territories of Turkey, and if
she can conclude with that country a closer customs convention,
then the entire economic, and with it, also, the political
future of Germany will rest on a broader and a firmer basis
than if the present streams of hundreds of thousands of her
people, and millions of capital, continue to pass in increasing
proportions, year by year, to countries which are economically
hostile to us.

Dr. Kaerger was especially concerned lest Germany might be anticipated by Russia or England in the realisation of her own designs on Asia Minor. Should, he declared, either of those countries acquire any further territory from Turkey, or increase in any way Turkey's dependence upon them, the result would be the most serious disturbance of the prevailing situation in Europe that had occurred since 1870.

The development of all these ideas went so far that in 1895 the _Alldeutscher Blätter_ recommended that Germany should establish a Protectorate over the Turkish possessions in Asia Minor; and in the following year the _Alldeutscher_ _Verband_ published a manifesto on "German claims to the Inheritance of Turkey" ("Deutschlands Anspruch an das türkische Erbe"), making a formal statement of Germany's alleged rights to the Turkish succession.

Germany had by this time already secured a footing on the soil of Asiatic Turkey by virtue of the _Anatolian Railway_. The first section--a length of about seventy miles, extending from Haidar Pacha (situate on the north-eastern coast of the Sea of Marmara, and opposite Constantinople) to Ismidt--was built in 1875 by German engineers to the order of the Turkish Government. It was transferred in 1888 to a German syndicate, nominees of the Deutsche Bank. Under the powers then conferred upon them, the syndicate opened an extension, on the east, to Angora, in 1892, and another, on the south, to Konia, in 1896, the total length of line being thus increased to 633 miles.

As the result of the visit of the German Emperor to Constantinople in 1898, followed by negotiations between the Porte and the director of the Deutsche Bank, authority was given to a new German Company--the Imperial Ottoman Baghdad Railway Company--under conventions of 1889, 1902 and 1903, to continue the existing Anatolian Railway from Konia to the Persian Gulf, via Adana, Nisibin, Mosul and Baghdad. This extension was to constitute the main line of the _Baghdad Railway_ proper; but the Company also acquired control over most of the branch railways already in operation. One of these was the French Smyrna--Afium Karahissar line, which constitutes the direct trade route between Smyrna and places served by the Anatolian railway, and has, also, a branch to Panderma, on the southern shores of the Sea of Marmara. Another was the short line from Adana to Mersina, giving access to the Mediterranean. This meant the substitution of German for French interests, while the course taken by the Anatolia-Baghdad Railway from the Bosporus to Adana shut off the possibility of an extension of the British line from Smyrna via Aidin to Egerdir (west of Konia) into the interior.

Then in 1911 the Company acquired the right to build a _new port at Alexandretta_, with quays, docks, bonded warehouses, etc., and to construct thence a short line of railway connecting with the Baghdad main line at Osmanieh, east of Adana. By these means the Germans acquired the control over, if not an actual monopoly of, the traffic between one of the most important ports on the eastern sea-board of the Mediterranean--a port where a trade valued at three and a half million sterling is already being done--and the vast extent of territory in Asia Minor designed to be served by the Baghdad Railway.

From Muslimiyeh, a little town on the north of Aleppo, there is a short branch connecting the Baghdad Railway with the _Hedjaz line_ from Damascus to Medina, which is eventually to be carried on to Mecca; while from Rayak, north of Damascus, a branch built in a south-westerly direction was to be carried to within a short distance of the Egyptian frontier.

From the junction for the Aleppo branch, the main line was to continue across the Mesopotamian plain to Baghdad (whence a branch to Khanikin, on the Persian frontier was projected) and so on to Basra, for the Persian Gulf.

Thus the scheme for what passes under the title of the Baghdad Railway embraces three separate and distinct regions of Asiatic Turkey--(1) Anatolia, (2) Syria and (3) Mesopotamia. In other words, whereas in their first phase, German aspirations for Turkish territory were based on the economic advantages of settlement in Anatolia--a region in itself large enough to accommodate all the Germans who were likely to want to settle there--in the second phase those aspirations were based on an extension of the Baghdad Railway towards Egypt in the one direction and the Persian Gulf in the other. This dual extension became the more noticeable, also, inasmuch as for the passage of the Taurus range of mountains a total of nearly 100 miles of blasting and tunnelling would have to be carried out, the cost of construction on certain sections of the line rising to between £35,000 and £40,000 a mile. The extension, therefore, was likely to be a costly business, the total length of the Baghdad Railway proper, apart from the Anatolian system, being, as projected, about 1,350 miles, of which, however, only about 600 miles were, in June, 1915, available for traffic.[76] Admitting the desirability of opening up Mesopotamia to commercial and agricultural development, it may, nevertheless, be asked, were there other motives--and motives to which still greater weight might have been attached--for this expansion of the earlier designs?

Abdul Hamid's reason for granting the concession is said to have been that the extension of the line to the Persian Gulf would greatly strengthen the military position of Turkey, since it would enable her to effect a speedy transfer of troops between the Bosporus and the Gulf, or intermediate places, as against the many months that might be occupied by marching on foot across plains and mountains.

Germany's reasons for seeking to construct the Baghdad Railway, its branches and connections, to the full extent of the programme laid down, were, not simply the development of new trade routes, as certain inspired representations have sought to make the world believe, and not simply the gain of various other economic advantages, but (1) a desire to increase German influence over Turkey; to strengthen her military and other resources with a view to employing them eventually in the advancement of Germany's own interests; and to ensure the realisation of that eventual Protectorate over Turkey which would convert the country into practically a German province; and (2) the furthering of Germany's aims against Great Britain in the belief that she, too, was a decadent country whose possessions, when we could no longer defend them effectively, Germany would be the more likely to secure for herself if, with a concentration of Turkish forces to assist her, she were established within striking distance of some of the most vulnerable points of the British Empire, ready to take instant advantage of any favourable opportunity that might present itself, whether in a prospective break-up of that Empire or otherwise.

Of evidence concerning Germany's efforts to obtain increasing influence over Turkey there is no lack.

We have, in the first place, the fact that in 1882 a German military mission, of which General the Baron Colmar von der Goltz was the principal member, undertook the training of the Turkish Army according to the principles of German military science, with the result that the Turkish Army became a more efficient instrument for the attainment, not only of her own aims or purposes, but those, also, of Germany herself.

The Kaiser, although the supreme head of the Lutheran Church, and although having no Mohammedan subjects of his own, sought to pose as the champion of Mohammedans in general and the Defender of _their_ Faith. During his visit to Damascus in November, 1898, he declared--"May the Sultan, may the three hundred million Mohammedans living who, scattered throughout the earth, honour in his person their Caliph, rest assured that at all times the German Kaiser will be their friend."[77]

Whenever political trouble threatened to fall upon Turkey, as the result of such occurrences as the Armenian and Macedonian atrocities or the insurrection in Crete, it was Germany who became her champion as against the other Powers of Europe.

Everything possible was done to push German trade in Turkey and to establish closer commercial relations with her. There came a time when every city of importance in the Turkish Empire was declared to be "overrun with German bankers, German clerks and German bagmen."

Not only, too, were German engineers active in seeking to get concessions for new railways, and not only were German financiers equally active in endeavouring to control existing ones, but, as Dr. Charles Sarolea points out, in his book on "The Anglo-German Problem," there are, in the agreements between the Baghdad Railway Company and the Porte, financial clauses which must ultimately place Turkey entirely at the mercy of her professed champion. "In Turkey Germany alone would rule supreme"; and the aspirations for a German Protectorate over Turkey, with the Sultan as a vassal of Germany, would then be realised.

Writing on the position as he found it in 1903, M. André Chéradame said in "La Question d'Orient":--

More and more the Germans seem to regard the land of
the Turks as their personal property. All the recent German
literature relating to Turkey affords proof of the tendency. An
ordinary book of travels is entitled, "In Asia Minor, by German
Railways." In his "Pan-Germanic Atlas" Paul Langhams gives a
map of "German Railways in Asia Minor." So it is, indeed, a
matter of the organised conquest of Turkey. Everywhere and in
everything, Turkey is being encircled by the tentacles of the
German octopus.

Coming, next, to the nature of _Germany's aims against England_ and the part which the Baghdad Railway was to play in their attainment, we have the frank confessions of Dr. Paul Rohrbach, an authority on the subject of Germany's Weltpolitik, and a traveller who has paid four visits to Asia Minor. In "Die Baghdadbahn" (2nd. edition, 1911) he tells us that Ludwig Ross, a professor at Halle who was well acquainted with Anatolia, was the first to point to Asia Minor as a desirable place for German settlement. At the outset economic considerations were alone concerned, and in Bismarck's day Germany's relations to England played only a minor rôle in her foreign politics; but in proportion as Germany's interests were developed and her soil no longer provided sufficient food for her people or sufficient raw products for her manufactures, she had to look abroad for the supply of her surplus needs. In so doing, however, her interests abroad might be endangered by the British Fleet. Hence the necessity for a German Fleet; and, although the German sea-power might not be strong enough, by itself, to attack and conquer England, it could bring certain considerations home to English policy. Dr. Rohrbach continues:--

If it came to a matter of war with England, it would be for
Germany simply a question of life and death. The possibility
of a successful issue for Germany depends exclusively on one
consideration, namely, on whether or not we can succeed in
bringing England herself into a dangerous position. That end
can in no way be obtained by means of a direct attack across
the North Sea; any idea of a German invasion of England being
possible is a mere phantasy. One must seek, therefore, another
combination in order to assail England at some vulnerable spot;
and here we come to the point where the relations of Germany to
Turkey, and the conditions prevailing in Turkey, are found to
be of decisive importance for German foreign policy. There is,
in fact, only one means possible by which Germany can resist a
war of aggression by England, and that is the strengthening of
Turkey.

England can, from Europe, be attacked by land and mortally
wounded only in one place--Egypt. If England were to lose Egypt
she would lose, not only her control over the Suez Canal and her
connexions with India and the Far East, but, presumably, also,
her possessions in Central and East Africa. The conquest of
Egypt by a Mohammedan Power, such as Turkey, might, in addition,
have a dangerous effect on her 60,000,000 Mohammedan subjects in
India, besides being to her prejudice in Afghanistan and Persia.

Turkey, however, can never dream of recovering Egypt until
she controls a fully-developed railway system in Asia Minor
and Syria; until, by the extension of the Anatolian Railway to
Baghdad, she can resist an attack by England on Mesopotamia;
until her army has been increased and improved; and until
progress has been made in her general economic and financial
conditions.... The stronger Turkey becomes, the greater will be
the danger for England if, in a German-English conflict, Turkey
should be on the side of Germany; and, with Egypt for a prize,
it certainly would be worth the while of Turkey to run the risk
of fighting with Germany against England. On the other hand the
mere fact that Turkey had increased in military strength, had
improved her economic position, and had an adequate railway
system, would make England hesitate to attack Germany; and this
is the point at which Germany must aim. The policy of supporting
Turkey which is now being followed by Germany has no other
purpose than that of effecting a strong measure against the
danger of war with England.

From other directions, besides, similar testimony was forthcoming.

The Socialist _Liepziger Volkszeitung_ declared in March, 1911, that "the new situation shortly to be created in Asia Minor would hasten the break-up of the British Empire, which was already beginning to totter (schwanken)."

In _Die Neue Zeit_ for June 2, 1911, Herr Karl Radek said:--

The strengthening of German Imperialism, the first success
of which, attained with so much effort, is the Baghdad Railway;
the victory of the revolutionary party in Turkey; the prospect
of a modern revolutionary movement in India, which, of course,
must be regarded as a very different thing from the earlier
scattered risings of individual tribes; the movement towards
nationalisation in Egypt; the beginning of reform in Egypt--all
this has raised to an extraordinary degree the political
significance of the Baghdad Railway question.

The Baghdad Railway being a blow at the interests of English
Imperialism, Turkey could only entrust its construction to the
German Company because she knew that Germany's army and navy
stood behind her, which fact makes it appear to England and
Russia inadvisable to exert too sensitive a pressure upon Turkey.

In the _Akademische Blätter_ of June 1, 1911, Professor R. Mangelsdorf, another recognised authority on German policy and politics, wrote:--

The political and military power an organised railway
system will confer upon Turkey is altogether in the interest
of Germany, which can only obtain a share in actual economic
developments if Turkey is independent; and, besides, any attempt
to increase the power and ambition of England, in any case
oppressively great, is thereby effectively thwarted. To some
extent, indeed, Turkey's construction of a railway system is
a threat to England, for it means that an attack on the most
vulnerable part of the body of England's world-empire, namely
Egypt, comes well within the bounds of possibility.

These declarations and admissions render perfectly clear the reasons for Germany's professions of friendship for Turkey and for her desire that that country should become stronger and more powerful. They also leave no doubt as to the real purpose the south-western branch of the Baghdad Railway was designed to effect. The _conquest of Egypt_ by a combined German and Turkish force was the first object to be accomplished with the help of the railway extension to the Egyptian frontier in one direction and to Mecca in another; but Dr. Rohrbach's suggestion that the loss of Egypt by England would entail the loss, also, of her possessions in Central and East Africa has a further bearing on what has been told in the previous chapter concerning Germany's designs on Africa as a whole. The strategical railways in German South-West Africa; the projected extensions thereof--when circumstances permitted; the German East African lines, _and_ the south-western branch of the Baghdad Railway in the direction of Egypt were all to play their part in the eventual creation of a Cape-to-Cairo German-African Empire.

If we now direct our attention to the south-eastern branch of the Baghdad Railway, we are met by the repeated protests made by Germany that in desiring the construction of a railway to the _Persian Gulf_ she was influenced solely by commercial considerations. Against these protests, however, there are to be put various material facts which leave no room for doubt that Germany's aims in this direction were otherwise than exclusively economic, while even the economic purposes which the Baghdad Railway would, undoubtedly, have served must have eventually led to a strengthening of Germany's political position, this, in turn, helping her military and strategical purposes.

As originally planned, the port of Basra (the commercial centre of trade in Mesopotamia, situate, sixty miles from the sea, on the Shat-el-Arab--the great river formed by the junction of the Tigris and the Euphrates--and open to the shipping of the world) was to have been the terminus of the Baghdad Railway; and if commercial considerations had, indeed, been exclusively aimed at, this terminus would have answered all requirements.

No objection was, or could be, raised by the British Government to the construction of the Baghdad Railway, on Turkish territory, as far as Basra. In the later developments of the scheme, however, Germany and her Turkish partner sought to ensure the continuation of the line from its natural commercial terminus, at Basra, to a political and strategical terminus, at Koweit, on the shores of the Persian Gulf. The _Abendpost_ (Berlin) voiced the German view when it spoke of Koweit as "the only possible outlet to the Baghdad Railway."

But the extension of an avowedly German line of railway to Koweit would have been a direct challenge to the paramountcy which Great Britain claimed over the Persian Gulf. It would have come into collision with British policy, interests and prestige in the East. It would have given the German and Turkish allies an excuse for creating at Koweit a harbour, with wharves, docks, warehouses, etc., which might be converted into a naval and military base capable of serving far different purposes than those of trade and commerce--those, namely, of a new line of advance on _India_. It would, in combination with the control already exercised by the Deutsche Bank over the railways in European Turkey, have assured to Germany the means of sending her Naval forces or her troops, together with supplies and ammunition, direct to the Persian Gulf, either to strengthen her fleet or to carry out any further designs she might cherish in the domain of Weltpolitik as affecting the Far East. It would have meant that, as far as the head of the Persian Gulf, at least, rail-power would have rendered her less dependent on the exercise of sea-power, on her own account, and would have enabled her to neutralise, also, as far as the said Gulf, the sea-power of England.

What so fundamental a change in the strategical position might imply was well expressed by so eminent and impartial an authority as A. T. Mahan, when he said, in his "Retrospect and Prospect" (1902):--

The control of the Persian Gulf by a foreign State of
considerable naval potentiality, a "fleet in being" there, based
upon a strong military port, would reproduce the relations of
Cadiz, Gibraltar and Malta to the Mediterranean. It would flank
all the routes to the Farther East, to India and to Australia,
the last two actually internal to the Empire, regarded as
a political system; and, although at present Great Britain
unquestionably could check such a fleet, it might well require a
detachment large enough to affect seriously the general strength
of her naval position.... Concession in the Persian Gulf,
whether by positive formal arrangement, or by simple neglect
of the local commercial interests which now underlie political
and military control, will imperil Great Britain's naval
situation in the Farther East, her political position in India,
her commercial interests in both, and the Imperial tie between
herself and Australia.

One is thus led to the conclusion that Koweit, as the terminus of the south-eastern branch of the Baghdad Railway, and within four days of Bombay, would have been as vital a point for British interests as the terminus of the south-western branch within about twelve hours of Egypt; while the possession of this further advantage by Germany would have been in full accord with the proposition laid down by Rohrbach and others as to the line of policy Germany should adopt for "bringing England herself into a dangerous position."

With a view to safeguarding British interests from any possible drifting into this position, as regards the Persian Gulf, the claim was raised, some years ago, that England should have entire control of the railway from Baghdad to Koweit. Germany did not see her way to assent to this proposal; but in 1911 she announced that she would forgo her right to construct the section from Baghdad to Basra on the understanding that this final section would be completed by Turkey. By way of compensation for the concession thus made by her to British views, she secured certain financial advantages and the right both to build the Alexandretta extension and to convert Alexandretta itself into practically a German port on the shores of the Mediterranean.

The precise value of the "concession" thus made by Germany was, however, open to considerable doubt. If she could succeed in her long-cherished aim of establishing a virtual protectorate over Turkey, then the fact that the final section of the Baghdad Railway had been built by Turkey, and not by Germany, would have become a matter of detail not likely to affect the reality of Germany's control. The line to Basra might have been nominally Turkish but the directing policy would have been German; and like conditions would have arisen had Great Britain agreed to allow Turkey--though not Germany--to continue the railway from Basra to Koweit.

In the wide scope of their aggressive purpose, the Baghdad Railway and its associated lines can best be compared with those roads which the Romans, in the days of their pride--the pride that came before their fall--built for the better achievement of their own aims as world-conquerors. Apart from the fact that the roads now in question are iron roads, and that the locomotive has superseded the chariot, the main difference between Roman and German is to be found in the fact that the world which the former sought to conquer was far smaller than the one coveted by the latter.

The programme of Weltpolitik comprised in the German schemes embraced not only countries but continents. In addition to the aspirations cherished as regards Europe, that programme aimed at the eventual annexation to the German Empire of three other Empires--the Turkish, the Indian, and a new one to be known as the German-African. It was further to secure the means of sending troops direct from Germany via Constantinople and the Baghdad Railway to the frontiers of Persia for possible operations against that country in combination with the Turkish military forces, these having first been brought under German control. The Baghdad Railway itself was, in the same way, and with like support, to afford to Germany the means of threatening Russian interests both in Persia and in Trans-Caucasia. It was to nullify England's sea power in the Mediterranean, if not, to a certain extent--through the establishment of a new Power at the gate of India--in the Far East, as well. It would, as Mahan showed, have flanked our communications with Australia, giving Germany an advantage in this direction, also, had Asia and Africa failed to satisfy her aspirations.

Regarded from the point of view of its designed effect on the destinies of nations, on the balance of political power, and on the reconstruction of the world's forces--all for the aggrandisement of a single people--the full programme must be looked upon as the most ambitious and the most unscrupulous project of world-conquest that has yet been placed on record in the history of mankind.

For its attainment, however, it clearly depended no less upon rail-transport than upon force of arms; and in this respect it represented Germany's greatest attempt to apply, in practice, that principle of rail-power to which she had devoted eight decades of inquiry, trial and organisation.

FOOTNOTES:

[75] "Babylonien, das reichste Land in der Vorzeit und das lohnendste Kolonisationsfeld für die Gegenwart." 128 pp. Heidelberg, 1886.

[76] Important extensions have been carried out since.

[77] Dr. Dillon, in _The Contemporary Review_, April, 1906.