arly as the thirties of last century Colonel
Chesney was sent out to examine the ground, and in 1867 the proposal was
considered by a Committee of the House of Commons. For the economic
development of Western Asia it is clearly a better plan, but then Dr.
Rohrbach bases the "necessity for the East Anatolian section of the
Bagdad Railway" on wholly different grounds.

"The necessity," he declares, "consists in Turkey's military interests,
which obviously would be very poorly served" (by German railway
enterprise) "if troops could not be transported by train without a break
from Bagdad and Mosul to the extremity of Anatolia, and _vice versa_."

The Bagdad Railway is thus acknowledged to be an instrument of strategy
for the Germans and for the Turks of domination--for "_vice versa_"
means that Turkish troops can be transported at a moment's notice
through the tunnels from Anatolia to enforce the Ottoman pretension over
the Arab lands. Militarily, these tunnels are the most valuable section
of the line; economically, they are the most costly and unremunerative.
And the second (and longer) tunnel could still have been dispensed with,
if, south of Taurus, the track had been led along the Syrian coast.
"Economic interests and considerations of expense," Wiedenfeld
concedes[32], "argued strongly for the latter course, but--fortunately,
as we must admit to-day--the military point of view prevailed." Thus the
Turco-German understanding prevented the Bagdad Railway first from
beginning at a port on the Mediterranean coast, and then from touching
the coast at all[33]. "The spine of Turkey," as German writers are fond
of calling it, distorts the natural articulation of Western Asia.

Nemesis has overtaken the Germans in the Armenian deportations--a
"political end" of Turkish Nationalism which swept away the "economic
means" towards Germany's subtler policy. A month or two before the
outbreak of war Dr. Rohrbach stated, in a public lecture, that

"Germany has an important interest in effecting and maintaining contact
with the Armenian nation. We have set before ourselves the necessary and
legitimate aim of spreading and enrooting German influence in Turkey,
not only by military missions and the construction of railways, but also
by the establishment of intellectual relations, by the work of German
_Kultur_--in a word, by moral conquests; and we are determined, by
pacific means, to reach an amicable understanding with the Turks and