ians; England, the vigilant guardian of the routes to India,
maintained a privileged political and economic position; Austria-Hungary
mounted guard over the route to Salonica; Russia, protecting the
Armenians and Slavs of the South of Europe, watched over the fate of
the Orthodox. There was a general understanding among them all, tacit
or express, that none should better its situation at the expense of
the others.

When into this precariously balanced system of conflicting interests
Germany began to throw her weight, the necessary result was a disturbance
of equilibrium. As early as 1839 German ambition had been directed towards
this region by Von Moltke; but it was not till 1873 that the process of
"penetration" began. In that year the enterprise of the Anatolian railway
was launched by German financiers. In the succeeding years it extended
itself as far as Konia; and in 1899 and 1902 concessions were obtained
for an extension to Bagdad and the Persian Gulf. It was at this point that
the question became one of international politics. Nothing could better
illustrate the lamentable character of the European anarchy than the
treatment of this matter by the interests and the Powers affected. Here
had been launched on a grandiose scale a great enterprise of civilization.
The Mesopotamian plain, the cradle of civilization, and for centuries
the granary of the world, was to be redeemed by irrigation from the
encroachment of the desert, order and security were to be restored,
labour to be set at work, and science and power to be devoted on a
great scale to their only proper purpose, the increase of life. Here
was an idea fit to inspire the most generous imagination. Here, for all
the idealism of youth and the ambition of maturity, for diplomatists,
engineers, administrators, agriculturists, educationists, an opportunity
for the work of a lifetime, a task to appeal at once to the imagination,
the intellect, and the organizing capacity of practical men, a scheme in
which all nations might be proud to participate, and by which Europe might
show to the backward populations that the power she had won over Nature
was to be used for the benefit of man, and that the science and the arms
of the West were destined to recreate the life of the East. What happened,
in fact? No sooner did the Germans approach the other nations for financial
and political support to their scheme than there was an outcry of jealousy,
suspicion, and