Book Description

THE purpose of this volume is to elucidate an aspect of the war which although it is overshadowed at present by the paramount issue-the menace of a militarism in league with autocracy-was the most significant single factor contributing to the outbreak of the long-foreseen war in 1914, and will form one of the most momentous problems when the time for the peace negotiations arrives. Ever since the announcement was made towards the close of the year 1899 that the Turkish government had conceded to a German syndicate the privilege of building a railway to connect Constantinople with Bagdad through a transverse route across Asia Minor, the Bagdad Railway has been the core of the Eastern Question. There were to be sure other aspects of that question, which led to the two Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913, but the addition of the Bagdad Railway was an aggravating factor to an already sufficiently complicated situation that involved the great European powers-England, France, Germany and Russia-in a network of diplomatic negotiations, the meshes of which became closer as the years rolled on. The railway became the spectre of the twentieth century. It was a spectre that always appeared armed "from top to toe" and when occasionally he "wore his beaver up," the face was that of a grim, determined warrior.As an industrial enterprise, the project of a railway through a most notable historic region, and passing along a route which had resounded to the tread of armies thousands of years ago, was fraught with great possibilities of usefulness in opening up the nearer East to brisk trade with Europe that would follow in the wake of the locomotive, and in infusing the young Western spirit into the old East, carrying western ideas, western modes of education, and western science to the mother-lands of civilization. The railway would also prove to be a short cut to India and the farther East, and as such the undertaking was on a plane of importance with the cutting of the Suez Canal. Connecting through junctions and branches with the other railway systems of Asia Minor, Syria and Palestine, the Bagdad Railway would result in covering the entire region with a perfect network of modern methods of transportation that would embrace eventually also the projected railways of Persia. Full credit should be given to the German brains in which this project was hatched, and there is no reason to suspect that at the outset, the German capitalists who fathered the enterprise were actuated by any other motive than the perfectly legitimate one to create a great avenue of commerce. When, however, the German government entered the field as the backer and promoter of the scheme, the political aspect of the railway was moved into the foreground, and that aspect has since overshadowed the commercial one. The full political import of the Bagdad Railway becomes apparent in the light of the eventful history of Asia Minor which can now be followed, at least in general outlines, from a period as early as 2000 B.C. To illustrate the main thesis suggested by the route of the railway that the control of the historic highway stretching from Constantinople to Bagdad has at all times involved the domination of the Near East, it has been necessary to sketch the history of Asia Minor in its relation to the great civilizations of antiquity and to follow that history through the period of Greek, Roman, Parthian and Arabic control, past the efforts of the Crusaders to save the route for Christian Europe, to the final conquest of it by the Ottoman Turks. That event, marked by the capture of Constantinople in 1453, directly led to the discovery of America in 1492.I feel that no apology is needed for thus devoting a large chapter of the volume to this history, for apart from its intrinsic interest, our understanding of the present situation in the Near East is dependent upon an appreciation of the position that Asia Minor, as the bridge leading to the East, has always held.