Let us begin with the Near East. The situation there, when Germany began
her enterprise, is thus summed up by a French writer[1]:--
Astride across Europe and Asia, the Ottoman Empire represented, for
all the nations of the old continent, the cosmopolitan centre where
each had erected, by dint of patience and ingenuity, a fortress of
interests, influences, and special rights. Each fortress watched
jealously to maintain its particular advantages in face of the rival
enemy. If one of them obtained a concession, or a new favour, immediately
the commanders of the others were seen issuing from their walls to claim
from the Grand Turk concessions or favours which should maintain the
existing balance of power or prestige.... France acted as protector of
the Christians; 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 rage. All the vested interests of the other States were
up in arms. The proposed railway, it was said, would compete with the
Trans-Siberian, with the French railways, with the ocean route to India,
with the steamboats on the Tigris. Corn in Mesopotamia would bring down
the price of corn in Russia. German trade would oust British and French
and Russian trade. Nor was that all. Under cover of an economic enterprise,
Germany was nursing political ambitions. She was aiming at Egypt and the
Suez Canal, at the control of the Persian Gulf, at the domination of
Persia, at the route to India. Were these fears and suspicions justified?
In the European anarchy, who can say? Certainly the entry of a new economic
competitor, the exploitation of new areas, the opening out of new trade
routes, must interfere with interests already established. That must always
be so in a changing world. But no one would seriously maintain that that is
a reason for abandoning new enterprises. But, it was urged, in fact Germany
will take the opportunity to squeeze out the trade of other nations and
to constitute a German monopoly. Germany, it is true, was ready to give
guarantees of the "open door." But then, what was the value of these
guarantees? She asserted that her enterprise was economic, and had no
ulterior political gains. But who would believe her? Were not German
Jingoes already rejoicing at the near approach of German armies to the
Egyptian frontiers? In the European anarchy all these fears, suspicions,
and rivalries were inevitable. But the British Government at least was
not carried away by them. They were willing that British capital should
co-operate on condition that the enterprise should be under international
control. They negotiated for terms which would give equal control to
Germany, England, and France. They failed to get these terms, why has not
been made public. But Lord Cranborne, then Under-Secretary of State, said
in the House of Commons that "the outcry which was made in this matter--I
think it a very ill-informed outcry--made it exceedingly difficult for us
to get the terms we required."[2] And Sir Clinton Dawkins wrote in a letter
to Herr Gwinner, the chief of the Deutsche Bank: "The fact is that the
business has become involved in politics here, and has been sacrificed
to the very violent and bitter feeling against Germany exhibited by the
majority of newspapers and shared in by a large number of people."[3]
British co-operation, therefore, failed, as French and Russian had failed.
The Germans, however, persevered with their enterprise, now a purely
German one, and ultimately with success. Their differences with Russia
were arranged by an agreement about the Turko-Persian railways signed in
1911. An agreement with France, with regard to the railways of Asiatic
Turkey, was signed in February 1914, and one with England (securing our
interests on the Persian Gulf) in June of the same year. Thus just before
the war broke out this thorny question had, in fact, been settled to the
satisfaction of all the Powers concerned. And on this two comments may be
made. First, that the long friction, the press campaign, the rivalry of
economic and political interests, had contributed largely to the European
tension. Secondly, that in spite of that, the question did get settled,
and by diplomatic means. On this subject, at any rate, war was not
"inevitable." Further, it seems clear that the British Government,
so far from "hemming-in" Germany in this matter, were ready from the
first to accept, if not to welcome, her enterprise, subject to their
quite legitimate and necessary preoccupation with their position on
the Persian Gulf. It was the British Press and what lay behind it that
prevented the co-operation of British capital. Meantime the economic
penetration of Asia Minor by Germany had been accompanied by a political
penetration at Constantinople. Already, as early as 1898, the Kaiser had
announced at Damascus that the "three hundred millions of Mussulmans who
live scattered over the globe may be assured that the German Emperor will
be at all times their friend."
This speech, made immediately after the Armenian massacres, has been very
properly reprobated by all who are revolted at such atrocities. But the
indignation of Englishmen must be tempered by shame when they remember
that it was their own minister, still the idol of half the nation, who
reinstated Turkey after the earlier massacres in Bulgaria and put back
the inhabitants of Macedonia for another generation under the murderous
oppression of the Turks. The importance of the speech in the history of
Europe is that it signalled the advent of German influence in the Near
East. That influence was strengthened on the Bosphorus after the Turkish
revolution of 1908, in spite of the original Anglophil bias of the Young
Turks, and as some critics maintain, in consequence of the blundering
of the British representatives. The mission of Von der Goltz in 1908
and that of Liman von Sanders in 1914 put the Turkish army under German
command, and by the outbreak of the war German influence was predominant
in Constantinople. This political influence was, no doubt, used, and
intended to be used, to further German economic schemes. Germany, in
fact, had come in to play the same game as the other Powers, and had
played it with more skill and determination. She was, of course, here as
elsewhere, a new and disturbing force in a system of forces which already
had difficulty in maintaining a precarious equilibrium. But to be a new and
disturbing force is not to commit a crime. Once more the real culprit was
not Germany nor any other Power. The real culprit was the European anarchy.
[Footnote 1: Pierre Albin, "D'Agadir à Serajevo," p. 81.]
[Footnote 2: _Hansard_, 1903, vol. 126, p. 120.]
[Footnote 3: _Nineteenth Century_, June 1909, vol. 65, p. 1090.]