BAGHDAD RAILWAY

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 206, 25 May 1908, Page 7

BAGHDAD RAILWAY

'■ EXTENSION TO MAUDE

SANCTIONED BY THE PORTE. GERMAN PRESSURE. by TKLEonArn—rniiss :.bsoc iaticx—coftbioht Constantinople, May 22. Owing to Germany's pressure, the Porte has sanctioned a 500-mile extension of the Baghlad Railway, including the Taurus section to Mardin'. CENTRAL LINK 0F A HUGE SCHEME. NATIONS' JEALOUSIES. Tho railway to Baghdad, which Germany is financing and pressing on Turkey, is of strategic as well as commercial importance, having as its complement an extension from Baghdad to • the Persian Gulf. Britain 1 has always claimed specjal interests iu the seuth. of Persia and on tho shores of the Gulf, a claim which derives implied if not express support from tho Anglo-Russian Convention. Col. Yate, formerly Chief Commissioner of Baluchistan, in a recent speech, strongly advocated that when the,railway some day Teaches Baghdad, Britain should not only build and control a line from Baghdad to the Gulf, but should also control the railway where it enters Baghdad. Another authority, Sir Chas. Dilke, in an optimistic* speech made in Paris, said he considered that " the Baghdad railway schemo, while in 1903 it had seemed a brand of discord, if not'a torch of war, now bade fair to becomo a bond of union." Ho was in" completo agreement with tho idea that the Euphrates Valley should once .more bo fertilised by an arrangement to which Russia, France, Germany, and Britain should be parties. 1 The proposal to mako this huge railway undertaking international has also financial arguments to support it. Germany's economic burdens are such that her capital is not equal to rapid construction, and Turkish financiers aro in such a state that payment of Turkey's kilomotric guarantees is a doubtful factor. The German Minister for Foreign Affairs, Herr Von Schon, told tho Reichstag in February that tho German Company which had obtained the concession for tho railway was ready to proceed with ■ tho construction of tho difficult Taurus , section of tho lino if tho Turkish Government was prepared to' pay the kilometric guarantee of .£825. Tho work'of con-' otruction would bo continued as soon as the necessary guarantees wero forthcoming. It was fanciful to ascvibe to Germany any intentions of seizing a port in tho Perisan Gulf or of colonising Turkish provinces with German farmers. If foreign capital wero admitted, which was not an impossible'contingency, tho German character of tho enterprise would bo preserved. Tho undertaking was purely commercial, and its essentially Gorman character, which it derived from tho fact that it was a concession'to Gorman capitalists, was recognised by tho other Powers.. Herr Erzsborger expressed the view that German interests wero prejudiced by. the Anglo-Russian Convention. Herr von Schon said that the Convention did not prejudico Germany's commercial interests in Persia.

Mardin,' to which it is. now. proposed by Germany to extend tho lino, is a strategically 1 important' town in Asiatic I Turkey,. between tho rivers Euphrates and Tigris. The line ie now at the foot of tho Taurus, mountains, and it will havo to overcome these and descend far down the oastehr watershed beforo it (reaches Mardin, a distance of some 330 miles as the crow flies, in country of difficult construction. From Mnrdin, Baghdad is distant, as tlio crow flies, : about, another 330 miles. The Taurus.-Mtirdin section now proposed to bs attacked is, therefore, the middle link of the Baghdad railway, and probably tho backbono of the undertaking. Onco Mardin is reached— and that cannot bedono. for years—the gigantic schome of a highway between Hamburg and Persia will bo within measurablo distance of completion. 1 '