'File 73/7 I (D 19) Status of Kuwait & Baghdad Railway, and Anglo-Turkish negotiations 1911' [‎151r] (335/631)

i litis bocoiaem. is th e'Property p.- H ig Britannic Majesty's Govenunent.]
EASTERN DEPARTMENT.
SECRET SERIES.
[March 15.]
Section 1.
[9557] N 0 . i.
Extract from the "Morning Post" of March 15, mi.— {Received at Foreign
Office, March 15, 1911.)
Bagdad Railway Question : French Government's Attitude.
[From a French Correspondent.]
J HE attitude of the trench Government towards the Bagdad Railway question
cannot be tlioroughly understood without a short historical retrospect. For a very
ioiig tune, in tact until the year 1902, French policy in respect of the Bagdad scheme
vsas rather unsteady. [he idea of connecting Asia Minor with the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. , which
the German engineer, W. von Pressed launched iii 1871, could not appeal to France
more than to England, since all the previous English or French schemes had always
contemplated the linking of the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. and of Mesopotamia with the echelles of
the Levant A geographical area corresponding to the region around the eastern Mediterranean Sea. ^ on the Mediterranean coast. Owing to the importance of French settle
ments in ^yria such a line as the Mediterranean-Bagdad Railway recommended in
1856 by Sir John MacNeilJ and General Chesney would have suited France much
betcer than the German plan. Still, it appeared from the first that the Turks them
selves would, tor strategical reasons, prefer the German scheme to the English one,
their main wish being to connect Constantinople with the remotest parts of their
Empire. i heretore the trench Government never offered a blind opposition to the
new enterprise, ' uriously enough,'it was a French company, the Compagnie Fives-Lille,
which constructed the first line from Haidar-Pacha to Ismid in 1871-73.
A new situation arose, however, when a German company secured in 1888 the
concession from Ismid to Angora with the promise of an ulterior extension towards
Bagdad. With a little more energy it was generally thought at the time that France
might have secured the concession for herself. But now the Deutsche Bank had the
railway and meant business. In 1893 the German rails reached Angora, and the
Anatolian company secured two more concessions—one from Angora to Kaisarieh,
which was left untouched ; the other from Eskisher to Konieh, which removed from
north to south the route to be followed by the future Bagdad line. A double menace
was thereby offered to French interests. First of all, the French lines in Asia Minor
were shut out from any extension towards the east or the south. Such was the case
with the line from Mudania to Brusa, and later on with the Smyrna—Kassaba line, after
the latter had been bought by French financiers from an English company. In the
second place, the Bagdad line was to take the Syrian route instead of crossing the
Kurdistan ; it was bound to injure the Mersina-Adana line, worked by an Anglo-
French company, and might prevent any further extension of the French lines in Syria.
Had England joined hands with France at that moment it might have been possible
to interfere in an efficient way with the somewhat ambitious schemes of the Germans.
Unfortunately, this was not the case. The French Ambassador in Constantinople
(then M. Paul Cambon) had to act alone. He therefore confined himself to asking for
a sufficient compensation. Owing to his successful efforts France secured not only the
railway from Damascus to Aleppo, including any future line which might connect that
railway with the coast, but she was allowed to extend the Damascus-Aleppo line as far
north as Birejik. Had the French financiers taken advantage of that very important
concession they would have found themselves in an exceptionally strong position when
the Bagdad line, after crossing the Taurus, would have found its route barred by a
French railway already in operation. It was not the French Ambassadors fault that
the construction of the Aleppo-Birejik Railway was not pushed in time, and that the
German company easily managed to take over that part of the concession in 1903.
It was only in 1902 that the policy of the French Government, in view of the
imminent agreement between the Turks and the Anatolian company, over the Bagdad
line, became definite Nobody failed to perceive then that a misunderstanding had
arisen between the French Foreign Office and the representatives of French interests
[1932 p—1]