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