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.