"When the history of the latter part of the nineteenth century will come to be written, one event will be singled out above all others for its intrinsic importance and for its far-reaching results; namely, the conventions of 1899 and of 1902 between His Imperial Majesty the Sultan of Turkey and the German Company of the Anatolian Railways."—Charles Sarolea, The Bagdad Railway and German Expansion as a Factor in European Politics (Edinburgh, 1907), p. 3.
"The Turkish Government, I know, have been accused of
being corrupt. I venture to submit that it has not been for
want of encouragement from Europeans that the Turks have
been corrupt. The sinister—I think it is not going too far
to use that word—effect of European financiers on Turkey
has had more to do with the misgovernment than any Turk,
young or old."—Sir Mark Sykes, in the House of Commons,
March 18, 1914.
