CHAPTER VI
THE BAGDAD RAILWAY BECOMES AN IMPERIAL ENTERPRISE
Political Interests Come to the Fore
It was asserted times without number that the Bagdad Railway was an independent financial enterprise, unconnected with the political aims of the German Government in Turkey and in no sense associated with an imperialist policy in the Near East. At the time the concession of 1903 was granted Dr. Rohrbach expressed the belief that political and diplomatic considerations were quite outside the plans and purposes of the promoters of the Railway.[1] Herr Bassermann, leader of the National Liberal Party, announced to the Reichstag that, although German capital was predominant in the Railway, there was no intent on the part of the owners or on the part of the Government to build with any political arrière-pensée. Baron von Schoen, Imperial Secretary for Foreign Affairs, reiterated this idea with emphasis. He pointed out that the Bagdad convention of 1903 was not a treaty between Germany and Turkey, but a contract between the Ottoman Government and the Anatolian Railway Company. He maintained that if the railway were considered, properly, as a purely economic enterprise, "all the fantastic schemes that are from time to time being attached to it would evaporate."[2] A British journalist wrote in 1913: "Gwinner, it may be assumed, is not building the Bagdad Railway for the purposes of the German General Staff. What chiefly keeps him awake of nights is how to extract dividends from it
