Britain, France, and Russia, of a Pan-Islamic revival. For all of these reasons the obvious German policy was not only to respect the territorial integrity of Turkey, but to defend it against the encroachments of other powers. "Not a penny for a weak Turkey," said Rohrbach, "but for a strong Turkey everything we can give!"[12]
In its political aspects the Bagdad Railway was something more than a railway. It was one phase of the great diplomatic struggle for the predominance of power, one pawn in the great game between the Alliance and the Entente, one element of the Anglo-German rivalry on the seas. The development of closer relations, political and economic, between Germany and Turkey was in accord with the spirit of an era of universal preparedness—preparedness for pressing economic competition, preparedness for the expected great European war in which every nation would be obliged to fight for its very existence. Through control of the economic resources of the Ottoman Empire, German diplomacy sought to arrive at an entente cordiale or a formal military alliance with the Sultan. Through support of the chief Mohammedan power Germany might throw tempting "apples of discord" into the colonial empires of her chief European rivals, for Great Britain ruled about eighty-five million subject Mohammedans, Russia about seventeen million, France about fifteen million; but Germany possessed almost none.[13] Friedrich Naumann wrote in 1889, in connection with the Kaiser's pilgrimage to the Near East: "It is possible that the world war will break out before the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. Then the Caliph of Constantinople will once more uplift the standard of the Holy War. The Sick Man will raise himself for the last time to shout to Egypt, the Soudan, East Africa, Persia, Afghanistan, and India, 'War against England.' It is not unimportant to know who will support him on his bed when he utters this cry."[14]
