- ing for continued construction of uncompleted sections of
the Bagdad Railway. The Young Turks were delighted at the prospect that the Powers might finally consent to the much-needed increase in the customs duties. They were no less delighted to know that railway construction in Asia Minor—which held out so much promise for the economic development and the political stability of the country—was to go on unimpeded by Franco-German rivalry and antagonism.[18]
There was some harsh criticism in Great Britain, however, of the advantages which France had obtained for herself in the Ottoman Empire. Sir Mark Sykes, an eminent student of Near Eastern affairs, believed that the new state of affairs was worse than the old. Speaking in the House of Commons, March 18, 1914, he warned the Foreign Office that "the policy of French financiers will produce eventually the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. . . . Take the proposed loan arranged with the French Government, for something over £20,000,000. In order to get this there are concessions which I cannot help feeling are more brazen and more fatal than any I have seen. The existing railways in Syria meander for miles to avoid legitimate profits in order to extort a guarantee. Alongside these railways you can see the merchants' merchandise and the peasants' produce rotting because the railway people do not trouble to warehouse the stuff or to shift it. They have got their guarantee, and they do not care. These concessions, which have been extracted from Turkey, mean a monopoly of all Syrian transit; and, further, a native press is to be subventioned practically in the interest of these particular monopolies. . . . In practice, loans, kilometric guarantees, monopolies, and a financed native press must, whether the financiers desire it or not, pave the way to annexation. I submit that this is not the spirit of the entente. The British people did not stand by the
