The English were, of course, vitally interested in any railroad concessions in Asia Minor as opening the route to the Persian Gulf and India.  Money talks with Turkey as nowhere else.  The Germans had made a great impression upon the Bosphorus.  Nobody at that point in the geography of the world could fail to see the wonderful commercial progress of the Germans and the military power that stood behind ready to back it up.

A concession for a railroad from the Bosphorus to Bagdad and through Mesopotamia to the Persian Gulf finally went to Germany, and the signature of the Sultan was at the bottom of the paper.  There was, of course, the usual Oriental compromise, and the concession for the oil fields of Mesopotamia went to the English; but the signature of the Sultan is still lacking to that piece of paper.

English statesmen announced that the Bagdad railroad was a purely private enterprise, financed in Germany by people associated with the Deutsche Bank.  They had later to confess that error.  Germany laughed and later openly announced that the Bagdad railroad was a Prussian enterprise of state.  In fact, this concession, which is likely to be famous in history when the Allies win, was handed over to the German Emperor personally by the Sultan.

Already a thousand miles of this road have been constructed through Asia Minor to Mosul.  The concession carries the mineral rights for ten miles on either side of the railroad, except through the oil fields of Mesopotamia, said to be among the greatest of the oil fields of the world.  They are really part of the famous Russian oil territory between Batum and Baku, or the Black and Caspian seas, which extends not only south into Mesopotamia but is now being developed far to the north in the Ural Mountains of Great Russia.

Steadily the influence of Germany progressed with Turkey, now through one channel, now through another.  When the Bulgarian war broke out, it was German guns and German officers and German money that upheld the Turks.  The French put their money on Bulgaria by bank loans to her treasury.  The Russians backed Servia.  The French laughed and so did all Europe when the Turkish troops manned by German officers were beaten back to Constantinople and the Bosphorus.

Austria extended the hand of friendship to Bulgaria and induced her to attack her allies, Servia and Greece, thus making the second Balkan war.  The result was the loss by Bulgaria of part of the territory she had acquired and a further augmentation in the importance of Servia.  Bulgaria has never forgiven either Servia or Austria for this defeat.

The Servians are the pure-blooded Slavs, while the Bulgarians have a Turkish admixture, whence their great fighting qualities.  The Roumanians just north of Bulgaria are Italians, and the defeat of Turkey in Africa by Italy did not lessen the importance of this enterprising nation on the Danube, fronting Austria-Hungary and Russia.  Both Austria and Germany were losers in all three wars; while the treaty ending the second Balkan war magnified Servia of the Slav race of Russia.  This is the important and crucial point in race and geography.