How safe will be evidenced by this--that at both
Bordeaux and Paris this problem was before the authorities: "Events
have now progressed so far that it is time for the Allies to consider
what will be their terms of peace. These terms must be divided into
many classes, ranging from those in which only one of the Allies has an
interest to those in which all have an interest. Of course, the latter
will be the most complex, and it is time now to begin with the
complexities of the most far-reaching situation. This is Mesopotamia
and the Bagdad railroad."

Now who in Washington knows anything about Mesopotamia or the Bagdad
railroad? Yet here is the key of the most far-reaching problem in any
peace proposals. It is because this matter can now be settled that the
plunging of Turkey into the war by Enver Bey has made all Europe
rejoice. The Germans think Turkey is another 16 1/2-inch howitzer or
"Jack Johnson" putting black smoke over the British empire. The rest
of Europe now knows the whole of Turkey is on the table, and the
carving, it is believed, will be had with no plates extended from
either Austria or Germany. For the first time the Turkish problem can
be really settled instead of patched.

Some years ago I was astonished to learn in Europe that American
banking interests, and American contracting and engineering firms in
alliance therewith, had their eyes upon Asia Minor and the possibility
of its development by American railroad enterprise. I was astonished
to learn that some people at Constantinople had authority for the use
of the name of J. P. Morgan & Co. Indeed, a railroad concession in
Asia Minor, the details of which it is not now necessary to go into,
had been arranged, I was told, and lacked only signatures. The
American people felt that the Germans were the little devils under the
table who stayed the hand of the Sultan, and kept his pen off the
parchment. Never would the signature come down on that paper, although
declared to have been many times promised.

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 f