or 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