The war and the Bagdad Railway; the story of Asia Minor and its relation to the present conflict

Front matter

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Preface

The purpose of this volume is to elucidate an aspect of the war which although it is overshadowed at present by the paramount issue — the menace of a militarism in league with autocracy — was the most significant single factor contributing to the outbreak of the long-foreseen war in 1914, and will form one of the most momentous problems when the time for the peace negotiations arrives. Ever since the announcement was made towards the close of the year 1899 that the Turkish government had conceded to a German syndicate the privilege of building a railway to connect Constantinople with Bagdad through a transverse route across Asia Minor, the Bagdad Railway has been the core of the Eastern Question. There were to be sure other aspects of that question, which led to the two Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913, but the addition of the Bagdad Railway was an aggravating factor to an already sufficiently complicated situation that involved the great European powers — England, France, Germany and Russia — ^in a network of diplomatic negotiations, the meshes of which became closer as the years rolled on. The railway became the spectre of the twentieth century. It was a spectre that always appeared armed " from- top to toe " and when occasionally he " wore his beaver up," the face was that of a grim, determined warrior.

As an industrial enterprise, the project of a railway through a most notable historic region, and passing along a route which had resounded to the tread of armies thousands of years ago, was fraught with great possibilities of usefulness in opening up the nearer East to brisk trade with Europe that would follow in the wake of the locomotive, and in infusing the young Western spirit into the old East, carrying western ideas, western modes of education, and western science to the mother-lands of civilization. The railway would also prove to be a short cut to India and the farther East, and as such the undertaking was on a plane of importance with the cutting of the Suez Canal. Connecting through junctions and branches with the other railway systems of Asia Minor, Syria and Palestine, the Bagdad Railway would result in covering the entire region with a perfect network of modern methods of transportation that would embrace eventually also the projected railways of Persia. Full credit should be given to the German brains in which this project was hatched, and there is no reason to suspect that at the outset, the German capitalists who fathered the enterprise were actuated by any other motive than the perfectly legitimate one to create a great avenue of commerce. When, however, the German government entered the field as the backer and promoter of the scheme, the political aspect of the railway was moved into the foreground, and that aspect has since overshadowed the commercial one. The full political import of the Bagdad Railway becomes apparent in the light of the eventful history of Asia Minor which can now be followed, at least in general outlines, from a period as early as 2000 B.C. To illustrate the main thesis suggested by the route of the railway that the control of the historic highway stretching from Constantinople to Bagdad has at all times involved the domination of the Near East, it has been necessary to sketch the history of Asia

Minor in its relation to the great civilizations of antiquity and to follow that history through the period of Greek, Roman, Parthian and Arabic control, past the efforts of the Crusaders to save the route for Christian Europe, to the final conquest of it by the Ottoman Turks. That event, marked by the capture of Constantinople in 1453, directly led to the discovery of America in 1492.

I feel that no apology is needed for thus devoting a large chapter of the volume to this history, for apart from its intrinsic interest, our understanding of the present situation in the Near East is dependent upon an appreciation of the position that Asia Minor, as the bridge leading to the East, has always held.

The war has resulted in bringing many countries closer to our horizon, but no lands more so than those to which Asia Minor, as I shall attempt to show, is the Hinterlcmd — Mesopotamia, Syria, Arabia and Egypt. Until recently, the history of these lands has been looked upon by the general public as the domain of the specializing historian, philologist and archaeologist. 'With the extension of the European war into these eastern lands, they become a part — and an essential part— of the general political situation. Their history needs to be known, if the problems arising from the relation of Asia Minor to the issues of the war are to be dealt with at the peace conference in an intelligent manner. I cherish the hope which, I trust, is not a delusion, that my sketch of the history of Asia Minor will help to illuminate the factors underlying " the trend towards the East " which began with Alexander the Great, which led modern nations to take possession of eastern lands, and of which the Bagdad Railway is the latest manifestation.

I have thought it proper to give the story of the Bagdad Railway in some detail, because through this we can best follow the growth of the spirit of hostile rivalry among European nations which culminated in the outbreak three years ago. A war like the present one cannot, to be sure, be carried back to any one issue, isolated from all others, but although many issues are behind the war, it is the Bagdad Railway that created the frame of mind among the European powers which made the war — one is inclined to put it — inevitable. A war breaks out when nations are ready for it — ready, I mean, in their disposition. The Bagdad Railway made them ready in this sense. The story of the Bagdad Railway tells us how this frame of mind was produced — and yet back of it all, we must bear in mind the deeper currents of history that produce the agitation on the surface.

The study of the relation of Asia Minor to the present conflict — on the basis of its history — would be incomplete without at least an attempt to peer into the future, a hazardous undertaking but which nevertheless has its value in at least suggesting the line along which the solution of the problem of the Bagdad Railway, and with it the Eastern Question of which it is the core is to be sought. As a preliminary to this outlook, I have tried to set forth the sharp distinction between what I would call the two wars — the war of 1914 and the war of 191 7. The recognition of this distinction appears to me to be essential for an understanding of the situation that will arise at the time of the peace conference.

The former war is in the main the European struggle for supremacy, the latter is the great world war for the preservation and spread of the spirit

PREFACE II

and the institutions of democracy. I am writing as a student of history and not as a partisan, except in so far as my position is, as I believe it to be, in accord with the American point of view as voiced by its most thoughtful and most sober representatives. I have no sympathy even in war time with that blatant form of patriotism which warps one's judgment and prevents a penetration into the deeper meaning of this war. It is the existence of that kind of patriotism in Germany which has produced the Pan-Germanic spirit, and the strength of which (though waning) prevents the German people from even now recognizing the reason for the hostility that they have aroused throughout the world. My indictment, therefore, of Germany's conduct of the war which has been the main factor, as I see it, leading from the war of 1914 to that of 1917, is set forth " more in sorrow than in anger " — a sorrow that must, I think, be shared by all who admired the Germany before the war for her remarkable achievements in all fields, and that bears heaviest on the thousands of Americans who, like myself, received the training for their careers at German universities and who feel keenly the intellectual ties that bind them to that country. But Germany has none but herself to blame for having thus transformed her friends into her opponents. She first handicapped those who were disposed at the outbreak of the war to see and present her side sympathetically by the violation of Belgian neutrality, she then condemned them to silence by the atrocious treatment of the Belgians and by the sinking of the Lusitania, and she finally converted them into enemies in arms by her ruthless submarine warfare that has done far more harm to the German name than any injury that the sink-at-sight procedure can inflict on the world's shipping.

As I write these lines I have before me a monograph by a German scholar on Germany's position in the East after the two Balkan wars in 1912 and 1913. Incidental to the discussion the author gives some shocking details, vouched for by reliable witnesses, of the atrocities committed in the first of these wars by the Bulgarians and Serbians. He speaks of the systematic attempt to wipe out the Turks by wholesale massacres on a huge scale, and the author asks, in a tone of righteous indignation, whether the voice of humanitarianism and civilization can remain silent with such deeds going on? The Bulgarians are now the allies of the Germans, and in the present war the Turks seem to be following exactly the same policy towards the Armenians that the Bulgarians adopted to annihilate an entire people. Did the German government respond to the desperate cry of humanity to stop officially ordered massacres in Armenia? And yet the Turk is neither cruel nor — unless stirred up — fanatical. Those who have lived longest in Turkish countries and who know the Turk best bear evidence to the fine traits of his character and that under normal conditions, Turkish Moslems and Christian Armenians live quite amicably side by side. The Armenian massacres represent a part of the policy of the Turkish government, as the Russian pogroms under the old regime were always organized by the Russian government. The population is stirred up by spreading false reports of a proposed revolt on the part of the Armenians — and the rest follows.

The war of 1914 as conducted by Germany forms a close parallel. The cruelties practised and the inhuman methods of warfare resorted to are part of the military policy, and for which the German government, following a deliberate plan of spreading terrorism and enforcing subordination, must bear the responsibility. The author whom I have quoted, assuming (as I do) that he is sincere in his denunciation of cruelties officially carried ouc by the Bulgarian government, ought certainly to be able to answer the question why the whole civilized world has changed its former admiration for Germany into a realization that through her military policy, dictated by an autocratic group that cannot be called to account by the people, Germany has become a menace to the safety of the world. The German army — in its origin the creation of the German people organized to fight for its liberty as a nation — has become a mighty weapon in the hands of the rulers of Germany to hold the people at their mercy and to use the splendid patriotism of the people (that brought 1,800,000 volunteers to the front within one week after the declaration war), for the furtherance of plans that endanger the happiness of other nations and that are to serve towards strengthening the power of autocracy. This " new " Germany, revealed by the conduct of the war, must be overcome in order to bring back the Germany of ante-bellum days. The " old " Germany, we now sadly recognize, died in 1914 — possibly earlier, on June 15, 1888, when Frederick III, surnamed the " Noble," passed away after a reign of one hundred days.^ The old Germany, as Brandes well says, gave us " everything German that is loved or appreciated." It can be recreated only through the democra-

^ George Brandes, a friend and lover of Germany if ever there was one, calls these one hundred days the " short gleam of a clear human spirit breaking in on our war-mad empire." The World at War, p. 6.

tization of Germany's form of government. This advance will assuredly come about either during the war, or as a direct result of the war, when the ghastly crisis through which the world is passing shall happily be a thing of the past, to become, after the lapse of some years, a memory that will continue to haunt the world for generations to come.

Unless, however, at the end of the war, the great nations of the world give the proper cue for the work of reconstruction by advocating a policy of co-operation with the East, instead of open or disguised exploitation, we will continue to have an Eastern Question that may again pass through the same process (with perhaps different contestants) to culminate in open hostility. " Internationalization " of all schemes for opening up the East to the West is the solution of the Eastern Question for which I have ventured to enter a plea at the close of this book.

It remains for me to make acknowledgment, as in the case of all my publications, to the invaluable assistance given to me by my dear wife in reading both the manuscript and the proof, and helping in various other ways, including the encouragement to trespass upon fields adjacent to my own and to which the study of the war in the East led me. I also wish to make grateful acknowledgment to my friend, Mrs. Gardiner Gayley, for many suggestions made in discussing with her the plan and the thesis of this study. To my former student, Hon. Edward I. Nathan, American Consul at Mersina from 1910 to the breaking of our diplomatic relations with Turkey, and who has rendered distinguished services at his responsible post, I am under obligations for criticisms and for valuable information regarding the industries of Turkey, particularly at Mersina, which I have embodied in one of the notes attached to the volume. I should like to call particular attention to these notes in w^hich I have given bibliographical and explanatory details for those who wish to pursue the subject further. The map, prepared by Mr. Earl Thatcher with great care, will, I trust, prove useful. I am indebted to Mr. Leon Dominian, of the American Geographical Society, for permission to make use of his map of railroads in Turkey published by him in " Frontiers of Language and Nationality in Europe " (Henry Holt & Co., N. Y., 1917). A special feature of my map is the inclusion of all railroads, both those constructed and those projected in Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine and Mesopotamia. The map will enable the reader to follow the further course of development of the war in the various sections of the Near East. For countries, lying outside of the special topic of this volume, I have contented myself with indicating merely a few places as an orientation ; and in order not to confuse the reader by making the map too crowded, I have selected for Asia Minor only the important places and more particularly those that are connected with events in the history of the region. My thanks are due to Dr. Edward Robinson, Director of the Metropolitan Museum of New York, who kindly placed at my disposal a photograph of the fine Hittite monument of the Museum — the only one of the kind (so far as I am aware) in this country. To my friend and colleague. Professor J. H. Breasted, of the University of Chicago, and to the publishers, Ginn & Co. and the University of Chicago, I am indebted for permission to use two illustrations, one in his excellent manual on Ancient History (Boston, 1916) and the other from his monograph. The Battle of Kadesh (Chicago,

1901 ) ; to Professor John Garstang for permission to use some of the illustrations in his Land of the Hittites (Button & Co., New York) ; to Mr. Ernest Leroux for the similar courtesy to use some illustrations from Nettancourt-Vaubecourt Sur Les Grandes Routes de VAsie Mineure (Paris, 1908) published by him; and to Mr. C. E. Lydecker, the Counsellor of the American Chamber of Commerce of Constantinople, for his approval in using several illustrations from The Levant Trade Review — a most important source of information for the commerce and industries of the Near East, and to which I am particularly glad to call the attention of all interested in Eastern matters.

To the Hon. Otis A. Glazebrook, who has made such a notable record as United States Consul at Jerusalem till the diplomatic break with Turkey, I beg to make acknowledgment for authentic information in regard to present conditions of railways in Palestine.

Mr. H. De Wolf Fuller, the editor of The Nation (New York) has kindly permitted me to embody in this book, in an enlarged and revised form, some views set forth by me in an article written for The Nation and published in the issue of August 30, 1916, under the title of " The World's Highway." Lastly, it is a genuine pleasure to dedicate the little volume to the members of the Wednesday Morning Club, of Pittsfield (Mass.), in recollection of many visits to the charming " heart of the Berkshires " as their guest. To speak before the delightful and sympathetic audience that gathers at tlie weekly reunions of this Club during the summer months is a privilege which I am sure all who are invited to do so value as highly as I do.

Morris Jastrow, Jr.

University of Pennsylvania November, 191 7

Contents

CHAPTER

PAGE

I. THE WAR IN THE EAST 23

Chapter I The War In The East

History is being made to-day through the war in lands replete with historic associations, that have witnessed the rise and decay of many a civilization. The conflict raging in three continents and shared in by the fourth sees armies taking possession of the valley of the Nile, whose pyramids were built 5000 years ago. Passing over a route identical in part with that of the traditional Exodus, the march of the English troops toward Jerusalem suggests a repetition of the Crusades of the Middle Ages. Cross and Crescent once more lock arms at sites that have acquired a sacred significance in the traditions of three religions. Further East, Russian armies are following the route of the Ten Thousand ^ on the eastern border of Asia Minor, and are moving in Persia along some of the old routes on which the hosts of Cyrus passed in their descent upon the Euphrates Valley, and which two centuries later witnessed the remarkable invasion of the old East

^Trebizond at the southeastern corner of the Black Sea, captured by the Russians in the early campaigns of the war, is the point where the Greeks on their retreat from Babylonia (401 B.C.) at last reached the seashore.

by the young Lochinvar, come out of the West. The imagination is stirred by the exploits of English armies landing at the head of the Persian Gulf and moving along the Tigris across the mounds, which have in part yielded but in large part still cover the remains of the civilization that arose in the Euphrates Valley thousands of years ago and which, spreading northwards, became the rival of Egyptian achievements.

Can any romance be stranger than the streets of Bagdad, only sixty miles distant from the ruins of ancient Babylon, with memories of past glory reaching back to Harun al-Rashid, resounding to the steps of European soldiery, and Mosul, opposite which lies all that remains of Nineveh " the great city," once mistress of the world, at the mercy of a European power! What does it all mean? It is reported that on the top of the remains of one of the ancient towers that formed a feature of the temples of Babylonia a " wireless " station has been installed since the beginning of the war. This particular tower is the one, curiously enough, which tradition associates with the famous Tower of Babel. Are we perhaps to see in the use to which this sentinel of a hoary antiquity has been converted an omen of the conquest of the East by the aggressive West? Or is it a symbol of the resuscitation of the East through the infusion of the progressive spirit of the West? Are the dry bones scattered through the valley as in the vision of Ezekiel,^ once more to be knit together with sinews and to be covered with new flesh?

On the other hand, in Arabia the standard of re-

^Ezekiel, Chap. 37.

THE WAR IN THE EAST 25

volt has been unfurled.^ The cry has been raised to reclaim the land in which Mohammed preached his new religion in the early part of the seventh century of our era for the people to which Mohammed belonged. Are we to witness perhaps a revival of the spirit which once created mighty forces to spread the Koran with the help of the sword throughout the world? Up to the present, to be sure, the " revolt " in Arabia hardly merits so dignified a name. The accounts of it sound more like a score of opera bouffe than a serious performance, but the anomaly presented for many centuries of a religion so essentially a product of the Semitic mind and an expression more particularly of the Arabic spirit as Islam controlled by a power of non-Arabic origin cannot endure for all times. To have the Sheikh el-Islam, the " chief of the church," at Constantinople, merely because Constantinople became the centre of a Turkish Empire four centuries ago, and a purely nominal head at that under the surveillance of a Young Turk cabinet, suspected of infidelity and acting at the dictation of German officials, is indeed ludicrous. But England in encouraging the demand of Arabia for the Arabs — for she is behind this revolt — may be stirring up a spirit which it will be hard for her to control, for the spirit of Islam is still the spirit of fanaticism that sees only the doings of Iblis in a world that does not acknowledge Mohammed as the apostle of Allah. " Die ich rief, die Geister, werd' ich nun nicht los," says Goethe. The Near East is still largely the Moham-

^ See Snouck Hurgronje's vivid account "The Revolt in Arabia," with a foreword by Richard J. H. Gottheil (New York, 1917).

medan East, capable of acting in accord if a great leader should arise, who will succeed in uniting the followers of Orthodox Sunna (" tradition ") with the Shiites * for a great common cause. Islam does not spell Progress. If reinforced, it may lead to a revival of a Near East that will once more be the antagonist of western culture, rather than a minor partner. The revival of the East is thus fraught with various possibilities that may take a turn for good or evil according to the throw of the dice on the table of fate. Or shall we accept the more comforting western belief that we can control the dice, and by wise counsels direct the course of events into the right channels ? Which shall it be, the optimistic creed of the West, " Life and death, the blessing and the curse, have I placed before thee, choose thou life" (Deuteronomy 30, 19), or the fatalism of the disillusioned East, which declares that " Allah is the only knowing one " ?

II

The key to the situation, however, lies not in Egypt nor in Arabia, neither in Palestine nor in Mesopotamia, but in the region of Asia Minor — along the great highway leading from Constantinople to Bagdad. That region has from the most ancient times determined the fate of the Near East. Its role in the distant past has ever been to threaten the existence of civilizations and powers that arose

* Islam, apart from numerous sects, is divided into two great divisions formed by those who follow the " sunna " or Orthodox tradition, as against those v^ho set up the claim that AH was the direct successor of Mohammed. The latter are known as "Shiites" ("partisans").

THE WAR IN THE EAST 27

in the valley of the Nile and in the valley of the Euphrates, as in the intervening lands of Palestine and Arabia. Egypt, Babylonia and Assyria exhausted their vitality in warding off the menace of the hordes that held the region. Hebrew Prophets announced the doom of the world through the coming of nations from the north — meaning Asia Minor. Cyrus and Alexander began their conquests of the old-time world by first securing a grasp on Asia Minor. With that in their hands, Babylonia, Palestine and Egypt fell easily into their lap. The Romans kept their grasp on the East as long as they held the routes through the mountain ridges of central Asia Minor. Islam failed in its world conquest because it could not hold this wild region in check, and the union of the Arabs broke up into rival caliphates. Decisive battles of the Crusades took place along these historic routes. A kingdom of Jerusalem was destined to failure from the start because it lay exposed to attacks from the North. The Turkish Empire was founded with the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, because through that event the control of the highway leading to the Persian Gulf was established. As long as that empire was able to maintain the two poles of the electric wire stretching from Constantinople to Bagdad, her dominant position remained unchallenged; her definite decline begins with a break in the current.

The conquest of that highway by Ottoman Turks meant the final triumph of Crescent over Cross, for it erected a barrier, shutting off Christian Europe from access to the entire East. A new route to India had to be found, and so in 1492 Columbus, sailing from Spain with this end in view, discovered a new continent.

In our own days we are witnessing what promised to be the reopening of the old historic highway — the bridge uniting Europe to Asia — to Western control, through the project of a great railway stretching along a distance of nearly 2000 miles from a point opposite Constantinople to Bagdad, and thence to Basra and to the Persian Gulf. That project, which was well under way at the time of the outbreak of the war, is thus marked through its historical background as one of the most momentous enterprises of our age — ^more momentous because of the issue involved than the opening up of the two other world highways, the Suez and Panama canals.

The creation of a railway from Constantinople to Bagdad under European control is at once a symptom of the dissolution of the Turkish Empire which has become a mere shadow of its former wide extension, and a significant token of the new invasion of the East by the spirit of Western enterprise. Passing along a highway over which armies have marched forward and backward ever since the days of antiquity, the railway is also a link connecting the present with the remote past.

More than this a project, which, on the surface, would appear to be solely commercial, assumes a romantic aspect through the struggle that the railway aroused for the control of a region that marked the ambition of all the great empires of ancient and mediaeval times. The rivalry between Germany, England, France and Russia, centering so largely during the past decade around the Bagdad Railway, is merely the renewal under changed

THE WAR IN THE EAST 29

conditions of a conflict that began thousands of years ago. The modern world fights for this region as the ancient world did, with the railroad as the new symbol of a possession stronger and firmer than the garrisons and outposts of antiquity and the fortresses of the Roman and mediaeval periods. The importance of Constantinople lies in its position as the starting-point of the great highway that has as its natural outlets the Bay of Alexandre tta on the one hand, and the Persian Gulf on the other. The historical role of this highway gives to the Bagdad Railway a political import far transcending its aspect as one of the great commercial enterprises of our days. Backed as the project was by the German government, steadily growing in power and aggressiveness since the establishment of the united German Empire, it added to the already complicated Eastern Question an aggravating factor that contributed largely to the outbreak of the great war. The present struggle for supremacy among European powers resolves itself in its ultimate analysis into a rivalry for the control of the East as an adjunct to commercial expansion. The " trend towards the East " ^ did not originate with modern Germany. It began with Greece, was taken up by ancient Rome and has actuated every Western power with ambitions to extend its commerce and its sphere of influence — Spain, Holland, England and France, and in days nearer to us Russia and Germany, Austria and Italy. Through a curious combination of circumstances, superinduced by the gradual weakening of the once dominant Turkish Em-