A former minister of the Sultan told me in the course of a conversation that no one believes that the railway will be useful. The same minister told me further that my Indian friends should not pay a pie unless they can exercise the right of supervision through their men and unless they are assured about the laying of a line from Jidda to Mecca. Just now there is so much corruption that there is little likelihood of the railway being completed. Many of the powerful Viceroys have told the Sultan that, in the name of the railway, regular embezzlement is going on. Of the hundreds of thousands of pounds received, nearly 25 per cent have gone into the pockets of corrupt officials.
Fares are also excessively high.
The third-class fare from Damascus to Tebuk is 4, which works out to an anna per mile. At present Izzet Pasha is planning to build a new office for the railway in Istanbul at a cost of 50,000. This expenditure is quite unnecessary since there already exist many vacant buildings, but no one gives thought to this chaos. The collections have already amounted to 25,00,000. Soldiers are being made to work at nominal wages.