The Wenatchee daily world. [volume] (Wenatchee, Wash.) 1905-1971, 1909-06-29
FRED S|MP|CH NOW
IN WASHINGTON
CONTINUED from First Page.)

steppes of Asia Minor, the mountains
of the Taurus. and those ancient
plains which are watered by the Tig.
ris and the Euphrates, past Nineveh
and Babylon to Bagdad, the city OF
the Caliphs, and at last to a little
Arab village, nesting amid the sand
dunes on the shores of the Persian
gulf.
This great highway of trade-the
Highway of Nations, some one has
called it's the payment which the
recent master of Turkey made to the
lateGerman war lord for the latter's
refusal to take part in the interna-
tional occupation of Crete
Never, perhaps, did the diploma
lists work more diligently than a few
years ago when four of the Great
Powers interviewed in the affairs of
Crete. Many and diverse interests
were at stake England, France and
Italy, though ostensibly acting to-
gether to redeem Crete from Otto
man misrule, were suspicious and dis
trustful allies; Russia, as usual. was
in ignorance and doubt; Germany
for reasons which I shall make plain
had thrown in her lot with the sui
tan, and so, while the ships of all
nations waited, grim and silent, off
the Cretan shore, the real battle was
fought by innumerable agents and
spies in the dark underworld of pol
itics.
II need hardly be said that the
Cretan insurrection Of 1928 was
fed and famed by the European pow
ers. 1t was the aim of each of the
Great Powers to secure a preponder-
ating influence in Crete For this
restless island has enormous strategic
Importance by reason of it's great
harbor at Suda bay, capable of berth
ing hundred Dreadnoughts, and by
its position, equidistant from the
shores of Europe, Asia and Africa
and within threatening distance of
the Messini straits, the Dardanelles.
and the SueZ canal AS / have said,
only Germany held aloof And this
is the reason.
Even in those days the Kaiser,
finding himself isolated as the result
of French and British diplomacy, de-
barred on every hand from territorial
expansion in Europe, had dreamed
his dream of a commercial empire
in Asia. But Wilhelm is the kind Of
a man who prefers to see things with
his own eyes, and that is why. in the
spring of 1897, he set out on his
spectacular tour of the Near East.
And this is what AbdulHamid
gave TO his German brother:
A concession to build railway
line from Haidar Pasha, terminal
port on the Asiatic side of the Bos-
porus, across from Constantinople,
through the heart of Anatolia, over
the Taurus mountains to Adana and
Aleppo; thence, passing through
southern Kurdistan, to Nineveh on
the headwaters of the Tigris, thence
paralleling the river to Bagdad,
where, crossing over to the Ephrates.
the line is to continue southwark, via
Babylon. kerbela and Basra to its
proposed terminus at Koweit, on the
Persian gulf. 1t looks simple enough
on the face of it, does it not?
But when the European choncel-
tories came to examine its provisions,
they stood aghast. for they soon
found that it constituted one of the
most gigantic commercial concessions
in all history Not only was the con-
cession granted under an Ottoman
mileage guarantee of close on five
millions of dollars per annum, but
the concessionnaires were given in
perpetuity tract of land 12.4 miles
wide along the entire length Of the
line, or, in other words. CO miles on
either side of the railway for a dis
lance of fifteen hundred miles. The
sultan had indeed, bartered a king
dam for the kaiser's friendship To
the German concessionnaaires was
given the exclusive right to cultivate
the land within this railway zone
1860 square miles in all. and every
foot of it, to all intents and purposes,
German soil. to work the mines and
the forests within this radius: to
grow wheat. tobacco. and cotton; to
colonize and to navigate the streams,
not to mention various subsidiary
rights. The concession admits, more
over, of the concessionnaires' utiliz-
ing all waters along the route for