creating a High Sea Fleet. Other Naval Acts followed in 1906 and 1908, 1906 being, it may be noted, the year in which the first German submarines were taken in hand; and eventually came the Naval Law of 1912, which was recognized in the British Empire generally as a more or less direct challenge to British sea-power, inviting an adequate response and further co-operation for sea defence among the British peoples.

and

It had been the traditional policy of Great Britain in Germany bygone years to befriend Turkey, to prevent the complete Turkey. dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire. As this policy fell into disrepute among British statesmen and the British public, there came an opening for Germany. In 1889, the year after he succeeded his father, the Kaiser visited Constantinople; and nine years later, in 1898, he repeated the visit, went on to Jerusalem and to Damascus, and openly proclaimed himself the protector of Turkey, the Mohammedans' friend. There was much in Turkey to attract Germany. Would-be world dominators are ever drawn towards the East. Napoleon felt the lure no less than others. Keen-sighted German financiers and merchants, not overburdened with scruples, saw a rich future harvest in Asia Minor. German statesmen saw in this direction a possibility, at a later date, of menacing, competing with, or striking at British power and British interests in the East. But there was a yet further point, more clearly discerned now than at the time. It is difficult for those who inherit peace-loving traditions to appreciate a national state of mind which tries all things and all men first and foremost by their fighting value. Only in the light of the late war have we realized the hideous possibilities which would assuredly emerge from a Germanized Asia or Africa-countless legions of coloured janissaries, trained and organized to follow leaders as ruthless as they are resolute, and to impose the will of their masters upon a terrorized world. One of Germany's highly trained soldiers, Von der Goltz, had, in the years 1883-95, reorganized the Turkish Army; he could testify from personal experience, and indeed all the

M

The
Bagdad

world knows, what fine fighting material are Turkish soldiers. Could the man-power of the Ottoman Empire be placed at the disposal of Germany, it would mean an immense accession of military strength. One outcome of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5 was greatly to raise the prestige of Asiatics as fighting men; and whether he hails from Europe or from Asia, the value of the Turkish soldier is beyond dispute.

Railways for peace or war, for commercial or strategic Railway. purposes, play an ever-growing part in making history. In the later years of the nineteenth century the Germans took a more than intelligent interest in the railways, or rather the want of railways, in Asiatic Turkey, obtaining their first railway concession in Asia Minor about the date when William II became Kaiser. A full-blown formal contract for the construction of the Bagdad Railway bore date the 5th of March, 1903. It was a 99 years' concession to the Anatolian Railway Company to prolong the line from Konia to Bagdad and Basra, in other words a concession to the Deutsche Bank and Herr Guinner to complete railway communication from the Bosphorus to, or nearly to, the Persian Gulf. It was a new and greatly revised version of the Euphrates Valley schemes of 1856-7 and 1871, which had had special interest for India. The new scheme started from the European end, and was not initiated by Great Britain. It is true that Great Britain, with other Powers, was invited to co-operate, for British money was at the time wanted to make the venture fructify; but the chief concern of Great Britain was to safeguard her own predominance in the Persian Gulf, and with that object to control, if possible, the final section from Bagdad to the sea. By the year 1905 the line had been carried south-east through Asia Minor as far as the slopes of the Taurus range; while, on the other side of that range, Germany had acquired the line running inland to Adana from the port of Mersina on the Gulf of Alexandretta. A few months before the war an understanding had been reached between Great Britain and Germany, but the agreement was still unsigned when war came.

Hedjaz

Meanwhile, the opening of the twentieth century saw The the Hedjaz Railway taken in hand by the Turkish Railway. Government; and, by 1909, the line from Damascus to Medina had been constructed, mainly by military labour. A further extension to Mecca was contemplated, but had not been carried out by the date when Turkey entered into the war. The Hedjaz line is within measurable distance of Egypt and the Suez Canal; if prolonged, it might, in the event of war, bring trouble to the Aden Protectorate; if Turkey became a vassal of Germany, as she did under the guidance of Enver Pasha, the railway promised to be a source of danger to British interests in and British communications with the East. A growing menace to the world as a whole, to the British Empire in particular, lay in this gradual extension of a German panorama.

in 1903.

In August 1903 an interesting return was given to the The House of Commons,1 showing the cost of Imperial defence, Imperial as borne by the taxpayers of the United Kingdom, by defence India, and by five of the more important Crown Colonies; the self-governing Dominions not being included in the return. The total sum was £87,500,000. Out of this total the Navy and Army estimates of the United Kingdom accounted for £69,000,000, divided in almost exactly equal figures between the Navy and the Army, £34,500,000 in either case. The total net military expenditure of India was slightly under £18,000,000, and the naval expenditure £393,000. The five contributing Crown Colonies were Ceylon, Mauritius, Hong-Kong, the Straits Settlements, and Malta. They contributed between them £355,000, of which the three Eastern Colonies, Ceylon, the Straits Settlements, and Hong-Kong gave £130,000, £117,000, and £76,000 respectively, or £323,000 in all. This return showed that the burden of the defence of the Empire devolved mainly upon the United Kingdom, but that a very substantial part was borne by India, and that the

1 Imperial Defence and Consular Service, Return of the total cost of Imperial Defence, including India and the Crown Colonies, and of the total cost of the diplomatic and consular service to Great Britain and Ireland, August 12, 1903: 339.

Lord

Kitchener

Eastern Crown Colonies, in proportion to their size and
resources, gave sums of large amount. In plain words,
wherever the Home Government was supreme, the charge
of Imperial defence was distributed according to ability
to bear it, the self-governing partners not entering into
the calculation, as having it in their power to give or to
withhold at will. Imperial co-operation in the dependent
half of the Empire was a matter of dictation by the central
authority; Imperial co-operation in the self-governing
half was
an uncertain quantity; how far each self-
governing Colony might provide for its own defence, how
far it might be willing to contribute to common defence,
as the Australasian Colonies by the revised naval agree-
ment were contributing, was entirely within their own.
competence.

Fresh from the South African War, the man who had in India. carried that war to a successful issue, Lord Kitchener, arrived in India before the end of 1902, to take up the duties of Commander-in-Chief; and the year 1903, which opened with the Coronation Durbar of King Edward VII, saw the armies of India under the moulding hand of a great military organizer. He held the command for between six and seven years, and when he laid down his. office in 1909, in a speech at Simla in August of that year,1 he stated in a few words the lines upon which he had worked. Peace with honour, he contended, can be purchased only by readiness for war. Therefore I hold it to be the duty of every Commander-in-Chief to strive with all his might after such readiness, and, at the same time, while so striving, to use all his influence against the frittering away of the military resources of the country in military adventures which are not demonstrably necessary and unavoidable.' Two main principles, he

added, had been the basis of what he had done in India or tried to do. One was that each step in Army reform must be founded upon an accepted policy. The other was in all things to look ahead. 'I think that one of the weaknesses of our English rule in India is that we do not 1 Farewell speech at the United Service Club, Simla, August 21, 1909.