A STRATEGIC LINE. 95 



because it is impossible to suppose that the shrewd 

 promoters of the scheme will consent to its removal 

 when once it has been built, since without such a 

 branch it would be folly to imagine that they could 

 compete with the existing camel transport between 

 Alexandretta and Aleppo. 



The most glaring defect, however, which is likely to 

 strike any one looking at the project from a commercial 

 point of view, is the persistent way in which all the 

 large towns of Northern Mesopotamia are left severely 

 on one side. Here, again, those responsible had much 

 to take into consideration. On economic grounds, as 

 far as actual construction was concerned, the more 

 southern trace was far preferable, avoiding as it did 

 the mountainous districts in which are situated the 

 larger towns, while to the Turk, sublimely disdainful 

 of commercial returns, the shortest route connecting 

 the 6th army corps at Baghdad with the 1st, 2nd, and. 

 3rd at Constantinople, Adrianople, and Monastir, and, 

 when the Damascus- Aleppo line, already constructed as 

 far as Hamah, is completed, with the 5th at Damascus, 

 seemed distinctly the most desirable. Nor must it be 

 for2"otten that that Power which was careful to exact 

 from the Sultan an agreement for the monopoly of 

 railway construction in the Black Sea basin has used 

 its powerful influence at Yildiz to frustrate any scheme 

 which might form the basis of an effective zone of 

 defence and offence on the north-eastern frontier of the 

 Ottoman Empire.^ 



1 As part of a scheme of Turkish defence, Colonel Mark Bell advocated 

 in the ' Journal of the Eoyal United Service Institution ' of September 1899 

 the construction of two main lines as follows : (1) Starting from Iskan- 

 derun or some neighbouring post on the Mediterranean, and proceeding 

 via Aleppo, Birejik, and Urfa ; (2) running from the northern post of 

 Samsun through Tokat, Sivas, Kharput, and Diarbekr, so as to join the 

 western line at Mardin. Herein is to be found in part the explanation 



