December ii, 1915. 
r. A N b A \ I) \\^ A t E R 
be no prohibitive task at any time — bnt the 
providinj; of really adequate communications with the 
Bospliorus might well be a matter of years. I should 
;;reatly deplore — for reasons I have already stated — the 
undertaking of this operation at all ; but if it has to 
come. 1 should at least hope that it may not be inside of 
live years, or, better still, ten." 
To my query as to whether tie meant to infer that an 
operation against Suez undertaken inside of iivp years — 
say previous to iqij — would be predoomed to failure. 
Hcrr Meissner was noncommittal, but to a somewhat less 
pointed question he vouchsafed a qualirted answer. 
" Supposing." 1 said. " that live or ten years had 
gone by„ and that the adequate railway communications 
which j'ou have stipulated had been established in the 
interim, and that only three or four months of light 
railway construction at high speed were necessary to 
throw an attacking army upon Egypt— would not those 
three or four months — considering the central position of 
Suez — always be sufficient for the massing of overwhelming 
forces — Enjjiish. Indian, Egyptian and Australian — at that 
point for its protection ? " - — 
" Frankly, I am not competent to express anopinion." 
replied Meissner, " but " — after a moment's liesitation— 
" I think our strategists — though they discount help from 
lilgypt. India and Australia — would reckon on being faced 
by superior numbers and base their expectations of success 
on superiority of organization, personnel and materiel — 
and they might hint at ' diversions ' among the Moham- 
medans of North Africa and the Middle East." 
The foregoing sums up, as far as my notes and memory 
go, the main points of Meissner Pasha's observations — as 
<'xpressed in the course of our meetings of 1912- regarding 
the role likely to be played by the Hedjaz and connecting 
railways in the event of a Turko-German attack upon 
1-gypt. Worth pondering over, however, by those who 
have taken it for granted that Germany's establishment 
of unbroken communications with Constantinople means 
anything like a breaking of the Allies' blockade through 
the opening up to her of the mineral and agricultural 
wealth of Asiatic Turkey, is this remark of Meissner's 
regarding the resources of the region in question : 
" There has been far too much of a tendency in Ger- 
many and England to look upon this part of the Ottoman 
Empire as a great storehouse, the wealth of which would 
become available to the world immediately the doors 
were unlocked by means of railways. This is a most 
erroneous impression. The wealth is here, but it is 
potential not existent wealth, and will only be won at the 
end of many years of patient preparation. Mesopotamia 
may be shipping a few foodstuffs hve years from now, but 
I do not look to see the oil of Hitt, or the copper of 
Diarbekir, figuring in world returns before i()20." 
These facts are, of course, known to anyone who is 
familiar with the vast voids of the interior of Turkey-in- 
Asia, but they seem very little appreciated by many 
others. As a matter of fact the Central Empires will gain 
nothing whatever of use to them from Mesopotamia, 
Arabia, Syria, and Palestine, and from Asia Minor an al- 
most negligible food supply and an even less con.siderable 
amount of short staple cotton and inferior wool. • 
1 left Lower Mesopotamia in the spring of 1012, and 
made my way to Mosul and Ale))po over the route of the 
Bagdad I^aihvay, stopping not infrequently at the camps 
of the engineers along the way. From Aleppo 1 went to 
Damascus and Beirut, and spent the following two months 
in Palestine and Arabia, not a little of the time along 
the route of the Hedjaz Railway. Returning to Aleppo 
in the Fall 1 encountered Meissner Pasha — who had come 
up the Euphrates by arabanah from Bagdad— and had 
llie pleasure of another evening in his company, .\linost 
his first question, on hearing where I had been, was " Wliat 
do you think of the Hedjaz Railway," and in reply 1 took 
from my pocket the manuscript of an article I had just 
completed and was about to dispatch to the Railway 
Age Gazette of New York on th*- railroads of S\'ria 
and Palestine, and indicated the following paragraph • 
" Although it still bears evidence— in solidly con- 
structed culverts and bridges and well run levels — of the 
skill of the distinguished engineer who built it. the Hedjaz 
line, opened scarcely half a decade ago, has deteriorated 
to a point where it has no rival for the title of ' The 
Worst I-iun, and the Worst Run Down Railway in the 
World.' Most of its engines — their boilers eaten out by 
the alkali water — are on the scrap heap, and the rest are 
on their way there, The trains, nominally run on the 
constantly varying .\rab time, can rarely be depended 
upon to leave even their termini within an hour or two of 
the minute scheduled. All in all the much vaunted 
' Pilgrims' Railway ' rivals the remains of Baalbek for 
the completeness of its ruin, failing to come up to the 
latter only on the score of picturesqueness." 
" That about epitomises my impression of the 
Hedjaz Railway as it is to-day. Your Excellency," I 
added ; " and I might say further that if it has ever to 
be put in shape ior that httle operation against Egypt 
which we discussed in Mesopotamia, the cleaning up 
job will be on a scale to make Hercules' labour with the 
Augean Stables look like a sideshow." 
It was a tiippant, not to say a rude, speech, and I 
regretted it the moment it had passed my lips. Meissner's 
reply, however, was " more in sorrow than in anger." 
" I don't wonder that the Hedjaz Railway seems a 
joke to you, or to any foreigner, or to anyone but m}'self 
who has spent some of the best years of my life in the build- 
ing of it. So perhaps you will ftnd it hard to believe me 
when I sa\- that its steady destruction — I can use no other 
word — under the laissez alter policy of the Turks has been 
to me the nearest approach to a tragedy I have ever 
known. Less than hve years ago I turned over to the 
Ottoman Government one of the best built railways Asia 
had ever known, and they have made of it — yes, you have 
used the right word — a ruin. Do you wonder that I 
refused to undertake the construction of the Bagdad 
Railway until the Porte had agreed to operate it, after 
completion, under German management " ? 
" As for having to employ it for operations against 
Egypt (there would be no use in denying to you after you 
have seen "of where it runs that strategic considerations 
were not lost sight of in keeping it so far from the coast 
and the dangers of a sea raid) — if that contingency ever 
arises, why, we will simpl}' have so make out the bestwc 
can with it." 
I met IMeissner Pasha vnore or less casually on several 
other occasions during my subsequent travels in Asiatic 
Turkey, but at no time did I hear him say, nor yet have 
I ever had authentic word of his doing, aught to indicate 
that — personally at least — he was not entirely sincere in 
the sentiments expressed that evening in Aleppo regarding 
a possible attack upon Egypt from Turkey. I have of 
course . always known that, like all the other Germans in 
the Near East, he was chained for life to the Kaiser's war 
chariot, and it is, therefore, with no surprise that I read 
in recent Berlin papers that he is directing the railway 
preparations for the long-heralded advance on Suez. 
There can be no doubt that he is doing the best he can 
with the facilities at his disposal, and it may be taken 
for granted that Meissner's best will — because he is trusted 
by the Turks and Arabs and has the faculty of getting on 
with them^be a good deal more than any other German 
could accomplish under the circumstances. But deep in 
his heart he knows that, however good his best is, it will 
not be good enough. 
Not only is there not any double track — except 
for considerable sidings— along any portion of this tenuous 
line, but even single track communication is still un- 
established through the Taurus and Amanus mountains. 
Practically all of the food, and every bit of the munitions, 
of an army operating against Suez will have to break 
bulk at least twice and be portaged over what are now 
snow-dogged passes of considerable altitude, and after 
that be worried along a zigzag route to Palestine over 
lines which, though connecting and of the same standard 
gauge — 4 ft. 8. J in. — were up to the outbreak of the war 
under German. French, and Turkish management respec- 
tively. Then will come the trans-shipment to the light 
desert railways in the rear of the army. To tinker this 
sorry patchwork into an efficient line of communications 
for a modern army is the task set for Meissner Pasha and 
his engineers, and there is no doubt that they will " do 
the best they can " at it, however far that best would 
seem predoomed to fall short of success. 
2J 
