acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

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346 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
side of the town. There, however, it was thought the
future could not well be provided for, so the Bagdad
Railway station is placed among the vineyards nearly
two miles away to the north, and the town is to be
drawn thither. There they found all the space required,
and have planned and built the station on a
great scale, with a boulevard to connect town and
station. Looking at the whole thing you are conscious
of free expenditure, of great hopes by those
who built, and a large idealism in conception.
You may regard these developments if you like as
due to the prescience of an altruistic railway company ;
it is soon borne in upon you, however, that all this
perfection and largeness of aim comes of the State
though not the Ottoman State. You recognise that
you are in the presence of something new—that here is
the effort of a foreign State preparing for itself a new
dominion in the territory of another State ; laying out
capital and erecting great works with the sure knowledge
of eventual great returns. You recognise, in fact,
that here is a small part of an Imperial Speculation on
the grandest scale. Seeing the Bagdad Railway and
its developments in and about Adana, it seems the
most natural thing imaginable to hear of Germans
seeking sites throughout the district, buying land,
and proposing to erect factories and mills. You see
and hear these things and cannot withhold your
admiration and respect, but also discover the stirrings
of tribal instincts in yourself— for beneath all these
visible and admirable activities you are conscious of
hostility to your own country.
In this matter of German ambitions and British
policy, it came as a surprise to find that not a few
Armenians of Adana followed the duel with interest.
The Agadir incident and Algeciras conference and
what underlay those movements they understood well
enough. Going by train to Mersina one day I noticed
an Armenian reading an English monthly. As he
read he laughed, and presently laughed so much that
other Armenian passengers became curious, for whose