Further dispatches in Thursday's and Friday's issues of the Times
throw fresh light on the negotiations. It is admitted by the Debate that in addition to the removal of German opposition to French railway plans in Syria and on the Black Sea littoral there will be certain compensations of a financial nature to the Ottoman Bank. French opinion is much more keenly interested in the Syrian than in the Black Sea part of the bargain, owing to the " traditional " interests of France in Syria. In Berlin the financial organs welcome the negotia- tions as proving that the whole Baghdad railway will be financed exclusively with German capital—a view which is not accepted in Paris—but an apparently inspired telegram in the Cologne Gazette emphatically denies that the matter has gone beyond a mere exchange of opinion between repre- sentatives of financial groups in France and Germany.
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