Constantinople will then be within five days' journey of Mecca.
The strategic advantages of this will be so great that the Turkish Government, in spite of its lose in the past, is eager to continue the work of construction. The difficulty is that the next section will be very expensive, and the Company is therefore anxious to combine it with the third section, which will be cheap; but the Porte declare that they are unable to
find the guarantees for two. sections at once. The German Embassy is said to be pressing the Sultan to assign the necessary revenues, and since three directors of the Company sit on the Council of the Public Debt, and a fourth member is a nominee of the Ottoman Bank, the Company can count on a majority in its favour. Considering the way in which the uncompleted railway was very nearly employed last spring during our dispute with Turkey—that is, considering the strategic menace to Egypt involved in its completion—we sincerely trust that our Government will give no encourage- ment to the new proposals for linking Constantinople and Damascus. We have no right, in our opinion, to forbid the construction of the railway, but we should certainly not help to prepare a weapon which may be used against ourselves.
