The reception which our rejection of the Baghdad Railway proposals
has met with in Germany is very significant. " It is believed by the promoters of the company," telegraphs Reuter's agent in Berlin to Friday's papers, "that the British Government yielded to three distinct influences,—first, to those politicians and publicists who urge an understanding with Russia ; secondly, to Eastern shipping interests; and, thirdly, to anti-German feeling." In part, this is true. Undoubtedly the desire of the nation to have done with our senseless dread and distrust of Russia, and with our feeble policy of pin-pricks in all that concerns her—a policy which makes us perpetually fall a victim to the agents provocateurs of Berlin—had a, great deal to do with the popular determina- tion to reject an admittedly anti-Russian scheme like the Baghdad Railway. Anti-German feeling, however, did not enter into the matter, and there was no desire to injure Germany per se. That there was a very real suspicion that Germany was trying to " use us " we, of course, admit.
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