Note 15 — Chapter VII · RUSSIA RESISTS AND FRANCE IS UNCERTAIN

According to M. Deschanel, this was sophistry. The French Government, if it was not guilty of an error of commission, certainly was guilty of a sin of omission. It was the opinion of M. Deschanel that the French Ambassador at Constantinople should have done something to put the French Government on record as opposed to the Bagdad Railway. M. Deschanel was not certain, however, that the French Ministry had not consented to the participation of French capital in the plan. “How can one imagine,” he said, “that an institution such as the Ottoman Bank became involved in an enterprise of such great political and military importance without the approval of our Foreign Office?... How is it that the Ottoman Bank is a party to this enterprise, and how is it that the Board of Directors for the first section of the line has French representatives, when only a word from the Government could have prevented it?” Ibid., November 20, 1903, p. 2798.