Note 18 — Chapter VII · RUSSIA RESISTS AND FRANCE IS UNCERTAIN

The Revue Bleue, April 6, 1907, p. 429; Syria and Palestine, p. 126. Many of the claims that the Bagdad Railway jeopardized French prosperity were purely fantastic. It was maintained that the opening of the great Mesopotamian granary would cripple French agriculture, already seriously handicapped by the competition of the new world. To this was added the suggestion that development of cotton-growing in Turkey would stifle the infant efforts at the cultivation of cotton in the French colonies. It is incredible that Mesopotamian grain and cotton would have interfered with the flourishing prosperity of the French peasantry; in any event, any such danger was at least a generation removed. France raised high tariff barriers against foreign competition in the home market for agricultural products; she was not an exporter of grain.