The Baghdad Railway Club(3)

The man Downes still hadn’t hit his stride. He was now saying how, although he knew they’d come for an evening of laughter, it was important to understand why so many of our men were dying out East, and how the Berlin–Baghdad railway was part of the reason we were over there.

I realised that the fellow sitting next-but-one was leaning towards me and holding out his own packet of cigarettes – some foreign brand I couldn’t quite make out. There were only two left, so I whispered thanks, and indicated that he should hold on to them. But he insisted, albeit without speaking, and followed up with a light. The cigarette was short and the tobacco strong, but of good quality – not burning to the throat. It was clever of him to have spotted that I was after a smoke.

I now turned again towards Downes, whose early hesitancy had fallen away. He was leaning forward from his chair, and speaking with urgency. ‘The land of Mesopotamia,’ he said, ‘. . . is it really worth fighting for? It seems on the face of it nothing more than a waste of sandy desert.’ He looked at us one by one as though honestly seeking an answer to his question, and it seemed to me that he had some sort of illness. Otherwise he would have been standing to give the talk. Yes, he was too pale. One leg sagged against the other, and the railway club lectern stood disregarded behind him.

‘But one hundred miles north of the Persian Gulf lies a veritable lake of petroleum,’ said Downes. ‘The Anglo-Persian Oil Company was formed to exploit it, and that company supplies three-quarters of the oil used by our navy. As you all know, however, the German navy is equally dependent on oil . . .’

The oil was in Persia – next door to Mesopotamia and supposedly neutral. But it was only just in Persia, and might easily have fallen into the hands of the Turks, the allies of the Germans and the controllers of Mesopotamia. They might interrupt the pipe and take the oil, so we had sent a gunboat at the start of the war, and this had been followed in pretty short order by an expeditionary force of the British Indian Army.

What was the reason for the Turkish alliance with Germany? Downes was asking the question, and had begun supplying the answer when the quiet man who’d passed me the cigarette said, almost in an under-breath, ‘No choice in the matter.’

Downes half nodded at this half answer, and hesitated for a fraction of time to see whether the speaker wished to elaborate. Evidently he did not, and so Downes spoke on himself. The Germans and the Turks shared a common fear of Russia; and Germany might have attacked Turkey if it had not formed the alliance. Turkey had to choose one side or the other, and she seemed to have picked the winner, back in ’fourteen. Also, Turkey and Germany were building a railway together.

It was the Germans who put up the money for a line leading out of Constantinople in the direction of Baghdad in 1888. That had got the ball rolling, and between them the Germans and the Turks had got up various schemes of funding to keep it rolling.

‘In 1903,’ said our speaker, ‘a number of German banks created the Berlin–Baghdad Railway Company. This alarmed the Russians, the French, and especially ourselves.’ Downes surveyed us gravely: ‘Can you all see why?’ He leant, or rather lurched, further forward. ‘Can you?’

Someone, embarrassed, muttered, ‘On account of the oil.’

‘That’s part of it,’ said Downes, ‘and perhaps the main part. But imagine Germany with a direct route to its East African colonies. Imagine her being able to bypass the Suez Canal. Imagine the Germans as rulers of Asia Minor, hand in glove with the Ottoman Empire in a territory unassailable by sea power, and with the whole of the Orient opened up before her!’

We all looked glum at that. Here was the very opposite of Humour on the Rails.

‘The line’, Downes continued, ‘creeps forward towards Baghdad, even while the fighting carries on. It has to date reached almost as far as Nusaybin, a hundred miles east of Aleppo.’

‘Never heard of either place,’ a bluff voice said. ‘Haven’t the foggiest notion where they are.’

‘I shall be passing out a map,’ said Downes, rather shortly. ‘In addition, a branch creeps north from Baghdad to meet the section coming down from Nusaybin. The gap between the two lengths of line is some two hundred and fifty miles.’

He sighed, either at the situation in Mesopotamia or because he was obliged to now reach down for the walking stick that lay under his chair. He rose with difficulty to his feet and made one pace forward – a sort of arrested stagger. He took one of the papers from the sheaf in his hand, and roughly pressed it on the nearest man in the front row. He in turn passed it to his neighbour, and it came to me a minute later.