Britain and Her Rivals in the Middle East 93
ing offer to the Sheikh for a concession for a terminus and port.
When he resisted their offer in accordance with his secret agree-
ment with the Government of India a year before, the Germans
induced the Ottoman Government, which the Sheikh nominally
regarded as his suzerain, to send an expedition to assert its authority
over him; but the presence of a British gunboat at the head of the
Gulf caused them to desist. In other parts of the Gulf German
traders were beginning to find the British "exclusive agreements*
an obstacle to their enterprises.
In 1903 the Anatolian Railway Co. had carried its plans for the
Baghdad Railway to the stage at which it required to raise addi-
tional capita] for their execution, and invited British capitalists to
participate on equal terms with the existing German and French
interests. The Balfour government favoured the acceptance of the
offer, but the Cabinet was not unanimous, remembering perhaps
Curzon's dictum of 1892 that 'Baghdad must be included in the
sphere of indisputable British supremacy*. The proposal was hotly
attacked by the imperialist and big-business section of the press,
which was concerned by the progress made by German com-
mercial competition in capturing overseas markets from Britain,
and resented the German support for the Boers in the South African
War; moreover, German publicists had been tactless and provoca-
tive in discussing the opportunities which a war in the Middle East
involving Britain would present for German expansion. Conse-
quently the government declined the German offer, and the
Foreign Secretary, Lord Lansdowne, redefined Britain's policy in
the Persian Gulf: her aim was to promote and protect British trade
without excluding the legitimate trade of other powers; the estab-
lishment of a naval base or fortified port in the Gulf by any other
power would be a very grave menace, 'and we should certainly
resist it with all the means at our disposal. I say that in no minatory
spirit because, as far as I am aware, there are no proposals on foot
for the establishment of a foreign naval base in the Gulf/
The following year, 1904, saw the culmination in the Entente
Cordiale of the negotiations into which the British and French
governments had been impelled by their growing fear of the ex-
pansionist policy of their Vigorous and talented competitor*
Germany. In this emergency all the outstanding points at issue
between Britain and France were settled. In particular, France at
last acknowledged Britain's de facto position in Egypt, though she