Letters and Papers Concerning the Trans-Persian Railway and Other Railways in Persia [‎199r] (397/442)

The r l vans-Persian Railway. [15 July 1912 ] The Trans-Persian Railway. 476
great deal about fatalism, and of the idea |
of this Trans-Persian railway being inevi- -
table. I could not but remember that last i
year the noble Earl himself told us of a |
“ great scheme of inter-continental com- I
munication which in the belief of all of us 1
will some day be realised.” Is not that |
fatalism ? Why are we to be reproached j
with a cowardly sort of fatalism when we J
really do not go far in advance of the line j
taken by the noble Earl himself only a !
year ago ?
*Earl CURZON of KEDLESTON : You
go about fifty years in advance.
Viscount MORLEY: But how does
anybody know— I certainly do not—that
this railway will be made fifty years hence ?
We have not committed ourselves to it.
We have committed the Government to
nothing except to this examination, and j
we are perfectly free to deal with the j
results of that examination without any j
fatalistic intention of precipitating the |
noble EarTs own expectation that some ,
day or other the Trans-Persian railway
will be constructed. I leave this point
by repeating the question which I put to the
noble Earl, “ Would you have had us say
when this proposal was brought before us,
‘No, we will have nothing to do with it;
we will use all our influence in the way of
vetoing, and, so far as may be, prohibiting
it ’ ? ” If he speaks again I wish he
would be kind enough to say whether he
would or would not have had us say that.
Now with a great deal of what the noble
Earl has said about trade and the effects
of this railway, if it be made, upon trade,
I am bound to say I entirely agree. I have
had occasion to think a good deal about the
scheme, and I agree that the prospects j
of its financial success would not strike
most of us as satisfactory. The noble Earl
is perfectly right when he says that, |
according to the best opinions that can be '
got, the estimated profits, if they are |
measured by Indian standards, are put
four-fifths too high; they will be only
one-fifth of the estimated amount. And
the noble Earl is not far wrong, according
to Indian precedents, in what he says of the
cost of the railway. He puts it at
£30,000,000 instead of £20,000,000—some
people say it will be £40,000,000. We
are quite alive to all those considerations.
The point has been taken—and I confess
I do not see any answer to it when I
consider the authorities who make it—
that Russian trade is very likely to get
more profit out of this line than we are
likely to do. That may be. That is an
argument which the Government of the
day will have to consider when they have
the report forwarded to them. No doubt
the cost of construction through a moun
tainous country where labour is scarce,
where communications are very difficult,
and where I suppose contracts will not be
prepared on purely abstract benevolent
principles will be very formidable. But
however that may be, the working of the
line and the earning of profits will be a
slow and gradual process. All the noble
Earl’s arguments about the immense
difficulty of land transport competing
with the cheapness and facility and
accustomedness of the sea route will
operate.
I was rather surprised to hear the noble
Earl, after he had very carefully analysed
all those elements, then say that the
Government were favouring a line which
would perhaps carry the mails or not carry
the mails, which might or might not carry
an increased number of passengers, and
so forth. But does he not perceive that
when the construction of this line and any
support of it by His Majesty’s Government
is under consideration all those elements
will be deciding elements ? To suppose
that we have already made up our minds
to cast them all aside and to neglect these
points is really to make us out more rash
and heedless than the noble Earl had any
right to do. As to this line not benefiting
our trade but Russian trade, I would like
to observe, in passing, that that very
important set of people the Moscow mer
chants do not think so ; they think the
exact opposite, and they are now loud in
their complaints that this line would lead
to a great improvement of British and other
foreign trade at their expense. The noble
Earl must bear that in mind. Nobody
pretends that Great Britain, and India, and
the whole general trade of the world will
not benefit from the creation of a better
state of things in Persia. It is clear that
wherever you get a better state of social
well-being you get a greater demand for
goods. Where you have roads and com
munications markets are improved. I wish
some of my friends—the noble Earl referred
to them—in the Press would realise what
the difficulties now are, and how far those
difficulties would be afiected by railways
whether a trunk line, or branch lines from
the ports which in many ways we should