Letters and Papers Concerning the Trans-Persian Railway and Other Railways in Persia [‎200r] (399/442)

480
479 The Tram-Persian Pailway. [15 July 1912] The Trans-Persian Railway.
to detain your Lordships with a long in
vestigation into the competing routes.
It is an extraordinarily intricate and com
plex subject. It is barely intelligible
without one of those maps which the noble
Earl reproached me for producing last
year, and therefore I will not attempt to
follow him over that area.
I only say that in keeping open to our
selves the option of asking for railway
concessions when the proper time comes we
have not designed and do not design to shut
out all foreign enterprise from Persia. That
would be a great disadvantage to Persia,
and not any advantage to ourselves. It
must be clearly stated that we have no desire [
to make this railway ourselves in Persia I
at this moment, but we may well wish to
guard against the possibility of waking up
some morning and finding that the Persians
have placed some important concessions
elsewhere involving foreign control which
would be detrimental to our political
interests and strategically menacing to our
frontier. We therefore desire to have the
option of making railways of that sort
ourselves in case Persia favours foreign
enterprise. I hope the House, in con
sidering the noble Earl’s speech and in
reading the arguments, of which we shall
have, perhaps, a plethora in the next few ,
months, will remember the strictly condi- j
tional situation in which the Government
stands in respect of all these proposals, and
will not forget, although there may be
drawbacks, which we do not deny, to the !
Trans-Persian railway, that any Govern
ment that might succeed us would think,
not twice but a hundred times, before they
repudiated and turned their backs upon our
action.
♦ Lord LAMINGTON : My Lords, I do
not know whether the noble Earl will think
the reply of the noble Viscount opposite
has been a satisfactory one. I confess that
I am still considerably dismayed with
regard to it. It has, however, thrown some
light on what has led up to the establish
ment of this Societe d’Etudes. It is inter
esting to see that the Government have
from time to time desired apparently to
thwart this railway project, and equally
interesting to see that whenever they have
put some obstacle in the way of the project
the Russian Government have been quite
agreeable, so desirous have they been to see
some scheme adopted, to accept whatever
this Government have proposed. The noble
Viscount opposite referred to the many
railway projects in Persia which have been
put before the public for a number of years
past. He did not say why not one of them
has ever come to fruition. And do not the
same reasons that prevented those lines
from being constructed equally hold good
to-day as to why this line should not be
constructed ? The light which the noble
Viscount has thrown upon the present
proposal seems to show that the line is not
desired by His Majesty’s Government, that
they have not done what they have done
willingly, that they have not done it because
they considered it good to Persia or to India
but because of some other alternative—
because some rebuff that they would have
had to administer would have led to serious
and disastrous consequences.
The noble Viscount speaks of the sub
currents of diplomacy that are going on. I
do not know of them, being a man in the
street, and I do not know what disastrous
consequences would have ensued from a
polite disclaimer. But I do not see how it
is going to improve the position when a few
months hence this Societe d’Etudes may
possibly furnish a satisfactory report. What
then will be the duty of His Majesty’s
Government ? Will they be in a better
position to refuse then than they are now ?
The objections to the line as put forward by
the noble Earl and also as stated by
The Times Military Correspondent—all so
powerful and forcible—would remain just
as great eighteen months hence as they are
to-day. How will the Government then be
in a better position to reject the scheme 1
It seems to me only to intensify the evil,
and if the line does involve a certain amount
of risk to India that risk will be just as
great then as now. I share, like the noble
Earl, a belief in universal peace between
the great nations of the earth and that
India will be linked up by railway com
munication with the rest of the world. But
there is no need to anticipate that day.
The conditions that have rendered it
undesirable in the past are just as strong
to-day, and until you change the environ
ment of affairs you are merely putting new
wine into old bottles by allowing this line
to be constructed.
I know of no single commercial body in
India or in this country that desires to see
this line built—with one exception only, the
Chamber of Commerce at Karachi. The
chairman, Mr. Webb, is a great believer,
as I am also, in the future of Karachi as one
of the principal Indian ports, and he is