‘Persia – especially Seistan’ [‎180v] (359/949)

8
anything in the south in regard to a railway, as the technical conditions for the
construction of railways from the south (starting either from the Indian Ocean
or Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. ) to the north costs not ten, not twenty, but a hundred million
roubles or more.
Local freights are not capable of feeding the lines as they are insignificant,
and can under no circumstances make the line pay. Of transit for English
meridional lines there can be no question, as freights of this nature can only
have capital importance for meridional Russian lines.*
The same situation exists in case the English should construct a railway
along the parallel from Quetta to Nushka, Kirman, and further to join the
German-Bagdad line.
Such projects were invented by English politicians and strategists, but not
a single financier uttered a word about them, and it was only last year that Sir
Lepel Gritfin laughed at these Utopias and called them a chimera. Such a
parallel line would cost the English twice as much as a meridional line, and,
according to my calculations, over 300 , 000,000 to 400 , 000,000 roubles. It
would have to intersect all the mountain ranges of Persia, having a direction
from north-west to south-east. Local freights would be still fewer than in the
case of meridional lines, and Germany alone would make use of transit, to
whom such a junction would be of extreme advantage. England in an econo
mic sense would only lose from such a line as her commercial fleet, which up
till now preponderates in Oceania, would have to share freights with the
Germans. But it would be quite irrational to work for others, and still less
advantageous, wherefore there is absotutely no reason to reckon that merchants
would embark in such an enterprise.
English financiers will give their money only for one undertaking, namely,
for the construction of a railway from Khanakim to Tehran through Hamadan,
and this not at once, but subsequently to the completion of the Bagdad
Railway, in order to divert a considerable part of the international trade while,
moreover, this region is in itself extremely rich and thickly populated.
Consequently, if English captalists will not give their money to any of the
other lines, there remains to be considered the question whether the Indian
Government will throw 300 or more millions of roubles away on this enterprise.
I positively consider that this is impossible.
Strategical advantages are not attained by the construction of parallel and
meridional lines. The safety of India is not conditioned thereby, and, on the
contrary, all the routes play into our hands and facilitate our operations, seeing
that the experiment of the restoration of the damaged Manchurian line shows
that in two to three months a line of 2,000 versts may be completely repaired.
But to construct such a line is a matter of years.
In political respects the Baluchistan-English road has an undoubted
importance : it intersects Persia, and at a matter of fact, divides it into two
parts. Por England this is necessary in order to realize her dream of creating
a world empire, uniting her African possessions with her Indian.
However, it would seem that her last Transvaal war has put England on
her proper level, and no one will dispute that England now has to think of
preserving the status quo, not dreaming of universal empire. But even if she
should realize this idea, we can paralyse it at any moment by the construction
of a perpendicular meridional line, which for us is inevitable, and presents the
natural issue of our power.
Let us finally suppose that the impossible has become possible, and that
the Government of London capitalists give 200 , 000,000 roubles for this
chimera : the construction of the Baluchistan line or a meridional line from
Bushire to Tehran. All think that Russian trade in Persia would perish—’that
we should lose our market. No doubt we should be hard pressed in the south,
but cannot be entirely ousted ; while in the north and centre our trade will
still predominate, as the shortness of distances and convenience, with the con
struction of the line Allat-Resht will re main on our side. It would not be
transit trade is forbidden, so that England would not be permitted to ship goods vi& Persia to Russia or
Western Europe.