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British, in the guise of Sir Ernest Cassel, had founded and owned the National Bank of Turkey, and through Vickers owned the Golden Horn and Stenia Docks, German commercial interests were gathering momentum fast. Siemens was deeply involved in the Berlin to Baghdad railway. Krupp was busy bribing politicians, and the formidable Liman von Sanders was about to transform himself into Liman Pasha and turn, with the help of his military mission, what the American ambassador described as an ‘undisciplined ragged rabble’ into a force ‘parading with the goose-step … clad in field grey’. 5
    For the young and sensitive Canaris this was a spectacular introduction into the game of geo-politics. On shore, as the guest at innumerable receptions given by German interests, the young officer would have heard countless times how, in the words of one expert on German Turkish relations: ‘Our common political aims and Germany’s interest in keeping open the land route to the Indian Ocean will make it more than ever imperative for us to strengthen Turkey economically.’ 6
    More ominously, these ideas went hand in glove with the view that: ‘England can be attacked … on land in one place only … in Egypt. With the loss of Egypt, England would lose not only mastery over the Suez Canal and the link with India and Asia, but also her possessions in Central and East Africa.’ 7
    Such was the influence of the Baghdad railway, supported as it was by all the most powerful commercial interests of Germany, including Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Bank and the giant engineering company Siemens, that news of its progress found its way into State dispatches and dominated conversation.
    With his keen brain, Canaris digested all of this with the enthusiasmof a convert. He noted the latest developments and watched for the signs of future moves. He was aware that Germany had supplied four torpedo boats, built in the Schichau yards in Danzig, two years earlier. A few months earlier, Deutsche Bank had acquired twenty-five per cent of the Turkish Petroleum Company, while the Hamburg-Amerika line had so successfully captured a large proportion of the transport business to and from Basra that it had ended Britain’s virtual monopoly of the seaborne trade of Mesopotamia, forcing the British to compromise on something like dictated terms. 8
    If, by the close of 1912, Canaris had added some European political insights to his seamanship skills, the next year, the last of peace, would cement these two qualities with renewed exposure to and experience of the Latin American world. By now a senior lieutenant, confident and handsome, Canaris was ready for the challenges of political instability that awaited him.
    In Mexico, revolution once again stalked the streets. The country that had seen so much turmoil in the nineteenth century and was destined to be the scene of competing European and American spheres of influence for many years to come, was having one of its periodic struggles between different commercial interests. While the majority of European ships kept their distance, the Dresden risked the last twenty miles of the Tampico river to rescue President Huerta from the rebels, despite their threat to set the river ablaze with oil from the nearby refinery. In addition to Huerta, several hundred Americans were rescued by the Dresden and taken to an American warship that had been unwilling to risk the rebels’ threats. Huerta was deposited in July 1914 in the relative safety of Kingston, Jamaica.
    With the outbreak of war a few weeks later, Germany’s interest in Mexico became even more intense, though with the then unforeseen consequence that this interest, already resented by America, would eventually bring the US into the war, thanks inevitably to British naval intelligence’s interception of the infamous Zimmerman telegram, offeringGerman support for a Mexican invasion of Texas.
    But all that lay ahead. As