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62 Venice and Genoa to Jaffa and Acre on the Syrian coast; on the other hand, armies marched through Hungary, along the famous 'corridor' of the Morava and Maritza valleys, and through Constantinople and Asia Minor into Syria. The comparison is obvious between these campaigns of the Crusaders by land, from a German base round to the back of the Mediterranean Sea, and the similar campaign of Alexander from his Macedonian base. A good many parallels might, indeed, be drawn between the half-Greek Macedonians and the half-Latin Germans. No Greek of the full blood but looked upon a Macedonian as a sort of bastard! But his position in the broad root of the Greek peninsula enabled the Macedonian to conquer the Greek sea-base, as the position of the German in the broad root of the greater Latin Peninsula has always made him dangerous to the Latin Sea bases beyond the Rhine and the Alps.

The peoples of the Latin civilisation were thus hardened by a winter o£ centuries, called the Dark Ages, during which they were besieged in their homeland by the Mohammedans, and failed to break out by their Crusading sorties. Only in the fifteenth century did Time ripen for the great adventure on the ocean which was to make the