European Peninsula, repeated in some degree the conditions of their own homeland. On the other hand, eastward from Yemen, at the mouth of the Red Sea, and from Oman, at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, they sailed on the summer Monsoon to the Malabar coast of India, and even to the far Malay Islands, and returned home on the winter Monsoon. Thus the Arab dhows sketched out a Sea-Empire, extending from the Straits of Gibraltar to the Straits of Malacca, from the Atlantic gate to the Pacific gate.
This vast Saracen design of a northward and southward Dominion of Camel-men crossed by a westward and eastward Dominion of Shipmen was vitiated by one fatal defect; it lacked in its Arabian base the necessary manpower to make it good. But no student of the realities about which must turn the strategical thought of any government aspiring to world-power can afford to lose sight of the warning thus given by History.
The Saracen Empire was overthrown, not from Europe or the Indies, but from the Heartland in the north—a significant fact. Arabia is sea-girt or desert-girt in every other direction but towards the Heartland.
