This roughness of surface becomes especially aggravated
as one passes westward, and over toward the Adriatic coast, from
Greece up into the Austrian province of Dalmatia, the country is
almost inaccessible to ordinary travelers.
What is the political value of this beleaguered domain? The broad,
significant fact is that any road from western Europe to the Orient
must pass through the Balkan Peninsula, and that these mountains
almost block that road. From north to south there is just one highway,
so narrow that it is really a defile.
This road stretches from the seat of the war at Belgrade on the
Danube down a narrow valley, the Morava, thence through the highlands
of Macedonia into the Vardar Valley to Saloniki, on the AEgean Sea.
At Nish, above Macedonia, another road branches off into Bulgaria
across the plains of Thrace and into Constantinople. This was the
road by which the Crusaders swarmed down to conquer the Holy Land.
This was the road by which, hundreds of years later, the Moslems
swarmed up into the plains of Hungary and overran the south of
Europe, until they were finally checked outside the gates of Vienna.
Nothing is more significant of the terror that these marching hosts
inspired than the fact that, with the exception of a few larger
towns, the villages hid themselves away from this highway in the
hills.
Bear clearly in mind that in the existence of this narrow way to
the Orient lies the key not only to the causes of the war, but to
the military campaigns that we shall follow in this region.
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