Our task is simply to ascertain what all this stands for in the history of Palestine, and what it has left behind it there as its memorial. In two words, it stands for the contact of the East and West, and for their separateness. Into Europe the Crusades brought much from the East. It was due to them more than to all other causes that there was so immense an increase of Eastern merchandise in Western markets--not of Jerusalem relics only, but of Damascus ware and of Persian and even Indian produce from beyond the great rivers. Their influence on architecture, too, is a well-known fact of Western history. The Mosque of Omar rose on at least three European sites, and the plan of many another piece of Byzantine building and Arabesque decoration was brought home by the Crusaders from the wars. Into the East, again, the Crusades brought much from the West. From north to south of Palestine one meets with the remains and memorials of that invasion. Theirs are the footprints most visible throughout the land. Everything in Syria has felt the touch of them and retained its mark. At every turn one finds something recognisable and homely to Western ears and eyes--the name of a castle, the chiselling of a stone, the moulding of metal--they are strangely familiar as they are met so far away from home. Yet they survive as wreckage, and as wreckage only. He who hopes to westernise the East is attempting a task in which all must fail, whether they be soldiers or priests, missionaries or statesmen. The ancient Eastern life has long ago flowed back over the relics of the Western occupation of Syria.