Hero_ The Life And Legend Of Lawrence Of Arabia Part 6

* A pleasing, narcotic fruit on which the Lotophagi, referred to in the Odyssey, Book iX, fed. it produced apathy, and, in the case of odysseus's s.h.i.+pmates, "as each tasted of this honey-sweet plant, the wish to bring news or return home grew faint in him." (The Odyssey of Homer, trans. t. e. Shaw [Lawrence of Arabia] [New York: oxford University Press, 1932], 122.) A pleasing, narcotic fruit on which the Lotophagi, referred to in the Odyssey, Book iX, fed. it produced apathy, and, in the case of odysseus's s.h.i.+pmates, "as each tasted of this honey-sweet plant, the wish to bring news or return home grew faint in him." (The Odyssey of Homer, trans. t. e. Shaw [Lawrence of Arabia] [New York: oxford University Press, 1932], 122.) * Woolley, who subsequently became critical of Lawrence, claimed that the villagers were scandalized because Dahoum had posed naked for Lawrence; but there is no proof of this, and since Young was present at the time, as well as any number of visitors, Arab and european, it seems unlikely. The carving of gargoyles, naked or not, would have been enough to scandalize the villagers, and would still do so in many parts of the Middle east, including Saudi Arabia. Woolley, who subsequently became critical of Lawrence, claimed that the villagers were scandalized because Dahoum had posed naked for Lawrence; but there is no proof of this, and since Young was present at the time, as well as any number of visitors, Arab and european, it seems unlikely. The carving of gargoyles, naked or not, would have been enough to scandalize the villagers, and would still do so in many parts of the Middle east, including Saudi Arabia.

* in fact, given the use that was made during Allenby's advance on Gaza, Jerusalem, and Damascus of the very accurate maps for which Lawrence was in large part responsible, the turks might have been better off turning down the Palestine exploration Fund's proposal, rather than merely trying to obstruct it. in fact, given the use that was made during Allenby's advance on Gaza, Jerusalem, and Damascus of the very accurate maps for which Lawrence was in large part responsible, the turks might have been better off turning down the Palestine exploration Fund's proposal, rather than merely trying to obstruct it.

* Young, Newcombe, Wingate, and Allenby the reader has already encountered. Dawnay was a tall, lean, perfectly dressed Guards officer, who would become one of Lawrence's devoted admirers in 1918 (photographed together they looked like Mutt and Jeff), as did A. P. Wavell, and trenchard later on. Young, Newcombe, Wingate, and Allenby the reader has already encountered. Dawnay was a tall, lean, perfectly dressed Guards officer, who would become one of Lawrence's devoted admirers in 1918 (photographed together they looked like Mutt and Jeff), as did A. P. Wavell, and trenchard later on.

* It would be published in 1915 as The Wilderness of Zin. There was also a brief report by Woolley in the 1914 Palestine exploration Fund annual statement. It would be published in 1915 as The Wilderness of Zin. There was also a brief report by Woolley in the 1914 Palestine exploration Fund annual statement.

CHAPTER SIX.

Cairo: 19141916.

There was seen in the churchyard, against the high altar, a great stone four square, like unto a marble stone, and in the midst thereof was like an anvil of steel a foot on high, and therein stuck a fair sword naked by the point.-Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur Like that of almost every family in Britain, the Lawrence family's life was immediately transformed by the war. Frank, the next-to-youngest, slipped effortlessly and almost immediately into the Gloucesters.h.i.+re Regiment (popularly known as "the Glosters"), just as the Oxford University Officers Training Corps had prepared him to, and was rapidly commissioned as a second-lieutenant. Bob, the eldest, would join the Royal Army Medical Corps as soon as he graduated from medical school. Will, still working as a teacher in India, debated whether to join up over there, or come home. Like many other people, he expected that the war would be over in a few weeks, perhaps won by a great naval battle against the German high seas fleet; only gradually did he become aware that it would be a land war, with no end in sight.

As for Ned, he was at first sidelined, at a moment when young men were volunteering in very large numbers. Some of Lawrence's critics have wondered why he held back, but the reasons were perfectly simple. First of all, he did not see himself in the role of an infantry subaltern. Second, the War Office had raised the minimum required height for volunteers in an attempt to reduce the excessive number, and Lawrence, at five feet five inches, was well below it. Third, and most important, Field Marshal the Earl Kitchener was determined to have the Palestine Exploration Fund publish its book as quickly as possible.

Kitchener, who had been on leave in England, had been about to board a cross-Channel ferry on his way back to his post in Cairo when Great Britain declared war. A messenger halted him on the gangplank at the last moment with a request from the prime minister that he return to London at once. The Liberal government, divided about the wisdom of going to war in the first place, was notably short of warlike figures, except for the first lord of the admiralty, Winston Churchill, a former professional soldier and by far the most bellicose and self-confident member of the cabinet. Kitchener was offered and accepted, without any particular enthusiasm, a seat in the war cabinet as secretary of state for war. It was felt that his ma.s.sive and formidable presence would rea.s.sure both the British public and Britain's allies that military affairs at least were in the right hands. The poster of Kitchener, with his penetrating eyes and impressive mustache, pointing his finger directly at the viewer over the caption "BRITONS-(Kitchener) 'wants you' Join your country's army! G.o.d save the king," at once became perhaps the most familiar image of World War I.

It soon became apparent that while Kitchener, the supreme imperial hero and autocrat, overshadowed the rest of the cabinet, his many years as a proconsul in Egypt had given him a certain resemblance to the Sphinx. He spoke seldom, and then in riddles that required considerable interpretation. He did not stoop to explain himself, and his enormous dignity and almost superhuman reputation discouraged his colleagues from asking questions. Whatever else he was, Kitchener was not a born politician. He was not a clever debater at cabinet meetings, and he did not relish the give-and-take of political infighting, unlike his aggressive young colleague Churchill. The result was that the British army and the Royal Navy were directed in very different spirits. Kitchener's enormous, silent, intimidating presence at cabinet meetings was rather like that of the graven image of wors.h.i.+p against which the Lord warned Moses on Mount Sinai.

Although Kitchener was in charge of the War Office, he did not by any means give up his concern for the Middle East; and everybody in the Middle East-including Sir Reginald Wingate, the sirdar in Khartoum; and Sir Henry McMahon, who had replaced Kitchener in Cairo-still looked to him for advice and direction. Others in the cabinet might be alarmed by the Germans' swift advance through Belgium, or by the ponderous slowness of Russia's mobilization, or even by the diminutive size of Britain's regular army, but some part of Kitchener's mind was still set on the Ottoman Empire and the Suez Ca.n.a.l. Despite a secret alliance with Germany, the Turkish government had not declared war, and was in fact vigorously negotiating with both sides in the conflict. Kitchener, who had spent much of his adult life in the Middle East, except during the years 19021909 when he was commander in chief in India, still hoped to keep Turkey out of the war, or bring it in on the Allies' side. He was therefore all the more determined not to admit that the Sinai map survey had been a military expedition, as opposed to an archaeological one. With his formidable memory and his capacity for detail, Kitchener continued to urge the book forward, thus effectively blocking Lawrence (and Leonard Woolley) from joining the army for the moment, and keeping them at their desks in Oxford.

Trying to placate the Turks was all the more important because even before Kitchener had joined the government, Winston Churchill had single-handedly made a decision that brought relations between Britain and Turkey almost to the breaking point. The Turkish navy was so enfeebled after the Russo-Turkish War of 1877 and the Greek-Turkish War of 1897 that the then first lord of the admiralty, the second earl of Selborne, on visiting Turkey's fleet in 1903, announced when he returned home, "There was no Navy!" The army was scarcely in better condition, and at the beginning of the twentieth century, Turkey took the extraordinary step of entrusting the modernization of its army to a German military delegation, and of its navy to a British one. To some extent, this can be seen as an attempt to have the best of both worlds-an army trained and equipped by the Germans, and a navy trained and equipped by the British-but it was also symptomatic of Turkey's attempt to survive by means of a balancing act between the great powers. In order to play the role of a great power in the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea, Turkey would need modern wars.h.i.+ps, and it thus set out on an ambitious and expensive program to order more than forty s.h.i.+ps from European s.h.i.+pyards, of which the two most important were the Reshadiye and the Sultan Osman I.

Laid down in 1911, these were battles.h.i.+ps of the British Dreadnought cla.s.s, among the most powerful and modern wars.h.i.+ps in the world; the Reshadiye* was built by Vickers, and the Sultan Osman I by Armstrong. The Turks had spread their bet by commissioning each s.h.i.+p from one of the two great rival British arms firms, in the expectation that compet.i.tion between the two firms would speed up delivery. These two great s.h.i.+ps were a matter of intense and widespread national pride-the Turkish government, strapped for cash, had raised the 4 million (about $320 million in today's money) needed to build the s.h.i.+ps by asking for public donations. From all over the Ottoman Empire people, even schoolchildren, had contributed toward their purchase, and larger donations were rewarded with a patriotic medal. Both s.h.i.+ps were launched late in 1913, and in a charming ceremony the daughter of the Turkish amba.s.sador to the Court of St. James's "christened" the Reshadiye by breaking a bottle of rose water against the bow, champagne being thought inappropriate for a vessel of a Muslim power. But as the months went by the Turkish government became increasingly alarmed by the long delays in fitting the s.h.i.+ps' armament, and in endless gunnery and speed trials. By August 1914, however, the s.h.i.+ps were at last ready for delivery, and Turkish crews were on hand to take them over and hoist the Turkish flag; but before they could do so, on August 1, 1914, armed British troops and naval personnel seized both battles.h.i.+ps and raised the White Ensign on each stern. As every day brought Britain closer to war, Churchill, determined not to let two modern battles.h.i.+ps go into the hands of a government allied with Germany, had boldly made the decision to "requisition" the two great s.h.i.+ps, which were immediately incorporated into the Royal Navy as HMS Erin and HMS Agincourt. was built by Vickers, and the Sultan Osman I by Armstrong. The Turks had spread their bet by commissioning each s.h.i.+p from one of the two great rival British arms firms, in the expectation that compet.i.tion between the two firms would speed up delivery. These two great s.h.i.+ps were a matter of intense and widespread national pride-the Turkish government, strapped for cash, had raised the 4 million (about $320 million in today's money) needed to build the s.h.i.+ps by asking for public donations. From all over the Ottoman Empire people, even schoolchildren, had contributed toward their purchase, and larger donations were rewarded with a patriotic medal. Both s.h.i.+ps were launched late in 1913, and in a charming ceremony the daughter of the Turkish amba.s.sador to the Court of St. James's "christened" the Reshadiye by breaking a bottle of rose water against the bow, champagne being thought inappropriate for a vessel of a Muslim power. But as the months went by the Turkish government became increasingly alarmed by the long delays in fitting the s.h.i.+ps' armament, and in endless gunnery and speed trials. By August 1914, however, the s.h.i.+ps were at last ready for delivery, and Turkish crews were on hand to take them over and hoist the Turkish flag; but before they could do so, on August 1, 1914, armed British troops and naval personnel seized both battles.h.i.+ps and raised the White Ensign on each stern. As every day brought Britain closer to war, Churchill, determined not to let two modern battles.h.i.+ps go into the hands of a government allied with Germany, had boldly made the decision to "requisition" the two great s.h.i.+ps, which were immediately incorporated into the Royal Navy as HMS Erin and HMS Agincourt.

The reaction in the Ottoman Empire to this high-handed act was widespread anger-the s.h.i.+ps had been paid for by public subscription, and Turkey was still a neutral country. "In Constantinople the seizure seemed an act of piracy," in the words of Martin Gilbert. Historians still debate the wisdom of Churchill's impulsive decision, but of course there was no easy answer. If Turkey was going to join the Central Powers anyway, then seizing its battles.h.i.+ps was the right thing for the British to do; if there had been any chance at all of Turkey's joining the Allies or staying neutral, then it was clearly the wrong thing to do. As first lord of the admiralty, Churchill thought it was better to be safe than sorry regarding two powerful wars.h.i.+ps.

The act would almost immediately have grave and unforeseen consequences. In the first days of the war two fast, powerful German wars.h.i.+ps were in the Mediterranean, hotly pursued by a superior but slower British fleet. The German battle cruiser SMS Goeben and the smaller SMS Breslau, both under the command of Rear-Admiral Wilhelm Souchon, having failed to prevent the convoy of French troops from North Africa to France, steamed east and managed to outrun and evade the British fleet sent to sink them. "As the shadows of the night fell over the Mediterranean the Goeben increased her speed to twenty-four knots," wrote Churchill in Volume 1 of The World Crisis, "... shook off her unwelcome companions and vanished gradually in the gathering gloom." Having thrown off his pursuers, Souchon paused to take on coal from German freighters at Messina; then, instead of entering the Adriatic to seek shelter in an Austro-Hungarian port, as the British expected him to do, he set course instead for Gallipoli, where on arrival he urgently requested permission from the Turkish government to pa.s.s through the strait. After several hours of intense diplomatic negotiations the two Germanwars.h.i.+ps were permitted to enter the Dardanelles, and were led through the minefields by a Turkish destroyer. They were now safely in neutral waters, and on August 16 they anch.o.r.ed off Constantinople, where, to almost universal astonishment, both s.h.i.+ps were immediately commissioned into the Turkish navy, their German crews raising the Turkish flag and changing into Turkish uniforms, with a fez to replace the uniform cap. Thus, in less than two weeks, the Turks had lost two battles.h.i.+ps and replaced them with two German cruisers-one of the cruisers, the Goeben, almost the equivalent of a battles.h.i.+p in strength and speed. Practically speaking, this had no immediate effect on the war-although the German s.h.i.+ps and their crews could easily dominate the antiquated Russian wars.h.i.+ps in the Black Sea-but it was a brilliant propaganda coup for the Germans, whose popularity in the Ottoman Empire soared as a result. To most people it seemed to ensure that Turkey would join the war immediately on the side of the Central Powers.

Disenchantment soon set in. Despite the Turkish flag and the fezzes, it began to dawn uncomfortably on some of the less pro-German members of the Turkish government that all of Constantinople was now threatened by the 12.5-inch guns of the Goeben. Still, Turkey showed no sign of entering the war as the great battles of the late summer of 1914 shook the nerves of all those who had believed that the war would be over in a matter of weeks. In the west, the vaunted attack of the German right wing through Belgium-intended to drive to the Channel, destroy the British Expeditionary Force, then cut south to separate the French armies of the north from Paris-came to an abrupt end within sight of the Eiffel Tower at the Battle of the Marne. From September 5 to September 12, this battle produced hundreds of thousands of dead on both sides and a b.l.o.o.d.y stalemate that would endure for four years. In the east, the equally vaunted "Russian steamroller," the avant-garde of an army of 6 million men, entered East Prussia and met with a b.l.o.o.d.y and decisive defeat at Tannenberg, between August 23 and September 2, exposing the incompetence of the Russian high command, as well as the f.e.c.klessness and indifference of the czar and his advisers. Illusions were shatteredfrom one end of Europe to the other, among them any remaining shred of belief in Berlin that Turkey was a trustworthy or reliable ally.

Appeals to Turkey's loyalty having failed, another strategy was called for. On October 27 Rear-Admiral Souchon, who had been appointed commander of the Turkish fleet-an appointment largely intended as window dressing to please the Germans-sailed his two cruisers, supported by Turkish destroyers and torpedo boats, into the Black Sea. The Turkish government-which was now essentially a three-man cabal-may have supposed that Souchon merely intended to make a demonstration, but on October 29 the Turks received news that Odessa and Sebastopol had been sh.e.l.led, and at least fourteen s.h.i.+ps sunk, including a Russian minelayer and a British freighter. The French amba.s.sador immediately asked for his pa.s.sports,* while the British amba.s.sador continued to negotiate with a deeply divided and hesitant Turkish government-some of its members still hoping to avoid what now seemed inevitable. Then, on October 31, at 5:05 p.m., the Admiralty at last signaled to all British naval vessels: "commence hostilities at once against turkey stop acknowledge." The two German cruisers had turned out to be a poisoned gift; Admiral Souchon had used them to produce a fait accompli that outraged Russia and brought Turkey into the war at last. while the British amba.s.sador continued to negotiate with a deeply divided and hesitant Turkish government-some of its members still hoping to avoid what now seemed inevitable. Then, on October 31, at 5:05 p.m., the Admiralty at last signaled to all British naval vessels: "commence hostilities at once against turkey stop acknowledge." The two German cruisers had turned out to be a poisoned gift; Admiral Souchon had used them to produce a fait accompli that outraged Russia and brought Turkey into the war at last.

Until early October 1914 Lawrence labored to complete the maps and ill.u.s.trations for The Wilderness of Zin. He and Woolley had both made efforts to join the army, and Woolley, who was a good deal taller than Lawrence, eventually succeeded in getting a commission in the Royal Artillery and was sent to France, leaving Lawrence to finish the book. Newcombe, and no doubt the always well-informed Hogarth, advised Lawrence to be patient-when Turkey joined the war he would surely be needed in Cairo-and once The Wilderness of Zin was done, Hogarth found him a post in the Geographical Section of the General Staff (GSGS). This cannot have been difficult-the department was run by Colonel Hedley, a member of the committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund, who was well aware of Lawrence's gifts as a surveyor and mapmaker, and was also eager to have him, since most of the officers serving in the GSGS had been sent to France. Lawrence was taken on as a civilian, and his casual manners and even more casual clothes did not endear him to officers working in the War Office. Hedley, who valued Lawrence's intelligence and skills, does not seem to have minded, but not everybody else was pleased to see a diminutive figure with an unruly shock of long blond hair, looking very much like an Oxford undergraduate, walking around the War Office in a position of some importance. Nor did Lawrence try to help matters by a.s.suming an att.i.tude of respect which he did not feel for senior officers, or by curbing his strong and unorthodox opinions. He was at once disheveled, opinionated, and c.o.c.ky-not a combination of qualities likely to appeal to bra.s.s hats. It may be true that when Hogarth asked Hedley if Lawrence was being helpful, three weeks after his arrival at the War Office, Hedley replied, "He's running my entire department for me now," but not everyone was as happy about this as Hedley. When Hedley sent Lawrence off with some maps for General Sir Henry Rawlinson, GCB, GSI, GCVO, KCMG, who was the commander of the British IV Corps in France and another protege of Kitchener's, Rawlinson "nearly had a fit," and sent him back to Hedley, saying, "I want to talk to an officer." Hedley was a professional soldier himself, and could read the writing on the wall; and, like Hogarth, he knew his way around. He put Lawrence's name in for a commission as a "Temp. 2nd Lieut.-Interpreter," which he received almost immediately, and which was gazetted in the Army List for November-December 1914. (Hedley, knowing all about Lawrence's time at Carchemish and the Sinai, probably a.s.sumed that Lawrence's Arabic would shortly prove more useful than his skill in drawing up maps.) In later years, Lawrence, who loved to tell a good story, used to tell people that he had never been commissioned at all, that following Rawlinson's rebuke, he simply went out to the Army-Navy store at lunchtimeand bought himself an off-the-rack uniform; but his army file makes it clear that he was commissioned on October 23, 1914, and that there was nothing irregular about this except the haste with which Hedley managed to bring it about. No doubt with a little more time Hedley could have managed to get Lawrence a higher rank, but his main objective was to get him into uniform quickly so he could keep on doing Hedley's donkey work in the GSGS. The only unusual aspect of Lawrence's commission beyond the speed with which it was obtained was that he underwent neither a physical examination nor any training. That he bought his uniform ready made at the Army-Navy store may be true, however, if we judge by photographs of him in uniform.

With Lawrence's exquisite gift for timing, he received his commission just a week before the Allied Powers declared war on the Ottoman Empire. Not only did Hedley recommend him "as an officer ideally suited for intelligence work in Egypt," but so did almost everybody else. Lawrence's abilities as a linguist and a surveyor, together with his travels through Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Turkey, made it certain that he would be sent to Cairo, where a new, larger, and more cosmopolitan intelligence staff was being swiftly a.s.sembled. Lawrence's companions on the Sinai survey, Newcombe and Woolley, were brought back from France, and a group of "Middle East experts" was picked to man the new department; it included Ronald Storrs, Oriental secretary of the British Agency in Cairo and a disciple of Kitchener, with whom Lawrence would make his first trip to Jidda; Colonel Gilbert Clayton, an experienced intelligence officer with close ties to Sir Reginald Wingate in Khartoum; Aubrey Herbert, a member of Parliament well known for his sympathy with and knowledge of the Ottoman Empire; George Lloyd, another member of Parliament with great experience of the Middle East; and Lawrence himself.

This rather extraordinary brain trust would eventually be joined by the ubiquitous Hogarth, and by Gertrude Bell. The British taste for last-minute improvisation-always contrasted with the grim efficiency of the Germans-is in part contradicted by the formation of the Intelligence Department of General Headquarters, Cairo, which, though improvised, was made up of strong-willed and independent thinkers, with very different backgrounds and experience, each of them in his or her own way brilliant and well-informed, and-except for Clayton, who would become their indispensable leader-none of them a professional soldier. It is doubtful that the German army could have put together such a colorful and opinionated group of civilians to run its intelligence department, or would have paid any attention to them if it had.

Such diversity was unlikely to produce unanimity, nor was it expected to. Herbert and Lloyd were both Turcophiles of long standing, and while everybody wanted to defeat Turkey now that it had joined the Central Powers, there was less agreement on how to replace it. Voltaire wrote of G.o.d, S'il n'existait pas, il fallait l'inventer ("If He did not exist, we should have to invent Him"). Similarly, if the Ottoman Empire ceased to exist, it would have to be reinvented-a daunting prospect, which would entail resolving the competing ambitions in the Middle East of Britain, France, and Russia, and at the same time attempting to satisfy the mutually hostile aspirations of Arabs (both s.h.i.+te and Sunni), Kurds, Armenians, Maronite Christians, Jews (both Orthodox and Zionist), and many others, all of them for the moment living, however unhappily, under Turkish rule. This vast and backward area was at once the strategically vital link between Europe, Asia, and Africa, and the birthplace of three of the world's great monotheistic religions; and Mesopotamia was already recognized as one of the world's largest reserves of petroleum, just as the navies of the great powers, led by Britain, were converting from coal to oil.

Storrs would later describe the intelligence group in a little poem, with his usual urbane wit, as: Clayton stability, Symes versatility, Cornwallis is practical, Dawnay syntactical,Mackintosh havers,And Fielding palavers,Macindoe easy,And Wordie not breezy:Lawrence licentiate to dream and to dareAnd Yours Very Faithfully, bon a tout faire.

It was not instantly apparent that Lawrence's role would be "to dream and to dare," and he may not have even realized it himself yet. He was, in fact, despite his eagerness to get back to the Middle East now that he was in uniform at last, delayed for weeks in London. The "general officer commanding" (GOC) in Egypt had wired the War Office for a map of the roads of the Sinai, which it didn't have, so Lawrence was put to the task of converting and expanding The Wilderness of Zin into a military doc.u.ment. He belittled his own work, and joked that he had to make up or invent much of it and that he would hate to be sent into a battle using his own maps, but it was finally done by the end of November. He complained that he had now written the same book twice, both times without pay-and on December 9 he and Newcombe finally took the train for Ma.r.s.eille, and from there sailed to Egypt.

He was preceded by a message from the director of military operations in the War Office to the GOC in Egypt, General Sir John Maxwell, introducing him as: "a youngster, 2nd Lt. Lawrence who has wandered about in the Sinai Peninsula, and who came in here to help in the Map Branch." Not every second-lieutenant is posted overseas with an introduction from one general to another, but even at this early stage of the war, with only one pip on his sleeve, Lawrence was being treated as someone of unusual importance.

Before leaving London, Lawrence had written to his brother Will, who was still in India, advising him to do nothing in a hurry-apparently in recognition of the fact that it was going to be a longer war than Will supposed-and mysteriously warning him, "Keep your eye on Afghanistan." Now, from Cairo, he wrote again to Will to say that he had beenthere for six weeks, "in the office from morning to night," trying to make sense of the news that was brought to him from all over the Ottoman Empire, and preparing "geographical essays" for general headquarters (GHQ). To the family he wrote quite a jolly letter, first to express grat.i.tude for their sending his bicycle out to Cairo, then giving his somewhat outspoken opinions about his new colleagues, as well as revealing that he sees "a good deal" of General Maxwell, the GOC, whom he describes as "a very queer person, almost weirdly good-natured, very cheerful.... He takes the whole job as a splendid joke," an odd description of the general in command of the entire Middle East. Of the two members of Parliament, he describes Lloyd as "very amusing," and Herbert as "a joke, but a very nice one." He mentions a few more odd additions to the staff, including Pere Jaussen, an Arabic-speaking French Dominican monk from Jerusalem; and Philip Graves, the correspondent for the Times of London. Lady Evelyn Cobbold, who had lent Lawrence the money at Petra, had just arrived "on her usual winter trip to Egypt," and invited him to dinner. In general it sounds as if Lawrence was having a very much jollier and more sociable life in Cairo than at home. The letter reads as if censors.h.i.+p of officers' mail was not yet being exercised efficiently, or perhaps the Intelligence Department had some way to get around it. What Lawrence did not mention to his family was his remarkably quick jump up the promotion ladder: he had been appointed an acting staff captain less than three months after he had been commissioned as a second-lieutenant.

Lawrence's dislike for Egypt, Cairo, and the Egyptians had not diminished, even though he seems to have settled in very fast this time. All members of the intelligence staff were quartered together at the Continental Hotel (at ten s.h.i.+llings a day) with a direct line to GHQ, at the Savoy Hotel, and Lawrence bicycled over to his job every morning. His army pay was 400 a year, so he was well off in Cairo. He saw General Maxwell frequently-the commander in chief does not appear to have been in any way a remote figure-but Lawrence's opinions were already his own: "So far as Syria is concerned it is France & not Turkey that is theenemy," he wrote home. This idea was to form the basis for much of what he did in 19171918, but it was far from British policy.

Indeed, British policy in the Middle East was hampered from the beginning both by France's historic claim to Lebanon and Syria, the origins of which went back to the time of the Crusades and included French support for the Maronite Christians of Lebanon; and by the fact that the British government in London and the government of India in Delhi had radically different ideas about the Middle East. Kitchener had always looked to the Arabs with the thought that given British support they might one day form a dominion or a colony under British rule, creating a British "block" or area that would stretch from the western border of Egypt through much of what is now Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Jordan, and extending south in Africa to include Sudan, which he himself had conquered, and of course the Suez Ca.n.a.l, which would then be protected by British possessions, rather than exposed at the extreme western end. To achieve this, it would be necessary to stoke the fires of Arab nationalism and separatism, which in the view of most people burned so low as to be invisible, since "the Arabs" scarcely even recognized themselves as such, and remained divided by region, by tribe, by clan, by religious differences, and by mutual enmity. The gap between the urbanized Arabs of Beirut or Damascus and the nomads of the Arabian Desert was so great as to seem unbridgeable, and the Turks had skillfully played one group against the other for centuries.

From the vantage point of the government in India a very different view prevailed. First of all, the largest single Muslim population in the world was in India, under British rule. Any attempt to ignite an Arab nationalist uprising in the Middle East could hardly fail to inspire Muslims in India to do the same. Worse still, the sultan of Turkey, impotent figurehead though he had now become, was caliph, the commander of the faithful, the successor of Muhammad, the spiritual leader of all Muslims everywhere, and the only person ent.i.tled to proclaim a jihad, or holy war, against the infidel. The last thing the government of India wanted on its doorstep was an Arab holy war. Moreover, the government of India, ifobliged to fight the Turks, wanted to do so in Mesopotamia (now Iraq), and had in mind for it a full colonial government-in short, rule from Delhi. Properly farmed, it was believed, Mesopotamia could produce grain to help India through its periodic famines, and could be policed by the Indian army. Indeed, within days of the British declaration of war against Turkey the Indian Army Expeditionary Force (which had been at sea for nearly three weeks, waiting for news of the declaration) had landed to ensure the safety of British oil installations in the Persian Gulf. Shortly afterward this force took the city of Basra, where Sir Percy c.o.x was installed as chief political officer, and announced that all of Mesopotamia was now under the British flag and would henceforth enjoy "the benefits of liberty and justice," but not of course those of national independence.

Busy as he was with map work, and digesting intelligence reports into concise and useful doc.u.ments for General Maxwell and Maxwell's staff-Lawrence described himself self-deprecatingly as "bottle-washer and office boy pencil-sharpener and pen-wiper"-his view of the Middle East was inherently that of Cairo, rather than Delhi. He did not see the Arabs as "natives," and he had no sympathy for traditional colonialism, whether British or French. He was well aware of events that were taking place in the Arab areas of the Ottoman Empire, since he, Woolley, and Newcombe all worked together in one room, and ate all their meals together, so it would have been hard for them to keep secrets from each other, even had they wanted to. Since they worked for Colonel Clayton, they also had a broader knowledge than other staff officers of what was happening. Clayton not only was in charge of the army's Intelligence Department, which reported to General Maxwell, but also ran the Egyptian civilian intelligence service, which reported to the high commissioner, Sir Henry McMahon, and in addition was the representative in Cairo of the sirdar and governor-general of the Sudan, Sir Reginald Wingate. For a man with three masters-one of whom, Wingate, combined a high military position and a civil position-Clayton was a model of patience, tact, and objectivity; and unlike many "spymasters" he does not seem to have tried to keep those who worked for him out of the larger picture.

As a result, Lawrence was one of the best-informed persons in Cairo-he made, corrected, and "pieced together" maps; he interrogated Turkish prisoners of war; he kept a record of the positions and the movements of each division of the Turkish army; he wrote and produced (with Graves) the official handbook of the Turkish army for the use of officers; and he was in constant telegraphic communication with London, Paris, Saint Petersburg, and Khartoum. His keenness, energy, and capacity for hard work drew people's attention-as did his superior tone and his determination to impose his own opinion on other people, however much higher in rank or more experienced they were. Thus he set about changing the whole system for transliterating Arabic place-names on maps, stepping sharply on the toes of numerous experts, and causing considerable distress in the Survey Department.* The head of the Surveyor-General's Office in Cairo, Sir Ernest Dowson, had once said of Lawrence, "Who is this extraordinary little pip-squeak?" but quickly changed his mind and came to admire him, though adding that the young officer had a rare talent for annoying people when he chose to be difficult. Dowson saw a lot of him, since among other duties Lawrence almost immediately became the liaison between the Intelligence Office, the Survey Department, and the Egyptian Government Printing Press. There is no question that Lawrence was a busy and well-informed young man, so busy indeed that when his brother Will stopped briefly at Port Said on the way home to England to join the Oxford and Buckinghams.h.i.+re Light Infantry as a second-lieutenant in March 1915, Lawrence was unable to meet him, and they were only able to speak by telephone. Will reported home in a letter mailed from Ma.r.s.eille that his brother Ned was now a staff-captain and that Egypt was "as quiet as a mouse," so their mother need have no concerns on his account. The head of the Surveyor-General's Office in Cairo, Sir Ernest Dowson, had once said of Lawrence, "Who is this extraordinary little pip-squeak?" but quickly changed his mind and came to admire him, though adding that the young officer had a rare talent for annoying people when he chose to be difficult. Dowson saw a lot of him, since among other duties Lawrence almost immediately became the liaison between the Intelligence Office, the Survey Department, and the Egyptian Government Printing Press. There is no question that Lawrence was a busy and well-informed young man, so busy indeed that when his brother Will stopped briefly at Port Said on the way home to England to join the Oxford and Buckinghams.h.i.+re Light Infantry as a second-lieutenant in March 1915, Lawrence was unable to meet him, and they were only able to speak by telephone. Will reported home in a letter mailed from Ma.r.s.eille that his brother Ned was now a staff-captain and that Egypt was "as quiet as a mouse," so their mother need have no concerns on his account.

Lawrence certainly knew that Arab nationalists had been in touchwith British high officials in Cairo even before Turkey entered the war, suggesting the possibility of an Arab revolt financed and armed by Britain. This was a delicate subject, all the more so while Britain and the Ottoman Empire were still at peace. In the first place, just as the British government in India was strongly opposed to Arab nationalism because it might spread to Indian Muslims, the authorities in Egypt were reluctant to encourage anything that might bring Egyptians into the streets protesting against British rule in Egypt. In the second place, hardly anybody had a clear idea of how strong the various groups of nationalist Arabs were, or what they wanted, whereas French ambitions in the area were clearly understood. Clayton himself had had several interviews with Aziz el Masri, an Arab figure of some importance in Turkish politics, whose secret support for Arab independence had led to his exile in Egypt before the outbreak of war. He had been lucky to leave with his life, since he had been condemned to death by his former colleagues. Aziz el Masri (or, as Clayton referred to him, Colonel Aziz Bey) was an impressive figure, but since what he sought was an independent Mesopotamia, his ambitions were directly opposed to those of the British government in India, and all the more so once Indian army troops had occupied Basra. Indeed, two of his collaborators, including Nuri as-Said, a future prime minister of Iraq, were deported from Basra to India by Sir Percy c.o.x.

A more promising approach-that is, one less likely to be vetoed outright by India-had been made before the war, by Emir Abdulla-second son of Sharif Hussein, emir of Mecca-on a visit to Cairo. Abdulla's concern was that the Turkish government might attempt to depose, remove, or a.s.sa.s.sinate his father, and replace him with somebody more compliant. This was not an empty threat. One son, Emir Feisal, was in Constantinople, ostensibly as a deputy in the Turkish parliament, but in fact in a position of comfortable house arrest as a hostage for his family's loyalty; and Sharif Hussein himself had spent more than fifteen years in Constantinople with his family as a "guest" of Sultan Abdul Hamid II. The sharifian family was widely respected, even revered, both as being directly descended from the Prophet and for its role as guardian of two ofthe three holiest cities in Islam. Consequently, the family was an object of suspicion to the Turkish government, all the more so since Mecca, in the Hejaz, was so far removed from the centers of Turkish power that before the building of the single-line railway to Medina, the journey to Mecca could take weeks or months. Even after the completion of the railway, there was still a daunting journey of 250 miles on camel or on foot from Medina to Mecca across a forbidding desert dominated by predatory Bedouin. Abdulla's importance and diplomatic skill were such that he not only met with Ronald Storrs but may have met with Kitchener himself; but neither of them was able to offer any meaningful support so long as Great Britain and the Ottoman Empire were at peace (or to provide Abdulla with the half a dozen modern machine guns he wanted). The moment they were at war, however, Storrs suggested reopening the discussion with Abdulla; and Kitchener, now in London as secretary of state for war, agreed.

Abdulla, speaking for his father, sought British support against the Turks, and after a series of messages from Mecca to Cairo to London and back, it was given, on the condition that the sharif (and "the Arab nation") a.s.sist Britain in the war against Turkey. Kitchener not only had given his approval but had sought the approval of the prime minister and Sir Edward Grey, the foreign secretary, thus committing Britain in principle to arm and finance a revolt in the Hejaz against the Turks under the leaders.h.i.+p of Sharif Hussein. The timing of the revolt and the exact meaning of the phrase "Arab nation" were left undefined for the moment; still, at one stroke, Great Britain had committed itself to the creation of an Arab state and to the leaders.h.i.+p of Sharif Hussein and his sons. Kitchener went even farther. In his message to Abdulla, he not only alluded to an Arab state but as good as pledged Britain to support Sharif Hussein as a new caliph, replacing the Turkish sultan: "It may be," Kitchener wrote, falling into language as stately and opaque as that of Hussein himself, "that an Arab of the true race will a.s.sume the Caliphate at Mecca or Medina, and so good may come by the help of G.o.d out of all the evil which is now occurring."

Since Kitchener's utterances, not unlike those of the sharif, tended to be Delphic, it is hardly surprising that his message of October 30, 1914, has been a source of controversy for the past ninety-five years. That and the Balfour Declaration of 1917 are among the most fiercely disputed doc.u.ments in the history of British diplomacy. It is clear enough, though, that British policy now promised "the Arabs" (without as yet defining who and where they were) a state carved out of the Ottoman Empire if they helped to defeat the Turks, and offered the sharif (and his family) a role of special political and religious importance within such a state, as well as suggesting that he should a.s.sume spiritual leaders.h.i.+p of all Muslims everywhere (something that was hardly in the gift of the British government). Not surprisingly, these a.s.surances were accepted with alacrity by the sharif, and very shortly afterward he offered the first proof of his allegiance to the Allies' cause.

Almost immediately after the outbreak of war between the Allies and the Ottoman Empire the sultan, though now hardly more than a figurehead, in his role as calpih proclaimed a jihad against the Allies. The proclamation appeared to have had little effect on Muslims in India, in North Africa, or even in Egypt. Although the sharif of Mecca had been expected to announce his adherence to the jihad, he showed no sign of doing so. His silence on the matter was deafening, and registered clearly in Constantinople and Berlin.

It may or may not be true that the British acquired their empire "in a fit of absence of mind,"* but certainly their policy for the Middle East was improvised in haste and as something of an afterthought, by men who were overwhelmed by the sheer size and ferocity of the war only three months after it had begun. However, when Lawrence arrived in Cairo, British policy, at any rate on the surface, appeared to coincide with his own view, except for the intrusion of the Indian army and government into Mesopotamia, which Lawrence opposed from the start. He plunged into his duties in Cairo with enormous enthusiasm-and daily expandedthem in every direction. He was convinced that British policy would lead to the creation of an independent Arab state, one that would, of course, include "his" Arabs, Dahoum and Sheikh Hamoudi among them, and would eventually include Syria, where he had spent the four best years of his life. but certainly their policy for the Middle East was improvised in haste and as something of an afterthought, by men who were overwhelmed by the sheer size and ferocity of the war only three months after it had begun. However, when Lawrence arrived in Cairo, British policy, at any rate on the surface, appeared to coincide with his own view, except for the intrusion of the Indian army and government into Mesopotamia, which Lawrence opposed from the start. He plunged into his duties in Cairo with enormous enthusiasm-and daily expandedthem in every direction. He was convinced that British policy would lead to the creation of an independent Arab state, one that would, of course, include "his" Arabs, Dahoum and Sheikh Hamoudi among them, and would eventually include Syria, where he had spent the four best years of his life.

For a junior staff officer, he seems to have had no hesitation in writing long, opinionated reports on strategy. No sooner was he settled into the Continental Hotel than he prepared an essay on the advantages of seizing the port of Alexandretta (now Iskenderun). The attraction of the scheme was that it could be carried out, in Lawrence's opinion, with a relatively limited number of troops, would provide the Royal Navy with a major deepwater harbor in the eastern Mediterranean, and would at one stroke cut Turkey off from its empire in the south and bring British troops directly into Syria, instead of having the British fight their way north over the hilly and easily defended territory from Gaza to Jersualem. Kitchener, whether encouraged by Lawrence or not, took a similar point of view, but the Alexandretta scheme was doomed from the start. The French distrusted any move that would bring British troops into Syria, which France intended to have as its share of the Turkish empire, along with Lebanon; also, there was a competing plan, hatched in part by Churchill, to use the fleet to break through the Dardanelles, threaten Constantinople, and open up the Black Sea to Allied s.h.i.+pping.

Throughout the winter and spring of 1915, Lawrence energetically pushed the Alexandretta scheme, apparently without anybody in Cairo or London questioning why an obscure temporary second-lieutenant was dabbling in grand strategy. He went on to write a long, persuasive, closely reasoned report on Syrian politics, which was once again read at the highest levels, where it seemed to dovetail with Kitchener's opinions. Lawrence's impressive knowledge of Syrian secret political societies (any political discussion that involved opposition to Turkish rule had to be, by definition, secret), and of the desires of the very different peoples who lived in Syria, was well-informed, realistic, and compelling, as was his conclusion that a functional Arab state would have to include Damascusand Aleppo, and if possible the littoral area and ports of Lebanon, under an administration flexible enough to include desert dwellers and city dwellers as well as Maronite Christians. He doubted that there was any such thing as Syrian "national feeling," but thought that the binding force of a Syrian state would be the Arabic language, and foresaw the possibility that Lebanon might need to be treated separately because of its large Christian minority. Palestine, he concluded sensibly, would present a wholly different set of problems. Anybody reading these doc.u.ments would have to conclude that Lawrence's four years at Carchemish and his travels throughout Syria and Lebanon had given him an extraordinary knowledge both of the Arabs' hopes and of the reality (and complexity) of the situation in the Arab-speaking parts of the Ottoman Empire.

In February, the Turks carried out their long-awaited attack on the Suez Ca.n.a.l, but it failed, since they had counted on an Egyptian uprising, which was not forthcoming. This was the attack that prevented Lawrence from meeting his brother Will. In March the Franco-British naval a.s.sault on the Dardanelles took place; it failed when six of the eighteen battles.h.i.+ps engaged were either seriously damaged or sunk by mines, so that the hesitant naval commander, Admiral de Robeck-who had replaced the even less bold Admiral Carden at the last moment, when Carden had a collapse attributed to stress-decided to break off the attack. Many people-first and foremost Winston Churchill-have since argued that if de Robeck had not given in to his fears he could have pushed on to Constantinople, and that Turkey might have collapsed with an Allied fleet anch.o.r.ed off the Golden Horn. Instead, the result was that British, French, Australian, and New Zealand troops were landed on Gallipoli in April, to take the Turkish forts and allow the strait to be swept clear of mines-an attempt that dragged on until December 1915 and cost the Allies nearly 150,000 casualties, including more than 44,000 killed. The failure at Gallipoli caused the Turkish att.i.tude toward the Allies to harden, and led to the genocide of the Armenians, since they represented the largest Christian population in the Ottoman Empire. It also resulted in the final shelving of the Alexandretta scheme, for which there werenow neither sufficient troops nor sufficient s.h.i.+pping. Other results included a weakening of Kitchener's position as Britain's warlord, a setback to Winston Churchill's career (Gallipoli would raise questions about his judgment until May 1940), and Lawrence's growing conviction that Turkey would somehow have to be attacked on the periphery, rather than frontally.

In May came news of his brother Frank's death. Frank had been killed while leading his men forward "preparatory to the a.s.sault," as his company commander put it in a letter to Frank's parents, adding, in a note typical of the futility of trench warfare on the western front, "The a.s.sault I regret to say was unsuccessful." Lawrence's letters home after he received the news of Frank's death are odd. Writing to his father, he regretted that the family had felt any need to go into mourning: "I cannot see any cause at all-in any case to die for one's country is a sort of privilege." To his mother he wrote, "You will never understand any of us after we are grown up a little. Don't you ever feel that we love you without our telling you so?" He ended: "I didn't say good-bye to Frank because he would rather I didn't, & I knew there was little chance of my seeing him again; in which case we were better without a parting." The letter to his mother makes it clear that even over a distance of thousands of miles, the old conflict between them was continuing undiminished. Clearly, despite the pain of Frank's death, his mother was still anxious to be rea.s.sured that her sons loved her, and Lawrence was still determined not to say so. His disapproval of the fact that the family was mourning Frank and his slightly defensive tone at not having been able to say good-bye are typical of Lawrence's lifelong effort to cut himself off from just such emotions-a kind of self-imposed moral stoicism, and a horror of any kind of emotional display. "You know men do nearly all die laughing, because they know death is very terrible, & a thing to be forgotten until after it comes," he writes to his mother; this is neither consoling nor necessarily true. It is exactly the kind of romantic bunk about war that Lawrence himself was to dismiss in some of the more brutally realistic pa.s.sages of Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

Some allowance must be made of course for the patriotic feeling and thewillingness to endure pain and death that separate Lawrence's generation from those that followed it. These traits are exactly why Rupert Brooke's romantic war poems seem so much harder to understand or sympathize with than the bitter, angry war poetry of Siegfried Sa.s.soon or Wilfred Owen. Even so, Lawrence's letters to his father and mother after Frank's death seem harsh, and full of what we would now think of as the false n.o.bility of war-putting a n.o.ble face on a meaningless slaughter. Frank's own letters home are full of similar sentiments: "If I do die, I hope to die with colours flying." This kind of high-minded sentiment about the war was shared by millions of people, including the soldiers themselves, although by 1917 it was wearing thin for most of the troops, as bitter postwar books like Robert Graves's Goodbye to All That and Frederic Manning's Her Privates We demonstrate. Lawrence, who would become a friend and admirer of both authors, would in the course of time proceed through the same change of heart as they did; hence the savagery, the nihilism, and the sense of personal emptiness that run through Seven Pillars of Wisdom.* Then, too, in May 1915, though Lawrence was in uniform, he was not fighting. However determined he may have been to be knighted and a general before he reached the age of thirty-he still had four years in which to accomplish these ambitions-he had not as yet made the first step toward active soldiering, and was beginning to feel a certain uneasy guilt. "Out here we do nothing," he complained to his mother. "But I don't think we are going to have to wait much longer." This was probably not a prediction she wanted to receive with the death of one son on her mind; nor was it accurate, since almost eighteen months would pa.s.s before Lawrence was in action. Then, too, in May 1915, though Lawrence was in uniform, he was not fighting. However determined he may have been to be knighted and a general before he reached the age of thirty-he still had four years in which to accomplish these ambitions-he had not as yet made the first step toward active soldiering, and was beginning to feel a certain uneasy guilt. "Out here we do nothing," he complained to his mother. "But I don't think we are going to have to wait much longer." This was probably not a prediction she wanted to receive with the death of one son on her mind; nor was it accurate, since almost eighteen months would pa.s.s before Lawrence was in action.

Communications between Cairo and Mecca, in 1914 and 1915, may be likened to putting a letter in a bottle and throwing it into the Hudson River in New York City in the expectation that it will eventually reach the person to whom it is addressed in London. After the message from Kitchener promising British support for an Arab state was pa.s.sed on to Mecca, a long silence ensued. This was partly because communications of any kind were dangerous-contact with the British was treason-and partly because Sharif Hussein was extremely cautious. He took the precaution of sending his son Feisal to Damascus and Constantinople, to meet with Jemal Pasha, the "minister of the marine," who had been put in charge of the campaign to attack Egypt and in general of the entire Arab population of the southeast, and with whom Feisal exchanged courtesies; and to meet more secretly with the Syrian nationalist organizations, to see whether they would support the sharif as their leader, and to try to define exactly what the borders of an Arab state should be. This was a mission that could have cost Feisal his life, but his gift for secrecy and for Arab politics exceeded even that of his elder brother Abdulla. His position, as well as that of his father and his brothers, was made more delicate by the fact that the French consul in Lebanon, Francois Georges-Picot, on returning to France after the declaration of war between the Allies and the Ottoman Empire, had left behind in his desk drawers a ma.s.s of incriminating correspondence with most of the major Arab nationalist figures, including messages implicating the sharif of Mecca himself. All this was now in the hands of Jemal Pasha, permitting him to play a sinister and protracted cat-and-mouse game with Arab political figures-with tragic consequences for many of those mentioned in the doc.u.ments.

In the summer of 1915, after conversations with Arab nationalists who had made their way to Cairo, Sir Henry McMahon, with the blessing of Kitchener and the war cabinet, issued a declaration promising that after victory Britain would recognize an independent Arab state; for the moment, he did not define its borders. The fact that the British had unilaterally transformed Egypt, which was, in theory, part of the Ottoman Empire, into a "protectorate" with McMahon as "high commissioner" made Arab nationalists nervous about Britain's intentions, all the more so because the French made no secret of theirs.

It was hoped that the declaration of a future Arab state would calm these fears, and perhaps persuade the Arabs to take up arms against the Turks, but all it produced was a note from Sharif Hussein to McMahon, which took almost a month to reach Cairo, and in which Hussein outlined the Arab demands for an independent state in great detail, repeating almost word for word what his son Feisal had heard in the secret talks with Arab nationalists in Damascus and Constantinople. These demands stunned McMahon. Great Britain was asked to recognize an Arab state that extended from the Mediterranean littoral in the west to the Persian Gulf in the east, and from the northernmost part of Syria to the Indian Ocean in the south (excluding Aden, which was already in British hands). In modern terms, this area would include Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Israel, and Lebanon. Since, in the words of Hussein, "the entire Arab nation is (G.o.d be praised!) united in its resolve to pursue its n.o.ble aim to the end, at whatever cost," an affirmative reply was requested within thirty days of receipt of the message.

To say that McMahon was taken aback by this message would be putting it mildly. For one thing, the area included a number of powerful Arab leaders who were no friends of the sharif of Mecca, including his rival ibn Saud, who was under the protection of the government of India; for another, the British themselves had designs on Iraq, where British and Indian troops were already fighting the Turks, and on Palestine, which they regarded as necessary for the protection of the Suez Ca.n.a.l. After consulting the war cabinet and the Foreign Office, McMahon set out to write a temporizing note-no easy task, especially given the prevailing phrasing of notes to and from Mecca. His reply begins: To the excellent and well-born Sayyed, the descendent of Sharifs, the Crown of the Proud, Scion of Muhammad's Tree and Branch of the Qurais.h.i.+te Trunk, him of the Exalted Presence and of the Lofty Rank, Sayyed son of Sayyed, Sharif son of Sharif, the Venerable, Honoured Sayyed, his Excellency the Sharif Hussein, Lord of the Many, Amir of Mecca the Blessed, the lodestar of the Faithful, and the cynosure of all devout Believers, may his Blessing descend upon the people in their mult.i.tudes!

It continues in much the same impenetrable style. The sharif's notes, equally full of compliments, t.i.tles, blessings, and protestations of respect, are even more opaque, so that the sense has to be teased out of each beautifully crafted sentence like the meat from a nut, then pa.r.s.ed the way orthodox Jews pa.r.s.e the old Testament, repeating every sentence over and over again in search of its truest meaning.

Despite the flowery beginning, McMahon's first message poured cold water on the projected borders of "Arab lands," as defined by the nationalist groups in Damascus and by the sharif of Mecca. Stripped of its polite decoration, his reply was that discussion of the precise borders of an Arab state would have to wait until after victory. The sharif's reply to this, in September, took the form of a fairly sharp rebuke, though even an admirer of his, the pro-Arab historian George Antonius, remarks that it "was a mode of expression in which his native directness was enveloped in a tight network of parentheses, incidentals, allusions, saws and apothegms, woven together by a process of literary orchestration into a sonorous rigmarole." It was not sufficiently florid, however, to conceal the sharif's irritation at what he describes as McMahon's "lukewarmth and hesitancy," which was reinforced by the arrival in Cairo of an Arab officer, Muhammad Sharif al-Faruqi, a Baghdadi, who had crossed over to the British lines at great risk to convey the fact that the sharif's demands were essentially the same as those of the Arab nationalist groups, and not by any means those of the sharif alone.

After consulting London and his own experts, chief among them Storrs, McMahon replied on October 24 with a letter that was intended to start the immemorial Oriental process of bargaining, setting out Britain's offer in response to the sharif's overambitious asking price. McMahon consented this time to give Great Britain's pledge to the independence of the Arabs within the area outlined in the sharif's letter, but with certain important exclusions. These included the Arabs' recognition of Britain's "special interest" in Mesopotamia (oil); some form of joint Anglo-Arab administration for the vilayats (provinces) of Basra and Baghdad; and the exclusion of the areas to the west of Damascus, which were not "purely Arab," in other words Lebanon, where the Druses regarded themselves as under the protection of the British and the Maronite Christians as under the protection of France. Further exclusions included-a rather broad sweep-those areas in which Great Britain was not "free to act without detriment to the interests of her ally France," and those areas controlled by "treaties concluded by us and certain Arab Chiefs," a polite reminder that ibn Saud and several of the sharif's other rivals would not be included in Hussein's Arab state. Nowhere in the letter is Palestine mentioned, unless it is meant to be included in McMahon's guarantee that Britain would protect the holy places-by which he almost certainly meant the Muslim holy places, Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem. On the other hand, since Palestine was not "purely Arab"-two Jewish communities were living there, one devoutly Orthodox, the other defiantly Zionist-and was indubitably to the west of Damascus, he may have meant to exclude it, or he simply took it for granted that the Allies were unlikely not to seek some form of control over the Christian holy places after the war.

T. E. Lawrence, by Augustus John.

T. E. Lawrence, by Eric Kennington.

Hogarth, by Augustus John.

Clayton, by Eric Kennington Ronald Storrs, by Eric Kennington.

Allenby, by James McBey.

Feisal, photograph by Harry Chase.

The rifle presented to Lawrence by Feisal. Note that Lawrence carved his initials, the date, and four notches in the stok Feisal's bodyguard and slave, by James McBey.

Sharif Hussein, photographed in Jidda.

Lawrence, photographed by Harry Chase at Aqaba, 1918.

Abdulla, by Eric Kennington.

Auda Abu Tayi, by Eric Kenningtc T. E. Lawrence, by Harry Chase.

Poster for Lowell Thomas's "travelogue," this one probably for the Australian production. (Note the Australian soldier in the characteristic slouched hat, in the foreground. Note, too, that the future author of How to Win Friends and Influence People is still spelling his name "Carnagey.") Map of the part.i.tion of Syria and Iraq as devised in the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement, by Tom Wrigley.

Lawrence's plan for the part.i.tion of the Ottoman Empire, prepared by him for the Eastern Committee of the War Cabinet, in October 1918.

Much bloodshed and strife might have been spared had Storrs and McMahon drafted the note of October 24 more precisely, but they were working under pressure from London. The Gallipoli expedition had all too clearly failed, the Turkish army was still within reach of the Suez Ca.n.a.l, and the invasion of Mesopotamia was going more slowly than expected, while on the western front losses were soaring for no gain in ground, and on the eastern front the Russian army was already showing signs of an impending collapse. If there is a chance that the