Lawrence of Arabia Read online

  Not long after, a German engineer beat one of the Englishmen’s house-servants on a limsy pretext. T.E. went to the German camp and demanded that the offender should offer a public apology to the victim. The chief engineer, a surly, hard-drinking man, retorted that logging was the only way to deal with natives, and washed his hands of the matter. This did not satisfy T.E. who, in his ominously quiet voice, remarked that in such a case he would have to take the engineer forcibly and make him apologize. The German looked at T.E.—and gave in.

  But the Germans themselves were later to have cause to bless that power of his, if they did not appreciate it. Dissatisfaction with the working conditions led to a riot in their camp. T.E. and Woolley went across to find several hundred furious Kurds besieging the handful of Germans. They stopped firing instantly when the two Englishmen appeared, but the besieged foolishly continued, and it was only by the exertions and cool determination of the Englishmen, risking the bullets of the men they were trying to save, that a massacre was averted. Even then, in the sequel, the neighbouring Kurds held up progress of the work until, finally, die Englishmen were called in to adjudicate the dispute; they persuaded the Kurds to accept a payment of blood-money for a man who had been shot. The Turkish authorities wished to confer decorations on the Englishmen for settling the trouble, but their offer was declined. In view of the part that T.E. was to play within a few years there would have been a delicious irony in his acceptance.

  But this sense of gratitude was not shared by some of the Germans. They harboured the belief that T.E. was at die root of the troubles they experienced with their native workmen, a belief not unnatural to those who saw the contentment in the other camp and were unable to see the cause. Moreover, conscious of the designs that inspired the Baghdad railway, they were sensitively quick to suspect T.E. of designing to sabotage it, or at the least to spy upon it. And here his own impish side came uppermost. Young relates that “he said gleefully that he did not go out of his way to remove this impression. On the contrary, he took a mischievous delight in rousing the German’s suspicions and cutting him out in every possible way. He even told us that he had gone so far one day as to drag some large pipes up to the top of the mound, whereupon the German had reported in a frantic telegram, which somehow fell into his hands, that the mad Englishman was mounting guns to command the railway-bridge over the Euphrates.”

  Whether the last part be fact or surmise, we may say of the story that it is so good that it ought to be true. And Lawrence, whose impishness sometimes extends to his stories, has the artistic sense to supply the appropriate complement even if it were missing.

  Again, one cannot avoid the suspicion that he was influenced by his sense of humour as well as by his sense of gratitude for their help when he took a couple of the Arab head-men back to Oxford with him in the summer of 1913. They took the experience very calmly, and the aspect of Oxford that they most admired was that of the “beautiful glazed bricks” in the public lavatories, while their chief surprise was furnished by the bicycles. T.E. amusingly tells of the delight with which they, learnt to ride, on women’s bicycles because of their lowing garments, and how they careered in circles round a stupefied policeman in the centre of Carfax.

  That winter, after his return to Syria, a more serious mission awaited him. Woolley and he were at Aleppo, resting after a hard spell at Carchemish, when a telegram came from London telling him that they were wanted to take part in an expedition to Sinai. They went south accordingly and were met at Beersheba by Captain Newcombe, a Sapper officer, who was to be their companion. They learnt that their part in the expedition was to be an archaeological camouflage for a military survey, by Newcombe and his assistants, of the country beyond the frontier of Egypt. He on his part had an equal surprise, for he had not unnaturally assumed that the archaeologists would be as venerable as their subject, only to be confronted by two youngsters, one of whom looked barely eighteen.

  Newcombe, who had already been surveying the frontier zone, had written home to the War Office to suggest that the survey be extended to cover the region between Beersheba and Aqaba. The War Office thought it wise to arrange a camouflage and, as this purpose coincided with an archaeological desire to fill certain gaps in scientific knowledge, the expedition was carried out under die auspices of the Palestine Exploration Fund, on whose behalf the necessary permit was obtained from the Turks. One may add that Lord Kitchener, then British Agent in Egypt, in approving the scheme had shown anxiety lest Turkish suspicions be aroused.

  The party travelled southward from Beersheba to Khalasa, and thence by a zig-zag route, through the wilderness to Ain Kadeis, supposed to be the Kadesh-Barnea of the Israelite wanderings. Instead of the verdant oasis pictured by some imaginative explorers, to the beguilement of modern Biblical geographers, they found it to be merely a small spring in a stony and barren valley. An American traveller, Dr. Trumbull, who visited the spot in 1882, and wrote a rapturous account of it, had told of the delight with which his Arab servants “stripped and plunged into the lower and larger pool for a bathe.” Lawrence, in giving the exact measure of its shallowness, ironically remarked, “Our guide also washed his feet in it.”

  The site of Kadesh-Barnea was but one of many fantastic suppositions, about Biblical traditions and Byzantine antiquities, that Lawrence and Woolley helped to explode. But the expedition had a future as well as a historical value. For, later in his course, T.E. passed by way of Wadi Musa and Jebel Harun (the traditional Mount Hor on which Aaron was buried) to Ma‘an on the new strategic Hejaz railway that linked Medina with Damascus. Thus he unknowingly did a preliminary reconnaissance of the scene of his operations in the second half of 1917. T.E.’s historical interest had already led him to spend some of his off-season travels in studying the approaches to Syria from the desert, and this study from Saladin’s point of view helped his own strategy later, even though he did not operate at the same places as Saladin and the railway was a fresh addition. “My problem and Saladin’s were not far apart.” He also remarks—“Saladin’s conquest of Syria was an accident, born of lopping off the edges.”

  More notable still, T.E. on this Sinai “survey” also explored the ground for his first great war exploit at Aqaba, although not in the way that has been recorded. It has been said that when the Turks refused permission for the party to visit this little port on the eastern arm of the Red Sea, Lawrence volunteered to go there on his own and obtain certain bearings that Newcombe needed. The facts are different The Turks were not asked for permission. Newcombe went there alone to survey this potentially important strategic point while Woolley and Lawrence pursued their exploration in the north. On arrival, despite rebuffs, his persistence won the day and he was finally left at peace to carry out his work. But before long Lawrence left Woolley to follow Newcombe, whom he found in camp about two miles from Aqaba.

  Near here, on a little island about a quarter of a mile from the shore, there was a ruined castle which had played its part in Crusading history, alternately in Moslem and Christian hands. Lawrence was eager to examine it for constructions by Renaud of Chatilion or Saladin. An interest in military defences of such remote importance aroused the Turks’ suspicions and they posted a guard over the boat he had intended to use. Thereupon Lawrence borrowed camel water-tanks from Newcombe, bound them together into a crude raft, and ferried himself and one of his Carchemish followers over to the island. He reached Jebel Faroun unobserved, and found it interesting, but completely in ruins, with even the cisterns broken. The return journey proved more difficult, as the wind was against him, while the presence of sharks in the water made the raft seem a rather frail protection, so that he felt no small relief when at last he reached land.

  During his stay at Aqaba T.E. made an inland excursion of more future significance. For he went several miles up the gorge of the Wadi Ithm, through which ran the direct route to the important station of Ma‘an on the Hejaz railway. It was far enough for him to see that it was impregnable against an advance
from the coast side—a piece of knowledge that was to bear fruit three years later. He was certainly a dangerous visitor for the Turks to harbour even though they could not foresee the consequence of his curiosity. But his wandering habits sufficed to arouse their suspicions, and on his leaving Newcombe’s camp to return north, the Turks sent a police officer with Mm as escort. Disliking this check on his curiosity, Lawrence gave the policeman the slip and made his way to Petra. Here he found Lady Evelyn Cobbold, who lent him the money for his fare back to Damascus from Ma‘an.

  This expedition, with its veiled military purpose, gave a reinforcement to thoughts which were already stirring in Lawrence’s mind since his sojourn at Carchemish. His basic intention in exploring Syria was always to write a strategic study of the Crusades; but incidentally he saw many other things. From Carchemish he had watched the construction of the Baghdad railway with his own eyes, and thus had the keener perception of its potential menace to the outposts of Britain. The Armenian revolutionaries had come to him for help and advice, and he had dipped far into their councils. The opposition party of the Kurdish reactionaries against the Young Turks had encouraged him to ride in their ranks and seek opportunity in the Balkan crisis. From the Arabs among whom he moved he had heard of their aspirations for freedom from the Turkish yoke. He had even made contact with sections of the secret society which, within and without the Turkish Army, was actively working towards such an end.

  The knowledge gave a new meaning to his old dreams, and brought them on to the horizon of reality. The expedition to Sinai was, he could feel, a definite step towards his aim and theirs. Indeed, the title of that famous story of spying on the German coastline, The Riddle of the Sands, might have been coined still more aptly to fit his recent activities. Before long he would himself propound a fresh riddle in the desert sands that the Turks would never succeed in solving.

  BOOK II

  HISTORICAL PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER II

  “THE SICK MAN”

  The curious revolutions of a century in Anglo-Turkish relations—The intrusion of Germany—The outbreak of the World War—The side-step that took Turkey into the War—The lost opportunity at the Dardanelles

  THE century that preceded the World War shows nothing more curious in the diplomatic sphere than the ever-changing yet ever-repeating relationship between Britain and Turkey. It might aptly be entitled “the Near East Knock-about turn.”

  The beginning of the nineteenth century found us fighting alongside the Turks against Napoleon. Yet in 1807 a British fleet passed through the Dardanelles in an attempt to compel Turkey to give way to Russia, and then sailed for Alexandria to support the Mamelukes in their revolt against the Turkish suzerainty. In 1826 our sympathy with the Greeks in their struggle for independence was expressed by our ships in sinking the Turkish fleet at Navarino, yet in the following year we set our face against Russia and reverted to the policy of preserving at all costs the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. In 1852 British public and political opinion was showing its mistrust of Turkey’s sincerity in the path of reform, but in 1854 a British army was fighting in the Crimea to defend Turkey against Russia. In 1867 the Sultan was in London receiving the Order of the Garter at the hands of Queen Victoria, but in 1876 Britain was wrathfully denouncing the Bulgarian Atrocities and execrating the “Unspeakable Turk,” who was not only massacring his subject peoples but suspending payment on his debts. However, a year later, the British fleet was again in the Bosphorus, covering Constantinople with its guns against the advancing Russians.

  In 1882 the British Army occupied Egypt, to the intense displeasure of the Turks. In 1885 Britain and Turkey had reached an amicable agreement and their respective High Commissioners were working side by side in Egypt. The result was an arrangement that the British occupation would come to an end in 1890. But French and Russian diplomacy intervened to disturb the atmosphere, and persuade the Sultan not to ratify the convention. So the British remained in occupation, and the Turkish High Commissioner remained as a cipher.

  The picture reminds one of a kind of mediæval clock with symbolical figures to represent Concord and Discord, Peace and War, bobbing in and out alternately. This extraordinary series of reversals is largely to be explained by the counter-pull of Britain’s moral impulses and material interests. The behaviour of Turkey towards her subject peoples repeatedly offended the Englishman’s sense of justice as well as his sentiment. But whenever there was a threat to our Mediterranean trade routes, or a danger that France, and, still more, Russia, might profit from the offender’s punishment, the Englishman’s moral sense gave way to his political instinct, the weight of commercial interest reversing the balance. As Napoleon wrote in 1808—“Who is to have Constantinople? That is always the crux of the problem.” it proved to be so for another century.

  In the light of those hundred years of history and their sequel, the use of our national gift for compromise may not seem altogether happy. Such delicate adjustment, to be truly effective, requires a Machiavelli—and the Englishman is not Machiavellian. He can never rid himself of moral scruples sufficiently to fill the part. Thus he is always and inevitably handicapped in an amoral competition, whether in duplicity or blood-and-iron. Realization of this inherent “weakness” suggests that Britain might find it better to be more consistently moral. At any rate the experiment has yet to be tried.

  On the other hand, there is plenty of experience to show the dilemmas and dangers into which Britain’s maladjustment of morality and materialism has landed her. The most striking example was provided in that sphere of international relations where Britain had been most inconsistent. And it came in the opening months of the World War. Or, rather, it came to a head then. For the scales had for a number of years been tilting against Britain’s influence with Turkey. The cause, this time, was not an outburst of British moral indignation but a new trend in Britain’s European policy.

  This gave a new point to old memories. And the point was directed at us, leading to what the British Prime Minister termed a “treacherous stab in the back.” His feelings surely overcame his historical sense. For in view of the past century’s record there was a piquant irony in the way writers referred to our “century-old friendship with Turkey,” and in the shocked indignation of the public at what was termed Turkey’s base ingratitude.

  MAP 1

  THE NEAR & MIDDLE EAST

  The truth was that Turkey had no assured grounds for relying on our support in her policy, or even in her resistance to Russian policy. She could perceive that our support in the past had only been tendered, reluctantly, when it suited our interests to give a check to Russia. Thus the drawing together of Britain and Russia which followed the Entente with France and was completed by the Anglo-Russian agreement, shook Turkey to the core. It produced a sense of insecurity greater than she had ever known.

  That negative effect was accentuated by a positive influence. Germany’s growing ambition for eastward expansion, her dream of empire extending to the Persian Gulf, had led her to extend her friendship to Turkey. The strengthening of her influence there meant the loosening of Britain’s. Little by little the wedge was inserted, beginning with a German military mission. If its energetic zeal for efficiency was found irksome, the Turk found a redeeming restfulness in his new friend’s silence when the treatment of Turkey’s subjects was called in question. While the British lion roared with indignation at the reports of atrocities, the German eagle soared above such trifles in quest of its ultimate goal. After the moral lectures he had so often received from Britain, the Turk could not but appreciate the comfort of Germany’s indifference to his methods.

  The German wedge, moreover, had a man of weight behind it. This was Baron Marschall von Bieberstein, who from 1897 to 1912 was ambassador at Constantinople. To a race who admired strength above all, whose “chivalry” was only extended to the strong, Marschall von Bieberstein’s huge frame, scarred face and trampling manner formed a living picture of the growing power of Ge
rmany. He had an able successor, whose forceful character was blended with foxiness, in Baron von Wangenheim, nicknamed the “Cuirassier diplomat.”

  There was one man who might have counteracted the impression with that of Britain’s more mature and quieter determination. This was Kitchener, who seems to have had an unrealized desire for the post. Instead, the successive British Ambassadors during these critical years lacked both the necessary prestige and strength of personality. Moreover, during the critical weeks of late July and early August, 1914, our representative was even absent from his post on leave.

  Yet, despite the assiduous way she was wooed by Germany, Turkey once more turned to her old supporter when again in danger, from Italy in 1911, and made an overture for alliance with Britain. The proposal was put aside by the British Government, although not without realization of the consequences. This is shown in a letter that Mr. Winston Churchill wrote from Balmoral to Sir Arthur Nicolson at the Foreign Office—“Will it not if it comes to war or warlike tension throw Turkey into German arms more than ever—thus making the complete causeway: Germany—Austria—Rumania—Turkey? . . . Do you think it possible that Germany has been marking time for this to happen in order to secure an atmosphere more suited to thunderbolts?” Nevertheless, while foreseeing the risks, he himself came to the conclusion—“clearly we must prefer Italy to Turkey on all grounds—moral and unmoral.”