Lawrence of Arabia Page 4

  Britain’s aloofness rankled deeply in the “Young Turks,” who had seized control of Turkey only to find themselves beset by external dangers; despoiled of Tripoli by Italy and of Macedonia by the armed alliance of their erstwhile Balkan subjects in 1912. Some of the new leaders of Turkey still clung, almost pathetically, to the hope of renewed ties with Britain, but their feelings—both emotional and diplomatic—were opposed by a certain chilling influence in the British Embassy, where a powerful prejudice against “Young Turk” freemasonry was combined with a lingering support of the powerless Sultan and his palace clique. This prejudice had a concrete base in the discovery that the Grand Orient of Turkey was in close touch with the extreme Nationalists in Egypt. Moreover, there were shrewd observers who became convinced that Turkey’s destination was inevitable from the moment Germany appeared “in shining armour” by Austria’s side in 1909—that in Turkish measure British sympathy could never balance the scales against German might. But, as it was, the antipathy checked several friendly advances while the Germanophile side of the “Young Turk” movement grew stronger under the contrast of treatment. And although Germany’s proffered embrace had its embarrassments it held no such obvious danger as the bear-hug of Russia.

  If the fear of rape by Russia supplemented by the hope of loot—at Russia’s expense—was the main factor in bringing Turkey into the war against Britain, the immediate impulse was provided by three ships. They were the new German battle-cruiser Goeben, and the British-built battleships Sultan Osman and Reschadieh. As a shrewd step to enhance German prestige—which had suffered from the defeats of the German-trained Turkish Army in the recent Balkan War—and to weaken the one remaining foothold of British influence—our Naval mission—the Goeben was sent out to Constantinople early in 1914 and for long lay anchored near the entrance to the Golden Horn.

  Then in the war-charged atmosphere of late July, the ever-present fear of Russian lust for the Dardanelles developed almost to panic pitch. Certain of war between Germany and Russia, uncertain of Britain’s participation, and egged on by Enver Pasha, the Germanophile and German-trained leader of the Young Turks, the Turkish Grand Vizier responded to previous German overtures by asking Wangenheim, on July 27th, for a secret alliance against Russia. Next day the proposal was accepted, and on August gnd the Treaty was signed, unknown to most of the Turkish Cabinet. On the morrow the first mines were laid in the Dardanelles. Enver had already mobilized the Turkish Army on his own initiative.

  Nevertheless, the news of Britain’s entry into the war against Germany came to Turkey as a shock which nearly burst the new treaty. It caused such a reaction, indeed, that it even produced an astonishing offer to Russia of a Turkish alliance. But this offer did not suit Russia’s ambitions, even though it promised her the one chance of a channel through which she could receive munitions from her French and British allies. She preferred isolation to the sacrifices of her dream of annexation, and did not even report the offer to her allies.

  Turkey’s sudden reversal of attitude was short-lived, and within a few days her new fear of British power had given way to her old fear of Russian ambition. The revival of confidence owed much to an access of annoyance. Smarting under the sting of defeat in the Balkan War, Turkey had been awaiting delivery of her first two modern battleships with an eager pride that was all the more general because the purchase-money had been raised by collections among the people. On August 3rd, however, Turkey was notified that the British Government was taking over the ships. The news caused an explosion of anger. Everyone who had contributed his mite felt a sense of having been robbed. And the popular outcry was at its height when, on August 10th, the Goeben together with the cruiser Breslau appeared at the entrance to the Dardanelles. They had slipped past the British Fleet near Sicily.

  An officer of the German military mission, Lieut.-Colonel Kress von Kressenstein, brought the news to the War Minister, Enver Pasha, and told him that the forts were asking for instructions. Enver replied—“I can’t decide that now. I must first consult the Grand Vizier.”

  “But we must wire immediately.”

  There was a moment of turmoil in Enver’s mind. Then came the answer—“They are to allow them to enter.”

  Kress asked a further, and guileful, question: “If the English warships follow the Germans, are they to be fired on if they also attempt an entrance?”

  “The matter must be left to the decision of the Cabinet.”

  “Excellency, we can’t leave our subordinates in such a position without issuing immediately clear and definite instructions. Are the English to be fired on or not?”

  Another pause. Then—“Yes.”

  General Kannengiesser, a German witness of this momentous discussion, says, “We heard the clanking of the portcullis descending before the Dardanelles.”

  International law was evaded, British objections frustrated, Turkish pride satisfied, and Enver’s nervous colleagues calmed by arranging the fictitious purchase of the two German warships. Turkey was not yet ready nor agreed upon war, and Britain had every reason to avoid it.

  Thus, during the weeks that followed, the Turks were successively enabled and emboldened to advance along the path to war by Britain’s characteristic indefiniteness, her passivity in face of growing provocation. The German crews were kept, the German admiral was appointed to command the Turkish Navy, the British Naval mission was removed from control, and then forced to withdraw. British ships were detained and their wireless dismantled, while a stream of German soldiers and sailors filtered into Constantinople. On September 27th the Straits were definitely closed, on German initiative once again.

  Meantime, Turkish Ministers, ever ready with glib assurances, congratulated themselves on this gullibility of the British—whose restraint was, rather, due to their acute sense of vulnerability, as a power with millions of Moslem subjects. Fear of a Jihad, the proclamation of a Holy War, overhung British policy like a cloud.

  But Britain’s continued refusal to take offence was at least worrying to the war-party in Turkey and its German whips. So Enver decided to prick Britain’s most sensitive spot, and arranged for several aggressive reconnaissances across the Egyptian frontier into Sinai. The potential threat to our communications through the Suez Canal caused Kitchener, now War Minister at home, considerable anxiety and hastened the measures for sending a large protective force from India. But the Germans in Turkey became still more uneasy when this fresh provocation failed to goad Britain to war.

  A more dramatic and decisive effort was staged. On the evening of October 27th the German Admiral, with Enver’s connivance, led the Turkish fleet on a raid into the Black Sea against Britain’s most sensitive ally. Odessa and other Russian ports were shelled.

  The story of this provocation, as related to and recorded by Lord d’Abernon after the War, is illuminating. The official sanction came to the German Embassy in a sealed envelope addressed to the Admiral. An official took the initiative of opening it and the precaution of sending on merely a copy. The first report that reached Constantinople was that the Goeben had been sunk. So, assuming that the order had been sunk with her, the Grand Vizier conciliatingly replied to the Russian protests by denying that any such order had been given. Thereupon the German Embassy sent to him saying—“The order of which you deny the existence, because you think it was sunk with the Goeben, is in a safe place . . . at the German Embassy. Pray cease to deny that the Turkish Government has given the order to attack Russia.”

  Thus the war-fearing Grand Vizier was compelled to stand aside helplessly while German craft, in a dual sense, deprived the Entente of any possible excuse for avoiding war with Turkey. On October 30th, the Russian Ambassador demanded his passports, and was followed by the British and French, after a final appeal for the dismissal of the German military and naval missons.

  The best chance for both Britain and Russia was now in taking the offensive instantly. The defences of the Dardanelles were obsolete and incomplete. The only two munit
ion factories in Turkey lay on the shore close to Constantinople and open to easy destruction by any warships which penetrated thither. The neglect of the opportunity, and the forfeiture of time that could never be regained, form a tale of almost incredible haphazardness on the part of Britain, of suicidal shortsightedness on the part of Russia. Britain was certainly hampered by lack of available forces, and Russia, still more, by excess of jealousy—lest anyone else should establish a claim to participate in the destiny of the Dardanelles.

  But both were fettered, above all, by a narrow doctrine of strategy. The soldiers of Europe had come to accept rigidly the theory of Clausewitz that all efforts and all forces should be concentrated in the main theatre and against the main enemy. As interpreted by his pupils it was a theory without elasticity and without regard to the practical question whether such “concentration at the decisive spot” was likely to produce an effective result at the actual time. The dead hand of Clausewitz on the strategy of his country’s opponents may well be counted as his supreme patriotic legacy.

  On November 3rd the Franco-British fleet briefly bombarded the outer forts of the Dardanelles. Its only use was to help the German authorities in trying to overcome Turkish inertia over the defences. But the effect of this warning has been overrated, for Turkish lethargy was almost as boundless as British indefiniteness. Not until the end of February did the Turks post more than one division on the Gallipoli peninsula, and not until March did the improvements in the defences approach completion. In part, this state of weakness seems to have been due to a feeling that it was a hopeless waste of energy to prevent a passage. If the experts, German or Turk, doubted their power to stop a purely naval attack, they were still less confident of resisting a combined land and sea offensive. The Turkish Staff History frankly states that “Up to February 25th, it would have been possible to effect a landing successfully at any point on the peninsula, and the capture of the Straits by land troops would have been comparatively easy.”

  But in England Mr. Winston Churchill was almost alone in showing a definite appreciation of the importance of opening the Dardanelles—and of the time factor. From August onwards he frequently tried to arouse the interest of the War Office, which, for several years had not even made a perfunctory review of the question. Three weeks after Turkey entered the War he raised it again at the first meeting of the new War Council, pointing out that such an attack was the true method of defending Egypt. But other eyes were still focused on the Western Front, and he received no support from Kitchener. It is fair to say that Kitchener mooted the idea of a landing near Alexandretta—at the “corner” between Asia Minor and Syria—to cut the Turks’ rail line of communication with their territories in the Middle East, but he was advised that a large force would be necessary for more than a momentary effect. So, the project was shelved, and the conclusion accepted that the passive defence of the Suez Canal was the only possible way of protecting Egypt. It meant that the Turks were granted a fresh lease of repose.

  In Germany, on the other hand, Falkenhayn, the new directing military brain, fully realized “the decisive importance of Turkey joining in the struggle.” it placed a barrier across the channel of munition supply to Russia, and promised an invaluable distraction to the military strength of Britain and Russia. This lever was now applied, before the Allies attempted any move. Under German dictation, Turkey struck as early as mid-December against the Russians in the Caucasus. Enver, however, overreached himself and his ambitious plan ended in disaster at the battle of Sarikamish—it was the cold rather than the human foe that destroyed the attacking army. The disaster was the more serious because the first-line Caucasus army was the only efficient force Enver possessed.

  Turkey was no more fortunate in her next venture—to cut the Suez Canal artery of Britain’s power in the East. The Sinai Desert was a natural check on an invasion in strength, and the Turkish force, totalling some 20,000 men, which eventually delivered a fragmentary attack on the Canal, near Tussum and Ismailia, in the first week of February 1915, was easily repulsed, although allowed to make good its retreat.

  Nevertheless, if both the Caucasus and Sinai offensives were tactical failures, they were of great strategic value to Germany by pinning down large Russian and British forces. At the time of the attack on the Canal there were 70,000 troops in Egypt, although only part were then fully trained. The force was still kept up to that strength in midsummer, although 28,000 were counted as a reserve for the Gallipoli expedition. After the evacuation of Gallipoli it rose to 100,000. Indeed, Sir John Maxwell, commanding in Egypt, considered that a far larger force was needed to guarantee the safety of Egypt, suggesting twelve infantry divisions on the Canal and three to hold Egypt and the Western Frontier. Even the General Staff at home conceded that eight were necessary on the Canal. In midsummer 1916 the garrison of Egypt exceeded 174,000 men while a further 237,000 were occupying at Salonika what the Germans satirically called their “largest prisoners of War camp.”

  Such was the most uneconomic sequel to our multiple-mistimed efforts to force the Dardanelles in 1915. A paper written on the eve of that year by Lieut.-Colonel Maurice Hankey, Secretary of the War Council, had diagnosed the deadlock on the Western Front and suggested that in the actual conditions Germany could most effectively be struck through her allies, especially Turkey. He had advocated the use of the first three new army corps for an attack on Constantinople as a means to knock Turkey out of the war, bring the weight of the Balkans into the scale of the allies, and open communication with Russia—abundant in wheat but deficient in munitions.

  In the light of history there can hardly be a doubt that such a force, the equivalent of 150,000 men, would have sufficed to achieve success with a margin to spare—if it had been used when the actual landing was made on April 25th. Instead, 75,000 were sent. Even this number, exactly half, might well have sufficed a month or six weeks earlier. By early June, the utter failure of the offensives in France inspired Churchill to urge that we should double the force at the Dardanelles. But a. month passed before the Government finally decided to do so; by the end of July they were ready to sanction still larger reinforcements. But the consequence of the belated decision and tardy steps was, first, that the second attempt could not be made until early August; and, second, that the force was once more outweighed by the Turkish reinforcements that had been brought up in the meantime. The effort was too late in the sense of being too small for the actual time.

  Worse still, the delay had far-reaching repercussions. It allowed a new danger to arise and a new drain of force to be created. The Germans were allowed time to prepare a campaign to open communication with Turkey by knocking out Serbia. And the Dardanelles lack of success, due to loss of time, encouraged Bulgaria to enter the war as Germany’s partner. As a result Serbia was overrun, and the sequel to this disaster was the unwilling occupation of Salonika by a Franco-British force, which became another investment too large for the Allies’ bank-balance, yet too small to produce a dividend.

  As for the Gallipoli expedition, with winter approaching and opportunity waning, a withdrawal was now decided upon and carried out. During the early hours of December 9th, the last lighters quitted the derelict piers of Helles with the last British troops who would set foot on the peninsula until after the war, while behind them the dark sky was suddenly reddened with the glare of blazing dumps and stabbed with Turkish rockets soaring skyward in alarm. In the circumstances evacuation may have been the most reasonable course, but it restored Turkey’s freedom of action. It thereby exposed Egypt to danger anew, and our Mesopotamian expedition to a fresh danger.

  If the horizon of most strategists in the West was narrowed to the Western Front, Kitchener certainly perceived the menace. All his associations, all his instincts, made him acutely sensitive to any movement towards Egypt. Already, in October, when the evacuation of Gallipoli was in the air, he had urgently demanded from Maxwell a report of the Turkish communications in Asia and Syria. The work of preparing it
fell largely on a temporary second-lieutenant in Cairo whose commission bore the name T. E. Lawrence.

  CHAPTER III

  THE LIFE-LINE

  The chains of empire—The construction of the Hejaz and Baghdad railways—The Turkish menace to Egypt and the Suez Canal—Active or passive defence?—Britain’s Alexandretta project, and its shelving—The menace looms dose—The revolt that brought relief

  WHEN the twentieth century opened, the Turkish Empire was still in the eighteenth—as regards its means of imperial communication and control. Virtually roadless and railless. In all the vast territories beyond Asia Minor there were only two short stretches of railway, both narrow-gauge, one connecting Damascus with the sea at Beirut and the other linking Jerusalem with the port of Jaffa.

  But in 1900 the Sultan Abdul Hamid set on foot the construction of a far-reaching railway line to connect his Arabian provinces with Damascus. It would not only help to strengthen his control over them but would avoid the unpleasant necessity of passing through the foreign-controlled Suez Canal. And it could be achieved in an economical way that delighted the heart of Abdul Hamid. For, by announcing it as a means of facilitating the pilgrimage to Mecca, its construction was carried out with money subscribed by pious Moslems throughout the world. The term “a pious fraud” might have been coined to fit the Hejaz railway.

  Moreover, its construction was carried out by German engineers. Their Government watched their work with a more than benevolent eye. For if the Sultan looked forward to strengthening his authority in the Hejaz, Germany looked forward to controlling, through him, the Western shores of Arabia. It promised a means of exerting pressure on Britain’s Suez Canal and Red Sea artery. The railway followed, generally, the pilgrim track and ran through desert that offered few serious difficulties save the scarcity of water. In 1904 the 285 mile stretch from Damascus to Ma‘an was opened, and in 1908 the railway reached Medina, 820 miles from Damascus. It was intended to prolong the line to Mecca, 280 miles distant, although delays supervened; and an eventual extension to the Yemen was contemplated by the Germans.