Lawrence of Arabia Page 5

  MAP 2 THE HEJAZ RAILWAY

  The ulterior purpose of the Hejaz railway was to a large extent masked not only by its pious foundation but by another vast railway scheme, the aim. of which became more palpable. This was the Baghdad railway. Back in 1888 a concession to build a railway in Anatolia which would link Angora with Constantinople had been granted to a group of German and British capitalists. The Germans subsequently bought out the British rights. In January, 1902, they were granted a further concession to extend the railway from Konia through the Taurus Mountains, across the Euphrates to Mosul, down the Tigris to Baghdad, and thence on to Basra, thus linking the Bosphorus—and Berlin—with the Persian Gulf. The scheme caused much apprehension in England, because of its potential threat to her sphere of influence. The Germans then offered to let the British participate, but on terms which would have established German control in perpetuity. The proposal collapsed—but the railway carried on, in disjointed sections.

  It sprouted both to east and west of Aleppo, the pivotal point where it linked up with the south-running Hejaz railway. The eastern stretch extended to Jerablus on the Euphrates, and as far again beyond. By 1917 this distance was doubled, and it had reached Nisibin; but over a hundred miles still separated it from Mosul, and there was then another hundred down the Tigris before it could join the short shoot that ran out from Baghdad.

  This railway system, designed to be the steel cord that should bind the crumbling Ottoman Empire together, plays such a part in the story of the war years that one needs to keep it ever in the mind’s eye. It may be pictured as a huge with the upper stroke slanting from the Bosphorus to Baghdad, and the lower stroke running from Aleppo to Medina. The latter alone was complete—with a break of a gauge at Riyak. For in the upper stroke there was not only a wide gap in the eastern half, but there were still, at the outset of the War, two breaks west of Aleppo.

  One was in the passage through the Taurus Mountains; troops and supplies coming from Constantinople had to be detrained at Bozanti and moved by a narrow mountain road to Tarsus, twenty miles distant, where they could be entrained again—but only for a short distance. For the other uncompleted stretch was in the Amanus Mountains, where the five-mile long Bagche tunnel had still to be pierced. In consequence, on reaching the Amanus break, some forty miles beyond Tarsus, the trains were usually switched down the branch line to Alexandretta, where their occupants detrained again, and went by road to Aleppo, or a station just west of it, before rejoining the railway. The alternative, slower and more difficult, was to march over the Amanus Mountains.

  The Alexandretta branch had originally been planned as the main line, but its course ran too close to the Gulf of Iskanderun to be strategically comfortable, and fears of Its Interruption from the sea had led to a change in the course of the main line.

  By October, 1915, there were still twenty tunnels on the Taurus section to be pierced, but the road, from Bozanti to Tarsus, had been improved. And work on the Bagche tunnel had gone ahead so well that it promised to be ready at an early date.1 Moreover, there had been a more ominous extension in Palestine which unmasked a new aspect of the Hejaz railway scheme.

  The branch from the Hejaz railway which ran from Deraa down to the sea at Haifa had thrown out an offshoot down the coastal Plain of Sharon which not only linked up with Jerusalem but extended south to Beersheba. And from Beersheba it would soon extend another twenty odd miles to El Auja on the Egyptian frontier.

  Thus the original big had grown a small attached on the western side of the lower stroke. By this, Egypt might now be menaced by forces far stronger than hitherto—if they were available. And the forces, indeed the bulk of the Turkish Army, had now it seemed been set free by the British withdrawal from Gallipoli. Moreover, since the enemy occupation of Serbia, they could be supplied with munitions direct from Germany.

  Such was the situation that caused anxiety to Kitchener, and still more to Maxwell, on the eve of 1916. Instead of gripping the Turk by the throat we now merely smelt his tail—a forked tail. It was a delicate position, for tails can be used to inflict painful blows, without serious risk to the animal itself.

  Maxwell’s thoughts reverted to the idea of averting the danger by striking the Turk in the pit of his stomach, near Alexandretta. He urged that the evacuation of Gallipoli would have disastrous moral and material effects unless such a counterstroke were delivered. Sir Henry McMahon, the High Commissioner in Egypt, concurred. Kitchener, who had come out to the Mediterranean to examine the problem of Gallipoli, listened sympathetically. But the General Staff at home opposed it strongly, both in detail and on the general ground, now such a familiar chorus, that “the scheme offended against a fundamental principle of strategy: to retain the power of concentrating strength for a great offensive in a decisive theatre of war.” By this, of course, they meant Flanders, which was the bounds of their horizon.

  In face of these objections, Kitchener referred the question to Sir Charles Monro for a detached opinion. In strict truth, his opinion could hardly be termed this—for he had commanded an army in France and had only made a brief visit to the Mediterranean. And while there he had already recommended the abandonment of the Gallipoli venture. But, most surprisingly, his reply went far to endorse the project, and to discount the objections of the General Staff. He agreed that Maxwell’s estimate of 100,000 troops would suffice not merely to cut the Turkish communications but to hold a position that would keep them severed indefinitely with security to itself. That reply, one may add, was influenced by the strategic arguments of Second-Lieutenant T. E. Lawrence, injected into the receptive ear of a superior whose voice carried weight.

  The scales seemed to have been tilted decisively towards the project. But at this point a new ally came to the aid of the discomfited General Staff. The weight of France was thrown into the scales against the proposed landing in Ayas Bay. And it was impelled by a political rather than a military motive.

  For on November 13th, 1915, the French military attaché presented the following note:

  “Should the British Government be considering a disembarkation of troops in the Gulf of Alexandretta in order to cut the railway to Palestine, they will have to take into consideration not only the economic interests but also the moral and political position of France in these countries.

  “French public opinion could not be indifferent to any operations attempted in a country which it considers as destined to form part of the future Syrian state; and it would require of the French Government not only that no military operations should be undertaken in this particular country without previous agreement between the Allies, but also that, should such action be taken, the greater part of the task should be entrusted to French troops and the French generals commanding them. . . .”

  This must surely be one of the most astounding documents ever presented to an Ally when engaged in a life and death struggle. For it imposed’ what was really a veto on the best opportunity of cutting the common enemy’s life-line and of protecting our own. As the French Government did not propose to send troops, their intervention killed the plan. The British General Staff may also be considered as accessories to the crime. It was no less—when we count the large force engaged and losses incurred in the frontal advance into Palestine that had alternatively to be undertaken.

  The first attempt, in the spring of 1917, to force the Gaia gateway was made with over 100,000 troops—and failed with a loss of over ten thousand. It was renewed in the autumn with some 100,000 men, and when, after a year of struggle, the advance finally reached Aleppo, the British battle casualties alone had reached nearly fifty thousand, despite the superbly economic conduct of the actual campaign. The veto on the Alexandretta stroke had meant that, once this way of hamstringing the enemy had been foresworn, we had to fall back on the painfully slow method of masticating the Turkish Empire from the tail upward if we were to operate against it in any way.

  But more than a year passed after the evacuation of Gallipoli before the Briti
sh forces took the initiative in any real way. And during that year of inactivity the garrison of Egypt rose at one time (March, 1916) to as high as 275,000 men. The best that can be said for this great concentration of idle force is that it served as an imperial strategic reserve, which could be, and was, drawn on by other theatres of war.

  The “campaign” of 1916 might be summed up briefly by saying that throughout most of the year the two sides crouched growling at each other a safe distance apart, the monotony varied only by the occasional Turkish pastime of stretching forward suddenly to pull a few hairs out of the lion’s mane, an audacity which the lion repaid with a sharp slap when it was repeated.

  A curious stretch of imagination had led the British Command to magnify beyond all reason the size of the Turkish forces which might be assembled for the invasion of Egypt. That magnification might be charitably described as due to a mirage of the desert, did one not know that the inflated estimate sent home was contrary to the facts known on the spot—to the information furnished to the head of the military intelligence by his subordinates, the active intelligence staff officers. The false estimate was persisted in despite their protests. They at least were not subject to the common vice that hierarchy breeds—that of telling a superior what he wishes to hear and what flatters his sense of importance. In such a case the superior is often the more to blame.

  At the beginning of 1916 Sir Archibald Murray, previously Chief of the Imperial General Staff, had arrived to take over the command.1 in February he wrote to his successor at home, Sir William Robertson, that it would be possible for the Turks to bring down a quarter of a million men to Beersheba and push them across the desert. Robertson put the figure at 100,000, and even this was certainly an over-estimate. Half the number of Murray’s estimate might conceivably have been brought to Beersheba, but they could hardly have been maintained there, and far less could they have been moved across the Sinai desert.

  In the actual event, Turkish lethargy and inefficiency, accentuated by distractions from other enemies than the British, removed any danger. Nothing happened until April. Then a small force of 3,500 moved out along the desert route nearest the Mediterranean shore against the British posts which had been established in the Qatiya Oasis as a shock-absorber in front of the Canal. The Turks overwhelmed the garrisons and then made their retirement. This neat little surprise coup was directed by the Bavarian colonel, Kress von Kressenstein, who was the inspiration and brain of the Turks in Palestine for the first three years of the war. After the Qatiya insult, peace settled on the desert no-man’s-land for another three months. Kress on his part was waiting for artillery, machine-guns, mortars and aircraft from Germany. The British were consolidating their position.

  Then in July Kress advanced again with some 16,000 men, and this time pushed beyond Qatiya to Romani. But he tempted fortune by lingering too long near Qatiya, waiting for his heavy artillery, and the delay allowed the British to prepare an encircling embrace when at last, after ten days, his attack developed. It failed, and he had a narrow escape from the trap. Once outside the lion’s jaws he succeeded in fending off the disjointed pursuit and even administered a sharp rap to the pursuers. If the British had missed a fine opportunity of netting the whole Turkish force, Kress had suffered a defeat and risked a disaster because his means were not adapted to his end. His force was too small for a sustained advance, while too large and encumbered for a raid.

  A few months earlier a fundamentally similar fault had marred another Turco-German move of similar intention on the opposite frontier of Egypt. Here in the Western Desert the tribes belonged to the Moslem sect of the Senussi. With them the Turkish proclamation of a Jihad against the infidel, in general a failure, had a measure of success. Nuri Bey, a half-brother of Enver, appeared on the scene and incited the Senussi to harass the British in Egypt. Another Turkish officer, Ja‘far Pasha, set to work to drill the Arab levies. Ja‘far was a Baghdadi Arab of marked capacity and even greater capaciousness. He spoke eight languages and had been trained in the German Army. But his efforts to discipline the Bedouin and make them into a regular force had merely the effect of making them into a regular target—for the British.

  So long as the Senussi’s followers stayed drilling in the desert they were a menace. The news created serious unrest in Egypt and grave apprehension, of an internal rising, to the British authorities. It even led the British to evacuate the coast. But when, in December, 1915, the Senussi’s troops advanced against our frontier force their progress was checked, although they baffled several British counter moves; and in February they were decisively routed, Ja‘far himself being captured.

  By contrast with these unsuccessful efforts to harass the British, the Turks themselves would soon receive a lesson at their expense, in the technique of harassing warfare and in the way to convert the roaming Bedouin into an effective agent of war. The teacher would be an Englishman—T. E. Lawrence. And the opportunity was provided by a rising of the Arabs against Turkish rule.

  This event, so far-reaching in its effects, took place in the Hejaz. Thereby the birthplace of the Moslem religion, a warrior faith, became the birthplace of the first scientific theory of irregular warfare. The scene, also, of its application.

  The revolt opened in June, 1916. Its first long-range effect was on the British. For the news of it inspired them to exchange their hitherto passive defence of Egypt for an offensive move into Turkish territory—to quote the official history of the campaigns in Egypt and Palestine: “Sir A. Murray was now directed by the C.I.G.S. to consider seriously that advance to El Arish which had previously been merely a vague possibility.” Moreover, the Hejaz rising set up that much-needed distraction to the Turkish initiative and the Turkish forces which the British, since the evacuation of Gallipoli, had hitherto failed to provide from their own resources. The revolt would spread, in space, scale, and effect until it ultimately became known to the world as the Arab Revolt.

  * * *

  1 Actually the gaps were not covered until early in 1917, and even then only by a light railway link. By the irony of fate the first through trains began running in September, 1918—just in time to greet the final victorious onrush of the British.

  1 His first appointment was to command the forces on the Suez Canal front, but in March he took over the whole force in Egypt, and Sir John Maxwell went home.

  CHAPTER IV

  THE UNDERCURRENT

  1914–1916

  The Arabs’ pre-war dreams of independence—Kitchener’s assurance to the Sherif of Mecca–The Sherif refuses Turkey’s behest to proclaim a Holy War–McMahon pursues negotiations with the Sherif which culminate in Britain’s wide, if qualified, pledge of October, 1915, to recognize Arab independence. Meantime another British agent, Sir Mark Sykes, independently makes a different arrangement, negotiating a treaty with the French for the future division of the still unconquered Turkish Empire—The Turks attempt to suppress the Arab movement, and dispatch reinforcements to the Hejaz—The Sherif hastens the long-contemplated revolt—in June, 1916

  DURING the years immediately before the War, Kitchener in Cairo, with his Oriental habit of keeping his ear close to the ground, was well aware of subterranean stirrings among the Arab subjects of the Turkish Empire. As he spun his spider’s web of information for Britain’s imperial interests, many significant clues and secret currents came to his knowledge. Among them were the ambitious dreams of Hussein, Sherif of Mecca, and his sons, of a vast Arab confederacy under the suzerainty of their family. A vision of the past glory of the Abbasid Empire floated before their eyes.

  In February, 1914, the Young Turks appointed Vahib Bey, who was known for his violently anti-Arab sentiments, as Vali, or Governor, of the Hejaz. After his arrival in Mecca he ordered the Sherif to hand over a hundred old Mauser rifles with which his guard was armed. The insult provoked a riot. That same month the Emir Abdulla, the Sherif’s second son, came to visit Kitchener in Cairo, and told him privately of the Sherif’s ambition to achie
ve independence for the Hejaz. He found a sympathetic listener, who had himself long cherished the idea of founding an independent Arab State in Arabia and Syria.

  Then the war came and Kitchener left Cairo for London to supervise schemes of vaster scope and more immediate execution. But amid the cares of creating a New Army of millions he did not forget the possibility of converting the Arabs into a British asset. Moreover, a reminder came to him from the depths of Arabia in the form of a cryptic message sent by a circuitous route—“Following for Lord Kitchener. ‘Remember our conversation—The day has come.’ ” The ominous bearing of Turkey gave emphasis to the matter. If the Turks were to proclaim a Jihad, the attitude of the Sherif of Mecca would have an important influence on its scope and its success.

  MAP 3

  ARABIA, SYRIA & MESOPOTAMIA

  Thus towards the end of September, Kitchener sent a message to the Emir Abdulla to inquire whether the Sherif would be on the side of Britain or against her if Turkey joined in the war. The reply was friendly but guarded. The Sherif’s ambition was tempered by his caution, and he was typically Arab—some might say traditionally British—in his care to sit on the fence, with a foot still on either side, until the right moment had arrived and the outlook had cleared. He implied that he would not side with the Turks of his own choice, but evidently wanted an assurance from the British side before he took the risk of defying his overlord in Constantinople. He did not forget that it was the policy of the Turks to keep alternative Sherifs in stock there. He himself and his sons had been held for years as hostages by Abdul Hamid until the revolution of the Young Turks had caused a convenient revolution in his fortunes and put him in Mecca in the place of his cousin.