In
and Out of History: Col. T.E. Lawrence
by
Lieut.-Colonel
T. E. Lawrence (1888-1935),
Lawrence
had a scholar's toolswide reading in several languages, an eidetic memory, a
powerful mind inclined to puncture accepted doctrinebut not a scholars
disposition, preferring games of life to those of study. I am not going to put
all my energies into rubbish like writing history, he wrote home from
Lawrence
knew the Near East well. In 1909, turning twenty-one, he hiked 1,000 miles
alone, in scorching summer heat, through often roadless, bandit-infested
Palestine and Syria to inspect thirty-six crusader castles for his Oxford
thesis. From 191114, he and Leonard Woolley dug a Hittite mound on the
Euphrates just inside the present Turkish border. He managed the work crew
effortlessly, hoped to free indentured natives from their usurious masters, and
befriended Busrawi Agha, chief of the Melli Kurds, who promised him a houseful
of art if they sacked Aleppo.
After
Turkey entered the war in October 1914, Lawrence prepared maps and interviewed
captives for British military intelligence in Cairo. Youngest in a small group
of Arabists, he tried to explain to untutored officials that not everyone in
Turkish uniform was Turkish and that secret dealings, money, and guns could
prompt native uprisings. In the Arab Bulletin (191619), he and his colleagues
interpreted regional affairs for government circles. The Bulletin was supposed
to be secret, but Lawrences gripping contributions raised its circulation. A
practiced marksman, he wore a sword and daggerstandard tribal weapons in
Arabia; but his trenchant pen and speech were his strongest weapons. Where
others saw unfathomable chaos, he saw the regions troops and peoples placed
like so many pieces upon its varied topography, wadis, roads, and rail lines.
Drawn to the elemental, marauding tribesmen, he knew their customs, rivalries,
and what could move them, and expressed his views with confident clarity. In
Cairo strategy discussions and campfire talk about tomorrows foray, he was
detached, even-tempered, shrewd, convincing, blending knowledge and insight
with wiliness and purpose. He was a first-class intellectual and practical
mechanic; he knew how to get things done; if necessary, he could be ruthless.
Following
demands for postwar rule of a vast territory from Arabia to Persia and the
Mediterranean, an equivocal British response, and a secret British-French
agreement to divide control of the northern lands, Sherif Hussein, Emir of the
Muslim holy cities, launched a rebellion in June 1916. Mecca and Jidda fell
quickly but the Turks held the railhead at Medina. [T]here is no harm in the
Sherif suffering a mild check, Lawrence wrote. He will be much more modest
and accommodating if he realizes . . . he is dependent on our help for
success. Stubborn old Hussein was never very modest or accommodating.
Entering
History
Lawrences
active part in the revolt began in October when, as the Turks attacked and the
Arabs faltered, he landed at Jidda to appraise the situation. He met Husseins
four sons and chose Feisal as the leader who would bring the Arab Revolt to
full glory. Feisal looked splendid in Arab robes and was pliable. (To [w]in
and keep the confidence of your leader, Lawrence advised British officers,
never refuse . . . schemes he may put forward; but ensure that they are put
forward in the first instance privately to you. Always approve them, and after
praise modify them insensibly, causing the suggestions to come from him, until
they are in accord with your own opinion.) Returning to Egypt, he told the
authorities what they were glad to hear, that weapons, supplies, military
advisers, and goldnot troops were needed. He was sent back to implement his
advice. It was as adviser to Feisal, Allenby, and Churchill that Lawrence
entered history.
His
influence in Britains Arab affairs rested partly on his bond with Feisal. Both
men saw Syria as the main Arab goal and France as the main obstacle to gaining
it. Lawrence presented Feisal, an attractive reed through which he could blow,
as the prime Arab military and political leader. Feisal saw him as better
informed, shrewder, franker, and more sympathetic to the Arabs than other
British agents. Their closeness did not preclude duplicity. Feisal negotiated
secretly (or so he thought) with the Turks while Lawrence monitored his
communicationsand later argued that, by rejecting their overtures, he showed
his loyalty to Britain.
Two events
in the summer of 1917 jolted Lawrence from his place as one of a half dozen
liaison officers to the lead British agent with Arab forces. The first was a
long, dangerous camel ride behind Turkish lines to Damascus and beyond to
examine terrain the Arabs would later enter and warn sympathizers against premature
action. The second was the capture of Akaba by tribesmen attacking from the
inland desert at Lawrences initiative. The events earned Lawrence promotion to
major, praise from generals in London and Egypt, and, most important, the
support of General Edmund Allenby, Middle-East Commander-in-Chief newly arrived
from the Western front. Henceforth, Lawrence reported to Allenby, who saw the
value of Arab raids against the Turks desert flank, and became a key link
between him and Feisal. A calculating link. I regularly reduced impolitic
truth in my communications, Lawrence wrote. I must have had some . . .
aptitude for deceit, or I would not have deceived men so well.
Allenby
occupied Jerusalem in December 1917 and Lawrence joined the victory parade.
Seven Pillars ends in Damascus, where he recalls his schoolboy ambition of
reshaping Asia: Mecca was to lead to Damascus; Damascus to Anatolia, and
afterwards to Bagdad . . . . Churchill later wrote, . . . if the Great War
had continued . . . he might have arrived at Constantinople . . . with most of
the . . . tribes of Asia Minor and Arabia at his back. That is not how things
appeared in Damascus on October 3, 1918, when Allenby told Feisal and an
emaciated Lawrence they must accept French advisers. Lawrence found that
intolerable, asked for leave, and departed for London.
At the
1919 Paris Peace Conference, Lawrence served as adviser to the Arab delegation
and as Feisals spokesman and interpreter. Fighting a French mandate for Syria
(which meant fighting British policy), he lobbied for a U.S. mandate, met with
Woodrow Wilson, Colonel House, American reporters and observers, and attracted
much attention. Felix Frankfurter was impressed by his singular charm,
intrepid military exploits and commanding power; historian James Shotwell
called him the most winning figure. But his cause did not win. After four
months as King of Syria, Feisal was expelled by French troops in July 1920.
In 1919,
American journalist and publicist Lowell Thomas staged a wildly successful film
and lecture show, The Last Crusade: With Allenby in Palestine and Lawrence in
Arabia, which played in Londons largest auditoriums. The royal family,
cabinet members, everyone who was anybody or nobody packed sold-out
performances. Everything that Mr. Lowell Thomas tells us about Colonel
Lawrence is true, Prime Minister Lloyd George said. Lawrence is one of the
most remarkable . . . figures of modern times. Thomass unctuous imagination
created a mythical figure whom newspapers and the public relished, a selfless
hero in robes unstained by the mud and blood of trench warfare.
The hero
soon attacked Lloyd Georges Middle East policies in the press. Two years after
the armistice, 80,000 troops were battling a rebellion in Iraq. It is odd that
we do not use poison gas, Lawrence told newspaper readers. Bombing the houses
is a patchy way of getting the women and children . . . .
When
Winston Churchill became colonial secretary in January 1921 with instructions
to restore peace, he asked Lawrence to be his adviser. Setting aside
French-controlled Lebanon and Syria, things went fairly well for the Empire and
Lawrences Hejazi friends. Feisal was made King of Iraq, obtaining 96.8% of the
vote in a plebiscite after his rival was escorted to Ceylon for a long holiday.
His brother Abdulla, who threatened to invade Syria, was placated with the
throne of Trans- Jordania, detached from Palestine for the purpose. Lawrence,
who in Seven Pillars makes much of Britains betrayal of the Arabs,
said that Churchill fulfilled our promises in letter and spirit (where humanly
possible). Only Sherif Hussein, now King of the Hejaz, remained unreconciled,
rejecting a treaty endorsing these arrangements in exchange for a subsidy and
protection from Ibn Sauds Wahabi tribesmen. I would rather this swine Ibn
Saud ruled the whole of Arabia than see it under the filthy yoke of the
English, he swore at Lawrence. Ibn Saud occupied Mecca in 1924.
Churchill
asked Lawrence, What would you like to do when all this is smoothed out? The
greatest employments are open to you . . . . One possibility was to succeed
Allenby as high commissioner of Egypt. Lawrence was not interested. I dont
think ever again to govern anything, he told his mother. Churchill refused his
repeated requests to resign but granted him leave, which he spent working on Seven
Pillars. Eventually, in July 1922, Churchill released him. The next month,
he enlisted as a private in the RAF under a pseudonym. Thus, at thirty-four,
Lawrence left the historical stage. A theorist and effective practitioner of
guerrilla warfare, he had helped to dismantle the Ottoman empire and replace it
with client Arab states he hoped to turn into brown dominions.
He and
Churchill had drawn the frontiers of modern Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, and
Arabia. The two got on well and subsequently kept in touch. Lawrence gave
Churchill a copy of the lavish 1926 private edition of Seven Pillars,
visited Chartwell occasionally, and appealed to Churchill for help at critical
junctures. Churchill thought Lawrence one of the greatest beings alive in our
time and declared, I was under his spell.
Leaving
History
Lawrence
had higher literary than worldly aspirations. Over eight years, he produced
four handwritten and two printed texts of Seven Pillars. [A]s a
professional historian and the sole person who knew what had happened in
Arabia, he told George Bernard Shaw, it was his professional duty to write
the revolts history. But Seven Pillars was not a history, contained no
documents, two footnotes, no bibliography or index; it did not cite
authorities, review evidence, examine and attempt to reconcile opposing
viewpoints. It was an intensely personal narrative that Lawrence strove to make
an epic like Moby Dick or War and Peace. Writing in twenty-four
hour sieges without food or sleep in an unheated attic, he relived his desert
experience and tried to incise it into enduring prose. Hardy, Shaw, Wells,
Forster, and others considered it a masterpiece, but Lawrence condemned it
harshly, because he aimed for an unreachable height; because his talent was
descriptive, whereas he wanted to be creative; because he condemned himself.
A split
personality if there ever was one, decisive and vacillating, vain and
masochistic, megalomaniac and self-abasing, he could be impressive, witty,
boyish in company, but his serious writing voiced a profound pessimism, even a
hatred of life. Seven Pillars subtitle, a triumph, was (and was not)
ironic. Asked why he never wrote about his time with Churchill, he said he
might have done so had they failed. The Mint, a brief memoir of his
early days in the RAF, stresses the brutality of recruit training and the
carnality of barracks life. Its abundant obscenities and coprophilia shocked
and dismayed his friends. His letters contain some of his most fierce and
gloomy reflections.
Effusively
praising the work of contemporary writers, poets, and painters, Lawrence was
more critical of historians. He seemed to believe that works of art and
imagination were legitimate and, when successful, wonderful, but attempts to
grasp the incalculable confusion of events were hopeless. Of military historian
Liddell Harts careful study of the Arab revolt, Lawrence remarked that he
makes it all fit in . . . it didnt happen like that . . . . He admired
Gibbon and the Greeks but had a poorer opinion of modern historians who
imagined history could be scientific. [H]aving helped to produce history bred in
me a contempt for our science, seeing that its materials were as faulty as our
private characters, which supplied them. The historian . . . learns to attach
insensate importance to documents. The documents are liars. No man ever yet
tried to write down the entire truth of any action in which he has been
engaged. All narrative is parti pris.
Lawrences
chief curse, Robert Graves said, is that he cannot stop thinking. The
entrenched masochism that made the ordeals of desert warfare perversely gratifying
made his introspection increasingly corrosive. Thinking, he lamented, drives
me mad. Immured as a private in the ranks, emptying swill, scrubbing floors,
doing mindnumbing clerical and mechanical chores, he sought futilely to choke
. . . this furnace in my brain.
He lost
interest in the East. Once, invited to visit King Feisal in London, he wired,
Give him my deepest regards regret . . . unable to visit London often as it
costs fortnights pay. Yet, a national hero with friends in high places,
Lawrence remained a background presence in British life whom many thought might
resume a public role. Periodically, newspapers broadcast stories of what he did
or did not do: his secret life in the ranks, his work on RAF speedboats, his
spying in Afghanistan or Morocco, his fabricated role in a Soviet show trial.
Some feared he might lead a fascist movement; supporters of Hitler and Oswald
Mosley sounded him out unsuccessfully. Friends hoped he would lead Lawrences
Bands, a movement to forestall unrest among unemployed youth. In May 1935,
Lady Astor, with whom he had a close, joking relationship, asked him to
Cliveden to meet Stanley Baldwin, soon to be prime minister again. I believe
you will be asked to help re-organize the Defence forces . . . . Please, please
come. No, Lawrence replied. . . . there is something broken in the works .
. . my will, I think. A few days later, he swerved his motorcycle to avoid two
bicyclists, split his skull, and died at forty-six.
In June
1940, 120 German bombers attacked England and the Battle of Britain began. It
may be idle speculation, but, had he lived, would, could Lawrence have shaken
his depression and resumed an active role in national affairs? Psychiatrist
John Mack, whose 1976 A Prince of Our Disorder is the most searching
study of Lawrences character, thought he would not. I disagree.
Throughout
adult life, Lawrence was periodically gripped by despair. He hated his small
body and punished it in masochistic rites. He abhorred the congress of man and
woman, felt strongly that his unmarried parents should not have had children.
Upon enlisting in the RAF, he was close to a nervous breakdown. At intervals,
he feared madness, spoke of suicide, and expressed the utmost nihilism. Artist
Eric Kennington, a good friend, reports an occasion when Lawrence burst forth
attacking everything, Life itself. Marriage, parenthood, work, morality,
especially Hope. Historian Lewis Namier saw in him a deep neurotic negation
of life . . . . which drew him to the desert. Lawrence himself declared, . .
. the planet is in a damnable condition, which no change of party, or social
reform, will do more than palliate insignificantly. What is wanted is . . .
birth control . . . to end the human race in fifty years. Despite, perhaps due
to, that bleak outlook, he was perceptive, compassionate, helpful, and
generous, with countless friends (none intimate) from top to bottom of both
Arab and British society. He might be withdrawn, silent, blank-faced,
lackluster or so captivating and imposing as to hold the floor in any
companyprivates, generals, lords, ladies, ministers, writers (G. B. Shaw
included). In good form, he was magnetic and a natural leader, leading not by
command but by instant, incisive analysis clearly pointing the direction to be
taken. Crises and war were his element, lifting his depression and turning his
mind to practical actiondealing with an accident, blowing up bridges and
trains, outthinking the enemyat which he was expert. With Britain in peril,
his RAF friends fighting to defend her, and Churchill in command, he could not
have remained in his Dorset cottage mooning about his failings, eternity, and
death. But that is perhaps fruitless thought of what might have been.
Harold
Orlans writes a column on higher education and culture for Change magazine. His
T. E. Lawrence: Biography of a Broken Hero was published by McFarland in 2002.
T.E. Lawrence