LAWRENCE OF ARABIA

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21714, 22 February 1936, Page 17

LAWRENCE OF ARABIA

I The Legend: And a New Study

[Reviewed by FRANK BZRKINSHAW]

Hk - »-«rr«ire. By Charles Edmonds. wf^fSS^w^^- and ;**** t'r Widin the last hundred years, ! '■4 nqnv romantic names have been ; Sated with Arabia: Kinglake, "SLit and snobbish; Lady Hester ■■ stanhope, living the life of a sheikh L, a disused convent; Sir Richard Burton, who went to Mecca in dis- > guise' 5 - Doughty, who wandered alone'in search of spiritual experi- : mcc And more recently, T.. E. f Lawre nce, "Lawrence of Arabia," ' i Prince of Mecca." "Lawrence, The Master Spy," "Lawrence, «tife Uncrowned King of Arabia." ■ jfe nine of Lawrence has become >■■ almost 5 inseparable from Arabia; during, the last few years a vast Xawrence legend has sprung up, a ' Lawrence myth, almost a Lawrence - 1 , eaga. ■ Thomas, Graves, and Others ¥i ' The Lawrence legend was started 9 i v an American journalist, Lowell .•Thomas, who towards the end of IV|9lB in the capacity of war correspondent paid a short visit to the Sjitish base of the Hejaz operations. ■jji s s tay in Arabia was more or less limited to.Akaba, at the head of Ithe gulf °* that name - But a tri P Into the interior convinced him that ' the fabulous stories of the Arabian '■ Rights would fade into insignificance Krhen compared with those that ■ could be typed by an able American ftp journalist. Lowell Thomas selected ; |xis characters with care. Lawrence tyas to be the hero of the piece, the '. Mystery man of the Middle East. .', Jrhe character part in chief was to V lie played by an obscure and elderly < «rab sheikh, Auda Abu Taye. The ■ Villains of the piece were obviously . <■'. fhe Turks. *-*. A year or so after the war,.Lowell ■ • Thomas's book appeared. It swept ■ across America, swept across Eng- \ *]an. It was a book of adventure, 01 j- high ideals, of incredible dangers i happily survived; it was a vision of i, idealised warfare, and not the war- , Jare' of attrition, of the trenches, of ' the blood and lice known to so .-. jnany. millions of war-weary people. U" Jhe hero, T. E. Lawrence, was an little man, pale and and neutral, cold-should-ered by the military caste, tortured jJby the Turks,, laughed at by everyone. But withal he possessed a power over the Bedouins, j and single-handed he brought the i/&Arab war to a brilliantly won cons'- elusion. It was all rather like a "x Charlie Chaplin tragi-comedy, the I \mhaßpy little man who outwits his I enemies despite the slings and |; enows of outrageous fortune.

Peter Davies, Ltd. 191 pp. (7s 6d net.) Ltd. the independence of Arabia, Syria, and Mesopotamia,. with the exception of Basra and Baghdad, whefe Britain had special interests. It was this pledge, backed by a goodly number of British gold sovereigns, that led Hussein to begin his revolt. But in the meantime the Foreign Office had sent Sir Mark Sykes to negotiate ari agreement with France. In May, 1916, the Sykes-Picot Agreement was secretly accepted by England, France, Russia, and Italy; and by this agreement the whole Arab area was to be parcelled between England and France in the event of an Allied victory. The situation now was that the Arab revolt began with the support of Sir Henry MacMahon and the Arab Bureau, a liaison office in Cairo, but with the hostility of the Commanders-in-Chief of Egypt and Mesopotamia, and with the, Arabs betrayed in advance by the British Foreign Office. T. E. Lawrence was attached to the Arab Bureau. He spoke Arabic fluently, having spent some years excavating in Mesopotamia. He met Feisal, a younger son of Sherif HUssein, of Mecca, and made friends with him. Lawrence realised, jas really any «man of average intelligence would realise, that in order to discommode the Turkish troops in Arabia it was necessary, hot to launch a mass attack on Medina, but merely to harass that thin, insecurely held line of communication, the Hejaz railway. After a few tentative actions, hostilities proper commenced at Akaba. A British flat-bottomed boat, H.M.S. Humber, was stationed at Akaba. Some few British troops were landed at Akaba, under the command of Colonel Joyce; these included a special duty flight of the Royal Flying Corps, part of the Duke of Westminster's Armoured Car Squadron,, and also a battery of light artillery with guns mounted on Talbot cars. And the French authorities, jealous of, their rights under the Sykes-Picot Agreement, landed a detachment of French Colonial troops. Bedouins and Turks This little force, together with the regular Arab' troops under the command of Jaafar Pasha, and consisting for a great part of deserters from the Turkish Army, dressed in British khaki with khaki headdresses of the Bedouin variety, rested at Akaba until it was discovered that Turkish outposts had retired from Guiera, some 30 miles away, and had taken up a position at Abu-lessan. Accordingly, the British-Arab force advanced to Guiera. Time passed, and it was discovered that the Turkish outposts had retired to the fortified city of Maan. So again the Allied forces advanced. In the meantime small actions took place at Mudoweira, a railway, blockhouse: The blockhouse was bombed by the Royal Flying Corps, shelled by the f light artillery, machine-gunned by the; armoured cars, and peppered with rifle fire from the regular ""A'r'a'b troops. A white flag was displayed by the beleaguered and unhappy Turks. From all sides, from behind ridges and sand hills, from the far horizon, out of the flickering mirages, appeared the irregular Bedouin troops. These were tribesmen, mercenaries, financed to the extent of free rifles and ammunition, food for their camels, golden sovereigns each month, and a bonus on battles fought. Like vultures flocking round the nearly dying man, like blowflies buzzing round a wounded sheep, the Bedouin tribesmen swooped down on the block house of Mudowera. And another battle was won. In the meantime, the town of Maan was bombed with great regularity at six o'clock each morning. The Hejaz railway was hacked to bits in various places, only to be repaired as regularly by the industrious Turks. The Arab forces advanced to Azrak, on the way to Damascus, where contact was made with the forces operating in Palestine under Allenby. A further battle at Deera, and the entry to Damascus was open. On October 1, 1918, Damascus welcomed the Allied troops. The Turks were finally defeated. And down in Medina, the original garrison grimly held on. Cut off from supplies, in the blazing heat, under the command of Fakro Pasha with his 8000 men, the garrison held out until January, 1919, when the officers mutinied and handed the commander oven to the Arabs. Lawrence's Defeat The rest of the story is sad. Lawrence had given his promises to Feisal that the Arabs should have their freedom, that Feisal should be given the kingship of Syria. But the French and British Governments had made their own arrangements. The Sykes-Picot Agreement triumphed over the MacMahon arrangements. The Arabs realised that they had been betrayed by British diplomacy. The French considered that their share in the Arab revolt had been deliberately underestimated. The British diplomats at Versailles repudiated the promises of Lawrence. Diplomacy triumphed over common honesty. And there, after Versailles, in all probability Lawrence would have been forgotten by the world, remembered only by a few men as a rather strange little fellow who wandered through the Arab revolt in a tentative -manner, dressed in Bedouin costume and armed with a short golden sword, and who appeared to be very friendly with the irregular Bedouin troops. But the American journalist and war correspondent, Lowell Thomas, gave' birth to the Lawrence legend. * Lawrence himself, matured by the war and with a nice feeling for prose, perpetuated the legend. Like a. snowball it-swept through the world, 'gathering force on. the way. Lawrence, uncertain whether he was a major prophet or merely a puppet of post-war circumstance, joined the Tank Corps as a private, later on transferring to the Royal Air Force ,as a mechanic. He .was killed last year when driving a motor-cycle through a Dorsetshire lane. A Forgotten Little Army Tliereafcre a few criticisms which must tfPShade. Mr Edmonds com--parestfhesecpnd battleof Gaza with the : first'. >dfesert'~, r'aid oh" Akaba. Murray,, &\ G&s'a, killed 1700, Turkish troops af a cost to the; English of I had killed or taken 1200 Turks at the cost of two Arabs killed. The I

11-.'I 1 -.' The Lawrence legend was auve. f Charles Graves wrote a biography ■/' which made a fortune for, ~th.e. ' • writer. Lawrence ' himself wrote. Jus autobiography. The manuscript X fras., atotert j&rom a?waiti«B roomvm ; railway station. He laboi'-t-Wly re-wrote his story, "The \ Seven Pillars of Wisdom." (The b; reviewer was offered a subscriber's \ copy of this book at the price of S'\ £3O. Within a few months an .' original copy was worth over £570.) ■ In an abridged edition, the "Seven ''•' Pillars" made a fortune for the author, most of which he distributed 1 in charities. Dozens of other people : wrote accounts of Lawrence and the k Arab revolt. Lord Winterton and 4 Colonel Dawnay, both members of \'- the-'Staff, gave their ideas on the '■ subject. Liddell Hart, the war i' historian, has written a volume on 1 the campaign treated from the mili- ' tary and strategic angle. And now comes "T. E. Lawrence," by Charles Edmonds, the author of "A Sub- ; altern> War." \ ! The Arab Revolt ' This book represents by far the , rest attempt up to the present to , clarify Lawrence's real position in the Arab revolt. Its author has wen at great pains to avoid any suspicion of hysterical adulation. ,* Be quotes freely, not only from Lawrence's own account but from ■ Turkish and French evidence. In its'simplicity and conciseness it laay well be accepted as the stand",jttd text-book of the campaign for the man-in-the-street who wants to *now what it was all about. It has ways seemed to the reviewer that ! the history of the Arabian Caml. P""gn of 1916-1918 and its connex- j ton with T. E. Lawrence needed a Peat deal of simplification. The ' *Me affair has in the past been "Wjjed with an immense amount of Werosity; invested with a spuriWW'glaaiour; written of as a major . necessitating vast quan- < ™es 'of- diplomacy, strategy, mag- ' So*?* fighting qualities, and SPy, the presence of T. E. Law!r?li'Actually> it was nothing of - To °e as brief as possible, ,|;?H0le Arab war was as follows. 1 d *JS»a Abdul Hamid, in pre-war K I B nced with German funds, mJ jSJJf.Wrrow gauge railway from mc\ S^wß,"* 0 Medina, stretching down »i' w t^^ and Plains of Arabia, paral•M Ifi- the Red Sea "ttoral. The wl tn.™°* this railway was fivefold: ml SSFI as a military link with the !'■ 35l- aghdad railw& y» thus conml telß German plans of a n tße«3&5 ast supremacy; to act as a Vk toMs?u the British P° rt of Aden; W to*Sr tile Arab tribes in ordjer; I troS?fi ; easy the coll ection of taxes I ra b s »' and to serve as a 1 folfej!]?, method of transportation I W»»r - slem Pilgrims to Mecca. I ag£v^Tjy was a single track i M ia2 , armoured blockhouses 1 m Blm S its length and 1 y ItMn gly- fortified railSi «tTiSvJ l 2 ns - There were garrisons if WIS « Boldie ry at these stations ■f% **«lffiSf •f arxißoll at the term_ , ft fej^^^'- a tmn i ron l in e stretchW Nraffl&w* unfriendly country fr.M<»^W^^ tian to manage. ■ as a disunited Em--1 broke out in Europe l*ieHS r i B * d itself t 0 the Ger " 1. W aSs?*:: fofeAabs. who for long secret plan of a free ■ *PhKin *k Em P ire > decided «^dfis^2 n ?^^ ould soon be ripe MfiHHrWii ■gainst the Turks. mSHSSBW I Shleirif of .Mecca, M jfljjmfTT °* Mohammed, M BHHy u^dito °* the two Holy MBR? a ? nd Medina, intended . Caliph of Islam and f Hi^^ he Arabs> ■ ' . v I mKm\ [f^^°^ s i- BBwMfilmlfl^^ oll on .behalf of 4i!egdtiatetf mMumffi*™ with Hussein to the HHBkI' wouM recognise

reviewer (who spent the years 1917-18 in the vicinity) must insist that there is no comparison possible between these two affrays. The second Gaza battle was an affair fought under conditions of modern warfare. The taking of Akaba was accompanied by the wholesale desertion of Turkish troops to the Arab bariner. The Turks, attracted by the promise of regular payment in gold, deserted the Turkish flag and shortly reappeared as regular Arab troops under the Hejaz banner. And these troops cannot strictly be described as being "killed." There is also in Mr Edmonds s narrative a tendency to discount the work done by the little band of British troops under the leadership of Colonel Joyce. For two years they lived in the world's hottest desert. The Rolls-Royce armoured cars patrolled the railway line, blowing up bridges and bits of line and generally playing the game of tip and run. They were short of food, short of supplies, apparently forgotten by everybody; they were shot at by Turks and shot at by "friendly" Bedouins. The Special Duty Flight of the Royal Flying Corps (later the Royal Air Force) bombed the Turkish posts regularly with aeroplanes that were hopelessly out-of-date. The light guns mounted on Talbot motor cars were literally man-hauled by their crews over hundreds of miles of sand. But in spite of the immense difficulties of the little campaign, the shortage of man-power, lack of communications, lack of interest at headquarters in Cairo, Colonel Joyce conducted a brilliant little local war. Unfortunately, the work of this British detachment remains unhonoured and unsung. And for the sake of true perspective, it is to be hoped that in future editions of his book Mr Edmonds will obtain the narrative of (say) Captain Siddons, late of the Royal Air Force, and now a Methodist minister in London. . Nevertheless, in all, this book is ■brilliant. And, quite incidentally, ; 'Charles Edmonds is the pen name of C. E. Carrington, late of Christchurch. .......