WITH LAWRENCE IN ARABIA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21940, 29 April 1933, Page 4

WITH LAWRENCE IN ARABIA

SIR HUBERT YOUNG’S EXPERIENCES “The Independent Arab." - By Major Sir Hubert Young, 0.M.G., D.S.O. With Maps. London: John Murray. (15a net.) Sir Hubert Young, who was recently appointed Governor of Nyasaland, first became acquainted in 1908 with the Middle F/astern countries in which he was to undertake so much valuable work, in peace and war, in the succeeding quarter century or so. His book, “The Independent Arab,” provides a most interesting footnote to official records of recent Arabian history, and is complementary to those of or concerning Lawrence, just as his work was complementary to that of the unassuming hero. Sir Hubert Young knew Lawrence, of course, his first meeting being at Carchemish. He had floated down the Tigris from Diarkebir, a nine-days’ trip, on a goatskin raft, and encountered in the digdings there “a quiet little man of the name of Lawrence,” with whom he practised revolver-shooting and studied nitrite inscriptions. He met him again in Cairo' in 1918. when he received an example of the quiet but now famous little man’s queer humour: — “The asked me to suggest someone who would take my place in case anything happened to me,” said Lawrence, with his mischievous smile, “and I told them I thought no one could. As they pressed me. I said I could, only think

of Gertrude Bell and yourself, and they seemed to think you would be better for this particular job than she would.” Of Lawrence's abilities, or peculiar genius, Sir Hubert Young has a view which supports the popular one. He has often been asked, he says, whether. Lawrence could have done the work -he did without the gold which the. British,'Government paid monthly to King Husein. He comments: — Lawrence could certainly not have done what he did without the gold, but no one else could have done it with ten times the amount. No amount of pomp and circumstance would have won him the position he gained among the Arabs if he had not established himself by sheer force of personality as a born leader, and shown himself to be a greater daredevil than any of his followers. ■■ ' ? ■’ Sir Hubert was himself engaged, in the latter war years, in co-operating with the semi-regular Arab unite which were working with British forces in a guerilla campaign. He has much that he finds amusing in retrospect to say of the difficult nature of the task, though it was exasperating enough at the time. The art that was necessary in stage-managing a desert revolt —requiring the organising of camels, food supplies, equipment, communications, and so on —could not all be expended on these mundane matters, for the Arabs had other weaknesses. They preferred, the patriarchalist. methods of warfare, and could not understand ins im* portance of the time-factor, and the truth frequently meant much lese to them even than the time, . Sir Hubert-Young’s estimate of his own share in the work which had one _of its happiest outcomes in the_ admission of Iraq to the League of Nations is modest, ■but the reader of; this instructive book will not under-estimate its importance. In his concluding chapters he in some detail the conflict _of interests and personalities involved in the Arabian question, both in the territory and at Whitehall. In 1919 he was at the Foreign Office, and made contacts with Lord Curzon, surely one of the most unconventional of statesmen. Curzon had no, fixed times for work, meals, or sleep, and ,6Tpected those with whom he dealt to display an equal disregard for such matters. *ln conversation there was,” Sir Hubert Young says, “ the same Olympian assumption of infinite distance," which he regards as more a lifelong pose than real pomposity. This excellent book would nave been improved by photographs, but it contains several maps. A.L.F.