LAWRENCE, PRINCE OF MECCA.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 16608, 4 December 1919, Page 7

LAWRENCE, PRINCE OF MECCA.

A KHAKI MIRACLE, i ECHO OP THE AVAR IN PALESTINE. A recent article in the Nation gives some idea of whut you _do see turn-. "Somehow, overdone with soldiering, popular fancy has all but inwsed its two romantic figures, Allcnby and Lav,-u-nce. Allenby’s capture of Jerusalem, his marvellous gift of organisation his Wonderful strategy in Northern Palestine, and his way with Orientals, exhibit him as perhaps the one soldierstatesman of the war. Bat Lawrence, save for his masterly squiring _of the Emir Feisul at Paris, has remained almost unknown. Yet if Mr. Thomas’ picture of him is correct, we must look oh this small chetif figure as on a Clive of the 20th century. AA’ith one qualification. Clive kept the Empire lie won; Lawrence will have to surrender a good part of his to France. It was •tall very thrilling; a feat of moral con- | quest no less Hum of arms, J proud wit--1 ness of the living genius of Britain. THE MILK AND HONEY EXPRESS "In any case the scenes of Palestine and Arabia now being shown by Mr. Lowell Thomas at Covont Garden would I be of extraordinary interest,” says) the : Nation. “Of quite peculiar interest. . indeed, to English and Scottish people, ■ whose knowledge of ancient history and j foreign parts is still founded in the I Bible, and usually limited to it. People 1 like to see and be told about what they ! know already, and here one sees and | hears about Egypt and the pyramids 1 which the children of Israel saw; and l the Desert of Sinai, through which they I wandered; and Gaza oi the Philistines, I where, we were told, Samson strolled in 1 the moonlight, along the shore‘with De- ; lilah; and Bethlehem, and *>ppa, and : Damascus, and Jerusalem itself with its i Mouut of Olives—ail names familiar from childhood to every man and woman present. “So familiar that no one is puzzled for a moment at hearing that the train running along the new railway from Egypt through the desert to Palestine is called by our soldiers the ‘milk and honey express.’ Long and embittered i have been the contests over religious education in our schools, but the education has its results. WHAT THE SOLDIERS SAAA’. "And wo are shown, besides, myriads of locusts consuming every green thing f‘the years that the locusts have eaten’), and great flocks of storks winging up from EgJ'pt to devour them —one of old Nature’s ways of correcting an erratum in her text. And then there is Petra—'a rose-red city’ certainly, but by no means ‘half as old as time’ ; not anything like half as old, for the styio of architecture seems to be very debased Hellenic. And in and out of all these j scenes, amid Arabs and Greeks and i Sudanese and nameless mixtures, move | the British soldiers, inquisitive, glad to i learn, but unperturbed, unimpressed as . usual. 1 “It was a remarkable campaign, and 1 this week of September should always ; bo remembered as the anniversary of the most brilliant and decisive victory in the war—the victory which ended the war with Turkey, and shut the back door of Central Europe’s fortress, as the Dardanelles campaign might have shut it. if the Cabinet at Homo had only realised its value. Those who. 15 years ago, observed Allenby’s command of the cavalry (he was then colonel of tbs sth Lancers) when French made his dash upon Colchester from the sea, thought they divined the touch of soldierly genius in the man, and he has -not disappointed them. COLONEL LAWRENCE THE MODEST. j "But everyone has been hearing the praise of Field-Marshal Lord Allenby this week, and' praise not for his military genius alone. To-day we would ■ rather speak of one whose name was ' hardly known before the war, except perhaps in a small academic circle of archaelogical students. Until we lis- i tened to Mr. Lowell Thomas in Covcnt , Garden we know very little of Colonel j Thomas Lawrence—‘feliercef Lawrence’ --beyond the name. And that is not; wonderful, since he is endowed with an J unusual grace of modesty, and we are told that, when he discovered ho u as to | receive derivations in Egypt, he jump- | td into an aeroplane and followed the ! course of the Israelites across the . deserts of Sinai, no doubt singing to i himself, ‘Oh, for the wings of a dovel’ Some tell us that modesty is the mark of genius. In Colonel Lawrence wo seem to find the combination, and the j quality of his genius is of peculiar interest to English people. A REMARKABLE MAN. "We are told that he was a young Oxford man, whom the beginning of the war found pottering about the Euphrates studying archaeology and Arabic, of which, indeed, he was already a master. A small man (oft. 3in. in height), beardless, easily passing for a woman in Arab dress, but so careless of appearances that, even when ho got into British uniform, he neither know nor cared how many stars he bad on bis shoulder straps, nor whether he had three on one strap and none on- the other. Entirely ignorant of military art, yet possessing such knowledge of the Arabs and their country that some general, who must have been gifted with an almost inconceivable genius for disregarding War Office etiquette, resolved to put him to use in the service, and apparently sent him down to Arabia proper. PRINCE OF MECCA. “There the Arabs made him a ‘Prince of Mecca,” which we are told is as big!) a title as it sounds. He was attached to the staff of Emir Feisul, and gathered a random array of 200,000 men, Bedouins and jither Arabs. A random army, indeed, it must have been, if we may judge from , the pictures of the white-robed hosts _ wandering in haphazard crowds, without any attempt at formation, over the rocky hills. But somehow or other ho led them up through Petra to join Allenby in the north of Palestine, occupied Damascus under his command, and ruled it as Governor. ; In any case, it was a re-1 markable exploit for a young Oxford , student. |

“But the most remarkable part of the story is the young man’s personal influence over an untamed, half-bar-barous, and exclusive people. It has lately been the fashion to extol _ the Arabs as a noble race longing for freedom and self-determination, capable of unity and respectable self-government. Those who have known the Arabs at first band do not speak of them so smoothly. Readers of Major Sande’s hook ‘ln Kut and Captivity,’ for instance, will remember that, however

° muck the British soldier hated the ■ Turk, he hated the Arab (even as an I ally) 20 times more—hated him for his i treachery, his meanness, his cruelty, j "Yet it was ameng these Arabs that Colonel Lawrence exerted so peculiar aa I influence that they served him as their i king, regarded! him as a prophet, and endowed him with something of supernatural power. His modesty, his indifference to dress and personal state, even his ignorance of military science (from the appearance of his army wo must assume that ho was incapable of saying ‘Foun Fours’!) —ail such things do not seem to have mattered in the least. There apuears to have hung a magic 'aura.’ about the man, a "doomonio’ quality, something of Unit ‘authority’ which even mad Lear retained.”