FEISAL AND LAWRENCE AT TILE BATTLE OF PARIS
After the fall of Damascus and the complete overthrow of the
Turkish armies, and after he had helped establish a provisional
government for his friend Emir Feisal, young Lawrence laid aside
the curved gold sword of a prince of Mecca, packed his pure white
robes and his richly brocaded ones, in which he had been received
with all the honor due an Arab shereef, and hurried to London. His
penetrating eyes had pierced to the end of an epoch-making
perspective, involving empires and dynasties and a new balance of
power in the Near East. He had achieved the seemingly impossible;
had united desert tribes that had sworn eternal enmity to one
another; had won them over to the Allied cause and helped Allenby
put an end to German and Turkish ambitions for Near Eastern mastery.
But Lawrence realized that his work was not yet finished. He was
determined that the great powers should not forget the promises
made to their Arab allies. The battle of the peace conference was
still to be fought. So Lawrence returned to Europe to prepare for
the arrival of the Arab delegates.
An amusing incident occurred when Lawrence passed through
Marseilles, where he landed in order to travel overland to London.
He stepped into the British railway transport officer’s headquarters
at the station to inquire the time of the next through train to Le
Havre. It was a drizzly day, and Lawrence was wearing a dingy
trench-coat, without insignia, over his uniform. Although Lawrence
was a full colonel at this time, he still looked like an
insignificant shave-tail lieutenant. The R.T.O. happened to be a
lieutenant-colonel, a huge fellow, with a fierce mustache. When
his visitor asked quietly about trains, the R.T.O. glanced up, gave
Lawrence a withering look, and blusteringly told him that he
couldn’t be bothered and that Lawrence should see his assistant.
Without a word Lawrence walked out, but in the next room he took
off his water-proof, and strolled right back into the R.T.O.’s
august presence again, this time saying even more quietly than
before, “What time did you say the next _rapid_ leaves for Le
Havre?” For the moment the R.T.O. looked as though he would like
to wring Lawrence’s neck, but, catching a glimpse of the crown and
two stars on his caller’s shoulder, he jumped to his feet, saluted,
and stammered:
“I beg your pardon, sir. I beg your pardon.”
Nothing delights Lawrence more than to take a self-important man
down a peg or two. There is no fuss and flurry or pomposity in his
own make-up, and it amuses him when he occasionally encounters a
blusterer who tries to play up stage.
Emir Feisal and staff were transported across the Mediterranean on
board H.M.S. _Gloucester_ as the guests of his Imperial Britannic
Majesty. The French were considerably perturbed when they heard
that an Arabian delegation was on its way to the peace conference,
and they objected to its being recognized. France coveted Syria
and realized that Feisal and his persistent young British grand
vizir would attempt to thwart them. But Feisal started for Paris
despite the coolness of the French.
Like all orthodox Mohammedans, the emir never touches intoxicants,
and complications were narrowly averted on board the _Gloucester_
because of the fact that several of the members of Feisal’s staff,
unlike their prince, were not ardent prohibitionists. Although they
could not regale themselves publicly for fear of incurring the
emir’s displeasure, they would spend half an hour or so in the
ward-room with the ship’s officers before dinner; and General Nuri
Bey, who had been Feisal’s foremost strategist during the desert
war, even ventured to take his glass to the table, and, although
he sat opposite the emir, he cleverly concealed it behind the
water-bottle so that Feisal could not see it.
On the voyage from Alexandria to Marseilles the Arab delegation
was accompanied by Lawrence’s tent-mate, Major Marshall, who
wondered just how the French were going to receive his charges upon
arrival in port. When the _Gloucester_ steamed into Marseilles
there was an official French mission on the dock, but no British
representatives; and the French indicated by their attitude to
Marshall that further British interest in Feisal would not be
welcomed and that all matters concerning Syria were purely the
affairs of France. So Marshall sent a wire of inquiry to the
British Embassy in Paris, and a few hours later Lawrence turned
up. With his usual tact he avoided friction with the French by
borrowing Marshall’s Arabian head-dress and attaching himself to
Feisal’s delegation as a member of the emir’s personal staff and
not as a British officer.
When the delegates assembled in Paris, Emir Feisal took up his
headquarters at the Hôtel Continental on the rue de Rivoli. Wherever
the Emir went, whether to an informal meeting or to an official
conference, he was usually accompanied by the slightly built,
insignificant-looking youth in the uniform of a British colonel.
Few people at the peace conference, however, were aware that this
young man had virtually led the Arabian armies during the war and
was almost as important a figure in the Arab delegation as Emir
Feisal himself.
Prince Feisal was quite the most imposing figure at Paris. In his
flowing robes he was the center of attention wherever he went and
continually sought by artists, photographers, and writers. But
publicity was almost as distasteful to Feisal as it was to Lawrence,
and so they would get up at six o’clock in the morning, throughout
the conference, in order to go rowing in the Bois de Boulogne and
escape the curious crowd, which, attracted by the picturesque dress
and stately figure of the Arabian emir, followed always at his
heels.
Photograph: EMIR FEISAL, CENTER, WITH GENERAL NURI TO THE LEFT
AND COLONEL LAWRENCE TO THE RIGHT, CAPTAIN PISANI OF THE FRENCH
MISSION STANDING DIRECTLY BEHIND THE EMIR
Photograph: FIELD-MARSHAL VISCOUNT ALLENBY OF JERUSALEM
AND KING FEISAL OF BAGDAD
Flattery he was quick to detect. A distinguished Frenchman, M.
Dubost, eulogized him somewhat fulsomely in the course of an
after-dinner speech at the Hôtel de Ville. When it was over a
Moroccan interpreter asked the emir how he liked it. Feisal’s only
reply was, “Hasn’t he beautiful teeth?”
To induce the Arabs to fight in the World War, Britain had made
certain promises which French interests made it extremely difficult
to fulfil. But during the peace conference Feisal’s tact and
personal charm did much to win friends for the Arabian cause in
Paris. No one ever came away from him in an angry mood. On one
occasion, at a meeting of the Council of Ten, M. Pichon referred
to the claims of France in Syria, which he said were based on the
Crusades. Emir Feisal listened respectfully, and when the French
statesman had finished his address he turned toward him and inquired
politely, “I am not a profound student of history, but would you
kindly tell me just which one of us _won_ the crusades?”
Lawrence’s personal attitude regarding the peace conference was
straightforward and simple: if Great Britain was not going to
guarantee independence to the Arabs and if she proposed to leave
them in the hands of the French so far as their Syrian aspirations
were concerned, for his part he intended to devote his energies
and talents to helping his Arab comrades in arms contest France’s
claims and obtain the rights for which they had so valiantly
fought.
During the war the British had sponsored the Arabian movement for
independence and made it possible for King Hussein and his sons to
maintain their army against the Turks. The French, on the other
hand, had merely sent a small detachment to Arabia, which could
hardly even have survived had it not been for the supplies it
received from Lawrence and his British colleagues. But the
embarrassing fly in the ointment was the “you-take-this,
and-I’ll-take-that” compact between the British and French in which
it had previously been decided that France was to have Syria as
her sphere of influence. Emir Feisal and Colonel Lawrence felt sure
if that compact was adhered to in the face of Arab claims that
Syria would become a French colony despite the fact that the bulk
of her population wanted neither French control nor French
coöperation.
In presenting the Arabian case and in coaching Emir Feisal to meet
the delegates on their own ground, Lawrence was a match for any
diplomat at the peace conference. He had the geography of Arabia,
Syria, and Palestine at his finger-tips. He spoke many of the
dialects of the Near East. He had lived with the Ansariya, the
Yezedis, the Ismailia, the Metawileh, the Christian Maronites of
the Lebanon. He had broken bread with the Druses and sat around
the coffee-hearths of nearly every tribe of the desert. He could
hold forth for hours on the intricate political relations,
religions, and tribal feuds of the Arabs and their neighbors. The
cities of Syria were as familiar to him as London and Oxford.
Sitting in a hotel room overlooking the garden of the Tuileries in
Paris, he made the ancient cities of the East live in vivid phrases
for frock-coated gentlemen who had never deviated from the straight
streets of continental capitals.
Lawrence admitted that Beyrouth, the foreign door of Syria, was
French in feeling and in language, in spite of its Greek harbor
and its great American university. But he insisted that Damascus,
the historic city of Syria, long the seat of lay government and
the religious center, was pure Arab, whose sheiks were orthodox
“Meccan” in their opinions and exceedingly anxious to be free from
alien rule. He also argued that the great industrial cities of
Hamah and Homs were more jealously native than any other Syrian
centers.
He maintained that the Arabian case rested on four important
documents, which he described as follows:
“First: The British promise to King Hussein of October, 1915, which
undertook, conditional on an Arabian revolt, to recognize the
‘independence of the Aarbs’ south of latitude 37 degrees, except
in the Mesopotamian provinces of Bagdad and Basra, and except where
Great Britain might not consider herself ‘free to act without
detriment to the interests of France.’
“Second: The Sykes-Picot Agreement made between England and France
in May, 1916, which divided the Arabian provinces of Turkey into
five zones; roughly, (a) Palestine from the Jordan to the
Mediterranean, to be ‘international’; (b) Haifa and Mesopotamia
from near Tekrit to the Gulf, to be ‘British’; (c) the Syrian coast
from Tyre to Alexandretta, Cilicia, and almost all southern Armenia
from Sivas to Diarbekir, to be ‘French’; (d) the interior (mainly
the provinces of Aleppo, Damascus, Urfa, Deir, and Mosul) to be
‘independent Arab’ under two shades of influence: (1) between the
lines Akaba-Kuweit and Haifa-Tekrit, the French to seek no
‘political influence’ and the British to have economic and political
priority, and the right to supply ‘such advisors as the Arabs
desire’; (2) between the line Haifa-Tekrit and the southern edge
of French Armenia or Kurdistan, Great Britain to seek ‘no political
influence’ and the French to have economic and political priority
and the right to supply ‘such advisors as the Arabs desire.’
“Third: The British statement to the seven Syrians of Cairo dated
June 11, 1917. This assured the Syrians that pre-war Arabian
states, and Arabian areas freed by military action of their
inhabitants during the war, should remain entirely independent.
“Fourth: The Anglo-French Declaration of November 9, 1918, in which
Great Britain and France agreed to encourage native governments in
Syria and Mesopotamia, and without imposition to assure the normal
working of such governments as the people themselves should adopt.
Photograph: MALUD BEY AND HIS ARAB CAVALRY
Photograph: “THE TOMB OF THE ROMAN SOLDIERS”
“All these documents were produced under stress of military urgency
to induce the Arabs to fight on our side.
“I can find no inconsistencies or incompatibilities in these four
documents,” said Lawrence, “and I know nobody else who can. It may
then be asked what is the cause of the difficulties among the
British, French, and Arabs. It is mainly because the agreement of
1916, second document, is unworkable and no longer satisfies the
British and French Governments. As, however, it is, in a sense,
the ‘charter’ of the Arabs, giving them Damascus, Homs, Hamah,
Aleppo, and Mosul for their own, with such advisors as they
themselves judge they need, the necessary revision of this agreement
is a delicate matter and can hardly be made satisfactorily by
England and France without giving weight and expression also to
the opinion of the third interest—the Arabs—which it created.”
The problem was, indeed, a delicate and intricate one to handle.
Great Britain had entered into certain agreements with France and
had made definite promises to the Arabs and other promises to the
Zionists. Emir Feisal was frankly opposed to France. He claimed
that the new Arabian Kingdom should include all of Syria,
Mesopotamia, and Palestine. France, by all the etiquette of old
diplomacy, considered that she had special and incontestable rights
in Syria, dating from the Crusaders. The French had founded
educational institutions throughout the country, financed railways,
and engaged in other forms of peaceful penetration. They considered
themselves the historical protectors of the Christians in Syria.
The Zionists were looking forward to a cultural state in Palestine
under the protection of the British. All these varied and in some
cases conflicting interests had to be considered and, if possible,
satisfied.
Emir Feisal, backed up by Lawrence’s advice, insisted that the new
Arabian state should include, not only the Hedjaz, but all
Mesopotamia, Syria, and Palestine as well. Feisal would not listen
to any proposal that Palestine should ever become a Jewish state.
From his point of view, and in this he represented the opinion of
the whole Arab world, Palestine could not be looked upon as a
separate country, but as a province which should remain part and
parcel of Syria. He maintained that, as there was no natural
boundary and no frontier between the two countries, what affected
one must affect the other, and that both from a geographical and
racial standpoint Palestine, Syria, and Mesopotamia were inseparable.
At the same time he raised no objection to the Zionist proposal to
encourage the immigration of the Jews into the country, and to
allow the Jews to have full control of their own schools, establish
a Jewish cultural center, and participate in the government of
Palestine.
“The Jews, like ourselves, are Semites,” agreed Emir Feisal. “And
instead of relying upon any of the great powers, we should like to
have the coöperation of the Jewish people for assistance in building
up a great Semitic state. I appreciate fully Zionist aspirations,
even extreme Zionist aspirations. I understand the desire of Jews
to acquire a home-land. But so far as Palestine is concerned, if
they have made up their minds that it is to be Palestine or nothing,
then it must be Palestine subject to the rights and aspirations of
the present possessors of the land. Palestine is still in effect
the land of the Arabs and must remain an integral part of the
Arabian state.”
Feisal, quite naturally, took an immediate and intimate view of
the territorial rights and political aspirations of the Arabs. He
was personally concerned in the establishment of an Arabian state
and in all the problems that might threaten its success. But
Lawrence, with his sixth sense and his imaginative understanding
of the rise and fall of empires, appraised events in terms of
rounded periods rather than of years. The Arabian question, the
Palestine question, the Syrian question, must all sift and change
with the sands of time.
In spite of all the diplomatic circumlocution, red tape, and
super-politeness that veneered the proceedings in Paris, Emir
Feisal was under no delusion as to the true spirit that permeated
the peace conference, and before he and Lawrence would start out
to attend one of the meetings Feisal would playfully unsheathe his
gold dagger and whet it a few times on his boot.
The emir is a keen wit and many stories are told of his clever
retorts in Paris. After he had been at the conference for a few
weeks some one asked him to give his opinion of modern statesmen
as a result of what he had thus far seen of them. He replied: “They
are like modern paintings. They should be hung in a gallery and
viewed from a distance!”
The final outcome of the battle of the peace conference was a
partial victory for Emir Feisal and Colonel Lawrence. They did not
get all that they had asked for, nor did they expect to. France
was given control of Beyrouth and the Syrian coast; Britain accepted
a mandate over Palestine; but the Arabs were allowed to retain
control of the interior of Syria and to make their beloved Damascus
the capital of their new state.
Illustration: THE AUTHOR SKETCHED BY JAMES McBEY,
OFFICIAL ARTIST FOR ALLENBY’S FORCES IN THE HOLY LAND
Photograph: AN ARAB APOLLO