LAWRENCE NARROWLY ESCAPES DEATH; ADVENTURES OF FEISAL AND HUSSEIN
During a lull in the long siege in the council-chambers at Paris,
Lawrence had one more adventure. He had left his diaries and nearly
all of his important papers relating to the campaign in a vault in
Cairo, because the Mediterranean was still infested with German
U-boats when the Turkish armistice was signed and when he returned
from the Near East. So after the preliminary work of the peace
conference had been completed, Lawrence found himself in need of
his notes and papers.
He heard that ten British machines—giant Handley-Page planes, with
Rolls-Royce engines, that had seen service in many a night raid
over Germany—were leaving for Egypt to blaze a new air-route from
London to Cairo. Lawrence promptly arranged to accompany them. But
the machines were old and nearly worn out, and the pilots were
daredevil chaps who literally ran their planes to pieces. In fact,
some of the pilots had never flown a Handley-Page, and some of
their mechanics had never even worked on a Rolls-Royce engine. On
the way from Cologne to Lyons five forced landings were made.
Nearly all the planes had to be rebuilt several times during the
journey to Egypt.
The Air Ministry in London had vaguely directed the squadron to an
aërodrome at Rome. When the pilots reached the Eternal City, they
flew back and forth across the Tiber, over St. Peter’s, the
Colosseum, the Forum, and up and down the Appian Way, but nowhere
on any of the Seven Hills could they spot a landing-ground. Finally
the pilot of Lawrence’s plane saw what he thought might be an
aërodrome. But when he swooped down it turned out to be a
stone-quarry. Just before reaching the quarry he saw his mistake,
switched on the engine, and tried to ascend again. Unluckily he
was unable to get up sufficient flying speed. The machine raced
along the ground, then bolted over the edge of the quarry, and
crashed down into a tree-top.
Lawrence was seated in the gun-pit. The occupants had a vague
impression of a tree coming toward them at amazing speed. Suddenly
there was a noise like the crack of a machine-gun. In the flash of
a second the great plane toppled over on its nose and right wing
and splintered into match-wood. Both pilots were killed outright.
The two mechanics, who were seated with Lawrence in the rear in
the machine-gunner’s compartment, were pitched out on their heads.
One suffered concussion of the brain; the other was merely stunned.
As soon as the second recovered consciousness he began to dig
Lawrence out of the débris. The colonel’s shoulder-blade,
collar-bone, and three ribs were broken. In the excavating process,
which took ten minutes, the mechanic kept sputtering excitedly that
the plane might catch fire any minute. Lawrence replied, “Well, if
she does, when I arrive in the other world I may find it chilly.”
In spite of the accident, however, Lawrence jumped into another
plane a few days later and continued his flight to Egypt. “Our
strangest sensation,” he afterward told me in Paris, “was
breakfasting on the isle of Crete and dining the same day in Cairo,
seven hundred miles away.” After he had gathered up his papers,
and still somewhat shaken up as a result of his aërial interlude,
he returned to the seats of the mighty in Paris.
At the conclusion of the peace conference, Emir Feisal and staff
visited London and then made a tour of the British Isles. Colonel
Lawrence took delight in showing his Arab friends around. Everything
was new to several of the sheiks who had just arrived from Arabia,
and one would have expected them to be tremendously impressed by
the subways, the automobiles, and the thousand and one wonders of
the capital of the British Empire. But these things merely excited
a supercilious, sheik-like smile. They were too proud ever to show
any signs of surprise, except on one occasion in their room at the
Ritz. They were dumfounded when they turned on the water-faucets
and found that one ran hot and the other cold. In the holy Koran,
they said, they had been told of the fountains of paradise, which
flow with milk or with honey at will; but they had never heard of
earthly fountains such as these in the Ritz. After alternating them
a bit and making quite sure that they themselves were not dreaming,
they told Lawrence they wanted to take some of those magic faucets
back to Arabia so that they could carry them in their camel-bags
to supply them with hot and cold water while trekking across the
desert!
On one occasion Emir Feisal visited Glasgow and was entertained at
a great civic banquet. He had been so busy seeing the sights along
the Clyde that when it came time to respond to the toast in his
honor he was unprepared. The only other person present who could
understand Arabic was Colonel Lawrence, who sat beside him to act
as his interpreter; and Emir Feisal leaned over and whispered in
his ear: “I haven’t a thing to say, so I am going to repeat the
passage from the Koran on the cow. When you get up to interpret
you can tell them anything you like!” It happens that the passage
on the cow is one of the most sonorous and euphonious parts of the
Koran, and the business men of Glasgow were tremendously impressed
by the marvelous flow of eloquence that rolled like Niagara from
the lips of the Oriental monarch, never dreaming that he was simply
reeling off the Prophet Mohammed’s dissertation on the cow.
Shortly before he returned to the Near East the emir was entertained
at a banquet in London, and Lord Balfour during the course of a
conversation tried to find out what Emir Feisal thought of the
British Government. He succeeded. “It reminds me of a caravan in
the desert,” replied the George Washington of Arabia. “If you see
a caravan from afar off, when you are approaching it from the rear,
it looks like one camel. But, riding on, you see that camel tied
to the tail of the next, and that one to the tail of the next, and
so on until you come to the head of the caravan, where you find a
little donkey leading the whole string of camels.” Lord Balfour
wondered to just whom the emir was referring!
When Feisal returned to Syria the people again welcomed him as
their liberator, and after a few weeks they proclaimed him King of
Syria, with Damascus as his capital. But this new state was
short-lived, for without foreign coöperation to help him finance
his government his position soon became impossible. After using up
his own private fortune in a vain attempt to develop order out of
chaos, he was obliged to leave Damascus, and the French at once
arbitrarily occupied the whole of Syria. For the moment it seemed
as though Feisal’s hopes were shattered. But Lawrence and the other
British leaders who had been associated with the Arabian Revolution
still had another card to play.
All through these turbulent days Emir Feisal’s father had continued
to strengthen his position in the Hedjaz. Galloping out of Mecca
in the gorgeous Arabian twilight, a slight, lean figure was often
seen by the Bedouins of the desert; it was Hussein, their King, on
a night journey to Jeddah, forty miles away. No music precedes him,
nor stately pageantry; he rides alone and a-muleback.
Although at the moment this is written he holds in the world to-day
a position second only to that of the pope in Rome, he lives so
simply that he prefers a mule to any other conveyence. But for
mules he is a connoisseur and a fan. South America, Australia, and
Abyssinia are combed for his favorite steeds; but the best of all,
according to King Hussein, is the good Missouri “hard-tail.”
Simple, even severe in his tastes, Hussein is a rigid upholder of
the Volstead clauses in Al Qu’ran. After a gloriously successful
train-wrecking expedition, two of Lawrence’s Arab officers went up
to Mecca on a week’s leave, taking along in their grips something
stronger than rose-water, with which to celebrate. This breach of
piety reached the ears of the king, who had the officers beaten in
public. After that no one chose Mecca as the Arabian Montreal.
The Arabs are inordinately fond of talking-machines, but King
Hussein has prohibited them in Mecca, believing them to be the
invention not of Edison but of the devil. Although he himself
prefers the life of a nomad and his real sympathies are with the
Bedouins, he is even more severe with the tribesmen of the black
tents than with the Arab townsfolk.
One day he was resting in the cool shelter of date-palms in an
oasis with a circle of Bedouins squatting around him on their
prayer-rugs. Out of the corner of his eye, he observed one of these
Arabs slip the kuffieh belonging to his neighbor under the folds
of his robes. A moment later, the owner returned and missed his
handsome head-dress. Every one denied seeing it, including the
culprit. Hussein stood up, terrible in his wrath, and strode over
to the guilty man.
“Varlet, where is thy brother’s kuffieh?” he demanded.
“Master of mercies, I know nothing of it,” stammered the terrified
man.
“Thou liest!” growled Hussein, and, picking up the gnarled club
that formed part of his regal trappings, he dealt the man a terrific
blow in the ribs. The thief collapsed in a heap and died next day.
Hussein, as the Grand Shereef of Mecca, was the sixty-eighth of
his dynasty. As king he was the first of a new line. Now, as
ruler-elect of the Mohammedan world, he revives the supremacy of
his ancient clan, the Qu’reish, from whom the Prophet himself was
descended. He is a man of keen intelligence, and those who know
him best say that he has a natural gift for diplomacy. Certainly
he will need every ounce of it if he is to keep his present
difficult position as caliph over the divided and distracted Moslem
world of to-day. Many do not acknowledge him. Even in his own
Arabia, the powerful schism of the Wahabis pays him but scant
attention. In fact the present sultan of the Central Desert and
head of the puritanical Wahabis, is King Hussein’s great rival and
one of the strongest men in Arabia to-day. Early in the war,
according to Mr. H. St. John Philby, “Sir Percy Cox, who accompanied
the Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force as Chief Political Officer,
immediately sent Captain Shakespear to spur Ibn Sa’ud into active
operations against the Turks and their natural ally, Ibn Rashid.
The campaign was launched in January, 1915, and I have always
thought that, had it not been for the unfortunate accident of
Shakespear’s death in the very first battle between the rival
forces, Colonel Lawrence might never have had the opportunity of
initiating and carrying through the brilliant campaigns with which
his name is associated, and as the result of which he entered
Damascus in triumph at the head of the army of the Hedjaz.”
Mr. Philby followed Captain Shakespear into the Central Desert
ruled over by Ibn Sa’ud, and he had a tremendous admiration for
that potentate. But by the time Mr. Philby was sent to Ibn Sa’ud’s
country the Hedjaz revolt was at its height and Colonel Lawrence
was well on his way toward Damascus. Mr. Philby made an extraordinary
journey through the unknown heart of Arabia and turned up rather
unexpectedly at the summer capital of King Hussein in the mountains
near Mecca. The aged monarch in greeting the explorer called him
the Lawrence of Nejd.
In the Wahabi sect sons can kill fathers or fathers can kill sons
who do not join. A man can also be killed for smoking a cigarrette.
These Mohammedan Puritans want to abolish the pilgrimage to Mecca
and blot out all shrines, such as the sacred Kaaba and the Tomb of
the Prophet in Medina. Ibn Sa’ud was the head of a powerful force
of fighting men, and after the World War he had captured the city
of Hail, his old enemy Ibn Rashid’s capital, and made himself the
ruler of the whole of Central Arabia.
King Hussein also has a number of other rivals. The Emir of Morocco
claims the pontificate by virtue of descent through another branch
of the illustrious Qu’reish. The Turks have proclaimed a republic,
and Ghazi Mustafa Kemal Pasha undoubtedly hopes to seize the
scepter of the Ottomans and become in fact if not in name the
supreme ruler in Islam. India is puzzled, and the doctors of Al
Azhar have up to date made no pronouncement on Hussein’s status.
Much, no doubt, is going on behind the scenes. We of the West are
prone to underestimate the importance of Mohammedanism; one day
there may be a rude awakening, for it is the creed of one fifth of
the world and is an active and proselytizing creed making converts
in London as well as equatorial Africa.
Like the waves of unrest and religious fervor and splendid hope
that passed through Christendom at the time of the Crusades, so
now, from Sudan to Sumatra, there are ominous signs of another and
darker movement. Men are muttering: “Verily those who disbelieve
our signs, we will surely cast to be broiled in hell-fire; so often
as their skins shall be well burned we will give them other skins
in exchange, that they may taste the sharper torment, for God is
mighty and wise. But those who believe and do right, we will bring
them into gardens watered by rivers.”
The times are difficult for a ruler of Islam, but no one has a
better claim than Hussein to the great inheritance to which he has
been called by popular acclamation at Bagdad.
From time immemorial the desert has been a confused and changing
mass of blood-feuds and tribal jealousies. To-day there are no
blood-feuds among the Arabs from Damascus to Mecca; for the first
time in the history of Arabia since the seventh century there is
peace along all the pilgrim road, thanks to King Hussein and his
sons.
Although he is only five feet two inches in height, his regal
bearing does not belie his ancient lineage and his high ambition.
At sixty he is still a man of exceptional vigor, although that is
not common in men of his age in the Southern Arabian Desert.
His hands, delicate and beautiful as a musician’s, impress one with
a sense of power and finesse; whether or no they will be able to
control the two hundred and fifty millions of the great brotherhood
of Islam is one of the fascinating problems of the future.
But the real hope for the future of Arabia is centered in his son,
King Feisal, who realizes that the Arabs need European and American
assistance in educational and industrial fields, and Feisal is
eager to inaugurate many changes that may revolutionize Arabia.
On the other hand, King Hussein is desirous that both Mecca and
Medina should remain isolated from the world, during his lifetime,
at least. “I am an old man,” says he, “and happy with things as
they are, but I realize that changes must come.” It is possible
that after the king has ruled Mecca for a few more years he may
retire and allow Feisal, Abdullah, and Ali to attempt to work out
their great plan for a United States of Arabia. In this event even
Mecca may be opened up to the Christian and unbeliever, for Feisal
and his brothers are thoroughly modern and do not sympathize with
the fanaticism of old Arabia. They have already prevailed upon
their father to introduce electric lights in Mecca.
Feisal, like his father, is a man of great personal courage. Were
he not, he would never have united his ignorant and fanatical
followers in a common brotherhood as he did. In the early days of
the revolt, he was by turns rifleman, company commander, and army
commander. The Bedouins were the only men he had, and they were
meeting artillery-fire for the first time in their lives and didn’t
like it a bit. Feisal had to lead them in camel charges, bring up
the rear in retreat, and defend narrow places in the mountains with
his own rifle. At the time they had few rifles and no stores, and
Lawrence has revealed the fact that he kept up the spirit of his
men with the thought of material rewards to follow by filling his
treasure-chest with stones and ostentatiously loading it on a
camel.
Lawrence believes that Feisal has a combination of qualities
admirably fitting him for the leadership of the new Arab state
which may rise out of the ashes of the old Ottoman Empire. Lawrence
is of the opinion that Feisal will go down in history, next to
Mohammed and Saladin, as the greatest Arab who ever lived. He was
and still is the soul of the Arab movement. He lives only for his
ideals and for his country. His only thought is for the future of
Arabia. That he and his father were liberal-minded enough to take
advantage of the genius and unique ability of a European unbeliever,
a mere youth many years their junior, seems incredible to any one
who knows the Mohammedans of the Near East, because, to the average
Moslem Arab, all Christians are dogs; but King Hussein and his
enlightened son even went so far as to accept their fair-haired
British advisor as a fellow-Arabian prince and an honorary shereef
of Mecca, a title which had always been reserved in the past for
direct descendants of the Prophet, and which had never before been
awarded to any other person, either Moslem or Christian.