air as had been prophesied, and found a crowd still waiting at the
aerodrome to greet him with ‘Aurans at last!’ A friend of mine was
talking to him shortly afterwards, at Jerusalem, when an Arab came up
and saluted. It was a member of the body-guard, ‘an awful-looking
scoundrel with love-locks and a sash-full of weapons.’ Lawrence asked
if he was doing anything important now. The man, trembling with
pleasure at seeing Lawrence, answered, ‘No, lord, nothing important.’
‘Then you must go to Basra and enrol in the service of Lord Feisal, who
will want your services and the services of the rest.’
Lawrence met Foch at Paris. It is related that Foch remarked in a
friendly way to Lawrence, ‘I suppose now that there will soon be war
in Syria between my country and your Arabs? Will you be leading their
armies?’ ‘No,’ Lawrence answered, ‘unless you promise to lead the
French armies in person. Then I should enjoy it.’ The old Marshal
wagged his finger at Lawrence. ‘My young friend, if you think that I
am going to sacrifice the reputation that I have so carefully compiled
on the Western Front by fighting you on your own ground and under
conditions imposed by yourself, you are very much mistaken.’ Asked
whether this story was true, Lawrence has replied that ‘the event has
faded from my retentive memory,’ which can mean anything that anyone
likes it to mean.
One more story (out of its place but recalled by this discussion of
international affairs):
When Lawrence was working up from Akaba into Syria he once took a
mobile hospital with him on a raid. All the stretcher-camels were,
for economy of transport, loaded up with dynamite. The Royal Army
Medical Corps Headquarters in Palestine got to hear of this and
telegraphed expecting that the Arab Army would in future observe the
Geneva Convention which insists that the transport devoted to fighting
shall be kept distinct from that devoted to medical work. Lawrence on
his next raid therefore left both hospital _and doctor_ behind.
The Medical Headquarters again protested, and Lawrence replied that
transport could not be wasted on non-combatants. This enraged the
Surgeon-General, who tried to catch Lawrence by wiring a peremptory
request to know how Lawrence proposed, in the absence of his medical
officer, to dispose of his wounded. Lawrence then replied tersely,
‘Will shoot all cases too hurt to ride off.’ This closed the argument.
XXX
Lawrence wrote his great history of the Arab Revolt, _Seven Pillars of
Wisdom_. or seven out of ten books of it, between February and June,
1919, in Paris. He did the present beginning of the introduction in six
hours in the Handley-Page aeroplane, on his way from Paris to collect
his belongings in Cairo: the rhythm of it is affected, he says, by the
slow ‘munch, munch, munch’ of the great Rolls-Royce engines. In London
he wrote an eighth book, but had all the eight stolen from him about
Christmas 1919 while changing trains at Reading. Only the introduction
and the drafts of two books remained.
He has never imagined a political motive for the theft, but his friends
have. They even whisper darkly that one day the lost text may reappear
in certain official archives. Lawrence himself hopes it will not: he
had destroyed most of his war-time notes as he went along and when he
began again the weary task of rewriting the quarter of a million words
he could not quite trust his memory. However, Colonel Dawnay, who
saw both texts, tells me that one chapter at least that he read more
carefully than others in the original seems to be the same, word for
word and almost comma for comma, in the second version. Lawrence still
had two skeleton-diaries and some rough route-sheets, but little else.
This second writing was done in less than three months at the rate
of some four to five thousand words a day. But Lawrence, immoderate
as usual, did not keep to a daily ration. He did it in long sittings
and probably set up a world’s literary record by writing Book VI in
twenty-four hours between sunrise and sunrise without a pause. Book
VI was about 34,000 words in length! ‘Naturally the style was
careless,’ he says. But it served as a basis for a careful literary
rewriting; which is the _Seven Pillars_ as it was finally published. He
wrote it in London, Jiddah and Amman in 1921, again in London in 1922,
in the Royal Tank Corps near Dorchester in 1923 and 1924, and in the
Royal Air Force at Cranwell in 1925 and 1926. He checked the historical
accuracy with the help of all available official documents and his
British friends who had served with the Arab army.
Lawrence does nothing by halves and not only set about making the book
a history of the Arab Revolt which the Arabs themselves would never
write, but one that he would not be ashamed of as literature. For this
last ambition he secured the advice of two of the best-known English
writers and taught himself with their help to write professionally.
_Seven Pillars of Wisdom_ is, beyond dispute, a great book: though
there is such a thing as a book being too well written, too much a part
of literature. Lawrence himself realizes this and was once, indeed,
on the point of throwing it into the Thames at Hammersmith. It should
somehow, one feels, have been a little more casual, for the nervous
strain of its ideal of faultlessness is oppressive. Lawrence charges
himself with ‘literary priggishness,’ but that is unfair. His aim was,
all the time, simplicity of style and statement and this he achieved in
the most expert way. He has, somewhere, confessed to a general mistrust
of experts and it may be that he should have carried it further, and
dispensed with expert advice in literary matters too. (Possibly,
though, in actual practice he did; he was always a difficult pupil.)
On the whole I prefer the earliest surviving version, the so-called
Oxford text, to the final printed book which was the version that
I first read consecutively. This is a physical rather than a critical
reaction. The earlier version is 330,000 words long instead of 280,000
and the greater looseness of the writing makes it easier to read. From
a critical point of view no doubt the revised version is better. It is
impossible that a man like Lawrence would spend four years on polishing
the text without improving it, but the nervous rigor that the revised
book gave me has seemingly dulled my critical judgment. I may add that
Lawrence had foreseen the effect that the book would have on me and
refrained for many years from letting me see it.
Lawrence was anxious to make the book as solid as possible, so he
employed the best artists that he could find to do drawings for it
under the art-editorship of Eric Kennington.
He published something more than a hundred copies for subscribers at
thirty guineas apiece and gave away half as many more to friends.
But he was so keen to do things well that he actually spent £13,000
on the edition—the reproduction of the pictures alone cost more than
the subscrip-tions—leaving himself £10,000 out of pocket. It was to
pay this debt to his backers (for he has no private means) that the
abridgment _Revolt in the Desert_ was undertaken for public sale. He
made it in two nights, at Cranwell Camp, with the help of two other
airmen, Miller and Knowles. The _Seven Pillars_ was never intended
for publication: it was to be a private record for Lawrence and a few
friends. _Revolt in the Desert_ was only published by the accident of
the £10,000 debt. It is a series of incidents loosely strung together
and purged of the more personal material. Single copies of the _Seven
Pillars_ now sell at extraordinary prices.
Lawrence has not made a penny himself from either of these books.
He was scrupulous to arrange that when the debt of the _Seven Pillars_
was paid off the extra money made by _Revolt in the Desert_ should not
go to him. It has been a set determination of his to make nothing out
of the Arab war directly or indirectly. His army pay went towards the
expenses of the campaign. His salary from Winston Churchill for the
year at the Colonial Office he did not spend on himself either, but
used it for official purposes. (On the other hand, Lawrence’s friends
have much benefited by his generosity. The gift of a _Seven Pillars_
with the note ‘please sell when read’ has been worth as much as £500.)
The success of _Revolt in the Desert_ called for a French translation
but when an application for the rights came from a Paris publisher
Lawrence offered permission on one condition—that the book must bear on
its jacket the inscription: ‘The profits of this book will be devoted
to a fund for the victims of French cruelty in Syria.’ So there could
be no French translation so long as he controlled the book rights.
I have never yet met with an explanation of the meaning _Seven
Pillars of Wisdom_ in all that has been written about the book. It is
reminiscence from a chapter in the _Book of Proverbs_, part of which
runs as follows:
‘Wisdom hath builded a house: she hath hewn out her seven pillars. She
crieth upon the highest places of the city, “Whoso is simple let him
turn in hither.... If thou be wise, thou shalt be wise for thyself.”’
The idea is, I believe, further elaborated in later Jewish theological
writings. This title was all that Lawrence rescued from an earlier
book of travel written in 1913 and destroyed in 1914; it compared
the seven cities of Cairo, Smyrna, Constantinople, Beyrout, Aleppo,
Damascus and Medina.
_The Seven Pillars of Wisdom_ will not be reprinted in Lawrence’s
lifetime. It is not a book, people agree on Lawrence’s behalf, that
should be published for a popular audience. (A simple member of the
public, an electrician, was shown the most painful chapter while proofs
were being passed. Then he could do no work for a week, but walked up
and down the pavement outside his house, unable to rid his mind of
the horror of it. The chapter about the Turkish hospital is almost as
painful.) Also popular publication might, they say, involve Lawrence
in a series of libel actions: he seems to spare nobody in his desire
to tell the whole story faithfully (least of all himself). Again,
the censor might, it is suggested, ban as obscene some of the more
painfully accurate accounts of Turkish methods of warfare. But in any
case Lawrence never intended publishing the book, except privately, so
these remarks are really irrelevant. The book was first written as a
full-length and unrestrained picture of himself, his tastes, ideas and
actions. He could not have deliberately confessed to so much had there
been any chance of the book coming out. Yet to tell the whole story was
the only justification for writing anything at all. And once written a
strictly limited publication of the book promised to remove the need of
even thinking about that part of his life again.
The historical accuracy of Lawrence’s account has been jealously
questioned by some overseas reviewers of _Revolt in the Desert_: he has
been accused of self-interested exaggeration. However, as there were
forty or fifty British officers, besides Arabs, as witnesses of his
activities and as no one of them has challenged the accuracy of his
statements, this criticism hardly calls for answer. Moreover, all
the documents of the Arab Revolt are in the archives of the Foreign
Office and will soon be available to students, who will be able to
cross-check Lawrence’s account and are likely to find that his chief
fault has been telling rather less than the truth.
It has been suggested that Lawrence’s part in the Eastern War was
devoid of serious military significance. Part of a letter protesting
against this point of view may be reprinted from a London weekly. I
know the writer as an expert in these matters:
‘SIR,—
‘Your reviewer of _Revolt in the Desert_ denies the Arab Army
any “serious military significance,” and suggests that Allenby’s
advance on Damascus would have been successful had it never existed.
As one who took part in the Palestine campaign, and was for a
considerable time entrusted with the preparation of the “Enemy Order
of Battle,” may I affirm the contrary? The revolt of 1916 isolated
the Assir Division of six battalions, destroyed two-thirds of the
Hejaz Division of nine battalions and brought a new division (58th)
from Syria to Medina. In the autumn of 1917 when Lord Allenby struck
his first blow the equivalent of twenty-four battalions was strung
out on the line from Deraa to Medina. I include mounted infantry and
camel corps. Some artillery was also engaged. Had the Arabs sat still
two-thirds of this force, which included good Anatolian units such
as the 42nd and 55th Regiments, would have been available for the
Gaza-Beersheba front. In 1918 the British threat to Transjordania only
became possible because of the growing strength of the revolt and the
increasing sympathy of the local Arab population for Arab success.
Lord Allenby’s demonstrations and the activity of the Arabs
tied up more and more Turks and some German units, and by September,
1918, reinforcements from Rumania (part of the 25th Division) and
the Caucasian front (48th Division) liberated by the Russo-Rumanian
collapse, had been used up east of Jordan instead of on the Palestine
front. Without going into details of military organization and the
dislocation of troops, dull reading to any but the professional
military historian, I can confidently assert that the Arab Army of
4,000 fighting men and an uncertain number of occasional pillagers was
worth an Army Corps to the British Army on the Palestine front, not
only on account of the Turks, whom it kept busy in the wrong place,
but on account of the strain it put on Turkish transport and supply.
‘Finally, may I remark that Lawrence and his Arabs saw a good deal
more at Tafas than one mutilated Arab woman, and the wonder to me
is not that they saw red then, but that they generally showed such
astonishing restraint against an enemy who habitually shot his Arab
prisoners, tortured Arab wounded with obscene ingenuity, and often
indulged in gross brutalities, at the expense of non-combatants, women
and children.
‘Yours, etc.,
‘B.’
The humour of the controversy lies in the siding of Lawrence himself
with the critics of whom ‘B.’ disposes so crushingly. What is called
‘serious military significance’ is part of the whole modern theory
of War, the seeking out and destroying by one side of the organized
military forces of another—a theory which he rejected as futile
and barbarous almost from the start. What Lawrence wanted, rather,
was to achieve serious _political_ significance for the Revolt by
whatever means lay readiest to his hand. Actual fighting, as opposed to
pin-pricking raids and demolitions, was a luxury that he indulged the
Arabs in merely to save their self-respect. They could not have thought
freedom honourably won without it. The capture of Akaba is a clear
instance of an operation that, though it affected the more conventional
war at Gaza and Beersheba, had in itself serious political rather than
serious military significance. It was only by an accident that the
Turkish battalion happened to bar the way at Aba el Lissan and invite
destruction. The rest of the operation was more like a chess problem;
white to play and mate in three moves.
This is not the place, and it probably is not the time to weigh up
Lawrence’s strategy and tactics during the Arab Revolt. Of the strategy
he makes no secret whatever. It lies in _Revolt in the Desert_ open
for anyone who can use a map intelligently. The _Seven Pillars_ gives
yet fuller details; the first number of the _Army Quarterly_ (1920)
contains a long article by him on the subject of irregular war—a
summary of the results of his sick-bed theorizing in Emir Abdulla’s
camp in March 1917. The obvious comment to be made on his strategy is
that it enabled the Arab Revolt in the sphere of politics, as in the
sphere of war, to assume a much larger share of influence and attention
than its material importance justified. B.’s letter just quoted, had it
compared the Arabs’ resources in arms and equipment, as well as in men,
with those of the Turkish forces opposed to them, would have made the
point still clearer. Lawrence would probably take this judgment as the
highest praise, for we find him throughout insisting, with a repetition
that conveys the painfulness of his problem, upon the extreme economy
of means necessary. The material and military assistance that the
Arabs could themselves provide, with all the goodwill in the world, was
small. Nor might it be helped out by large borrowing of material and
military resources from the Allies without a proportionate political
debt when the fighting was over. Lawrence would therefore be proud to
think that he made his little go such a long way—even the total of ten
million pounds and the score or so of British casualties that the Arab
Revolt cost Great Britain was a flea-bite compared with, for instance,
the monthly cost of the Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force in lives and
cash-and that politically he made so much ado out of what had begun as
little or nothing.
From the point of view of tactics, his conduct is far less clear. A
casual reading of his books might lead one to suppose that he fought
his battles with bluff and crimson banners for main argument; or even
that the hypnotic effect that his presence seems to have had on the
Arabs extended to the enemy, who were fascinated into stupidity—that
the moon herself came under the influence and consented to open one of
the more difficult gates to Akaba for him. But actually his tactics
were, I believe, thought out with the same care and artifice, not to
say humour, as his general strategic principles. And his reasons for
slurring over the ways and means of fighting are connected with the
political relations between the Syrian Government and the French in
1919 when he first wrote his book. Both sides were preparing for armed
struggle in Syria and it looks as if Lawrence set himself to contribute
nothing in the form of a manual of warfare that could be used in
this struggle. His late re-draftings of the book at a time when the
danger had become less acute only modified the literary style without
adding (or taking away) much of the content. He had to select the
materials to be used with great severity. His two active years provided
enough for ten books of the size to which he limited himself—his
memory was uncomfortably clear and full—so that wherever possible he
sacrificed the details of the fighting.
He mentions, for instance, no more than three or four armoured-car
actions in which he took part; but it seems that he fought at least
fifty, enough to evolve a whole system and scheme of battle for them.
(Readers of _Revolt in the Desert_ will have found no more than two or
three occasions mentioned on which Lawrence was wounded, against the
four or five mentioned in the _Seven Pillars_; but the total number
was nine times, including the occasion of Minifer when he had five
bullet grazes, cuts from flying boiler-plate and a broken toe.) Nor is
adequate mention made in either book of the numerous engagements in
which he tempered his body-guard into a real fighting weapon. We can
only gather, from casual allusions, that he did not leave the tactics
of the desert as he found them.
He based his strategy on an exhaustive study of the geography of his
area; of the Turkish Army; of the nature of the Bedouin tribes and
their distribution. So he based his desert tactics on a study of
the raiding parties of the Arabs. As we have seen, one of his first
actions on being posted as military adviser to Feisal was to accompany
a raid on the Turkish force attacking Rabegh. And he continued this
self-education, in the school of Auda and Zaal and Nasir, until after
the occupation of Akaba. Only by graduating in this Bedouin school
could he win the experience and prestige that would allow him to modify
its traditions.
Exactly what these modifications were is nowhere explained, though they
seem to have achieved a greater unity of purpose among the members
of the raiding party, at the more critical moments before and after the
attack, without impairing the self-reliance and self-sufficiency of any
individual. His English companions knew the difference between an Arab
raid when he was present and one when he was not present; but they were
not professional soldiers, nor students of war, so could not put their
finger on the precise points of difference. And he himself, except in
the battle fought north of Tafileh, withholds any account of himself
in command. This battle proves what we knew already, that he relied on
automatic rifles and not on ordinary rifles. The rapid-fire exercise,
with an ordinary rifle, of fifteen to thirty aimed shots a minute,
saved the British Expeditionary Force at the first battle of Ypres in
face of enormously superior machine-gun fire; but it was only perfected
by years of intense musketry training. The Bedouin Arabs would never
have had the patience to master it and in any case it would have been
of little use to them in camel-fighting.
Bayonets he scornfully rejected with the memorandum (to General
Headquarters!) that they were ‘unintelligent masses of steel, generally
fatal to the fools behind them.’ He might have added that the Turk, a
good man with the bayonet, would have welcomed this choice of weapons.
Machine-guns, except when armoured, were less suited for his battles
than automatics because their longer bursts of fire did not make up
for their greater weight and cumbersomeness. There is one recorded
case of a British machine-gun sergeant, in France, picking up his
weapon and using it like a rifle, but he was a giant. When it came to a
choice between Lewis and Hotchkiss automatic rifles, he preferred the
Hotchkiss, because it was not so easily jammed by mud and sand;
but the files of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force Headquarter Office
were full of his demands for quantities of either or both. The battle
of Tafileh is a neat example, though not, one gathers, his first, of
what is technically known as ‘attack by infiltration,’ with automatic
rifles to the fore. Lawrence seems, before this, to have reduced his
gun-crews to two men and a gun. His body-guard of forty-eight men
had in one fight with a Turkish cavalry regiment (place and date
unfortunately are not available) twenty-one automatics. He himself
carried an ‘air-Lewis’ (borrowed from the Air Force) in a bucket on
his camel-saddle. He once said that if he could get control of an
arms-factory to make him Hotchkiss guns he would supersede the use of
the rifle in war. A pleasant gift to civilization!
Lawrence’s attitude to war, by the way, seems to be that he has no
stronger objection to war, as war, than to the human race as the human
race; but he does not like wars in which the individual is swallowed
up in the mass. He commented to me once on the anti-war poetry of
Siegfried Sassoon, who had the misfortune to serve, on the Western
Front, in divisions that were accustomed to lose the equivalent of
their full strength every four or five months, that had Sassoon been
serving with him in Arabia he would have written in a completely
different vein. That is very likely true. On the other hand, Lawrence’s
revolt in the desert was a form of fighting so unlike ‘civilized’
war, and so romantically appealing, that it is perhaps fortunate that
Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, Edmund Blunden, and the other poets
who got badly involved in the war were all infantrymen in France.