CHAPTER XXVII

TALES OF THE SECRET CORPS

Although none played quite so spectacular a part as Lawrence, there were at least a score of other dashing officers who distinguished themselves in Arabia, and a volume might well be, and in fact should be, written about the exploits of each.

All of Britain’s coöperation with the Arabs was arranged by a secret service department, the Near Eastern Intelligence Corps, created in the days when Sir Henry McMahon was still high commissioner for Egypt. Upon his retirement the control of this branch of the service passed on to his successor, Sir Reginald Wingate, and to Sir Edmund (now Field-Marshal Viscount) Allenby. Although these three distinguished men each personally encouraged the Arabs and took an active interest in the Shereefian revolt, no man among those who did not actually visit Arabia deserves more credit for the success of the revolution than Sir Gilbert F. Clayton, the organizer of this secret corps.

During the early days of the operations in the Near East, General Clayton made his headquarters in Cairo. There he gathered together a group of brilliant men who were each intimately acquainted with some corner of the Near East and with some one particular group of its bewildering mosaic of peoples. Among them were students of political affairs, men like Mark Sykes and Aubrey Herbert; then there was Hogarth, the famous antiquarian and geographer; Cornwallis and Joyce, veterans from the Sudan; Woolley and Lawrence, who were engaged in archæology in Mesopotamia; and many others, including an engineer-adventurer of reckless daring by the name of Newcombe, whom Lawrence described to me as “the most devastatingly energetic person in the world.”

Although Colonel Lawrence had more train demolitions to his credit than any one else, he was not the man who first introduced the gentle sport of tulip-planting in Arabia. That honor must go to Lieutenant-Colonel S. F. Newcombe, who might even have exceeded Lawrence’s record as a train-wrecker and railway-demolisher had not his fearless spirit and love of fighting resulted in his spending the final stages of the war in a Turkish prison.

Prior to 1914 Newcombe had earned the reputation of being the ablest engineer in the British army. The railway line which crosses the Sudan Desert from the valley of the Nile to the Red Sea was one of his efforts. Always a pioneer, he had surveyed and blazed trails in Abyssinia, Persia, and various other regions that are mere blobs on the map to most of us.

So engrossed did he become in each job that he also gained renown for his forgetfulness as well as for his daring. After the capture of El Wedj, in the early days of the Hedjaz revolt, he was placed in temporary command of that port. Living with him were several other officials, but as the colonel happened to be the only one who had a servant they were all obliged to depend upon him for mess arrangements. But Newcombe attended to this unimportant phase of his day’s activity in the most casual manner, if at all, and when one o’clock came around and some one suggested, “Now for a bit of lunch,” it usually developed that Newcombe had forgotten to give instructions; and as a result they would have to compromise by telescoping lunch and tea at two o’clock.

Colonel Newcombe played a meteoric part in Arabian affairs for seven months and initiated the methods of railway destruction which Lawrence afterward applied so effectively. Although he donned Arab garb he was utterly un-Oriental in his ways and plunged headlong into his work both day and night at such a furious pace that no one could keep up with him. Then at the end of seven months in the desert he rejoined the British army in Palestine and in the attack on Beersheba carried out one of the most daring actions of the war.

Allenby’s cavalry and infantry were closing in on Beersheba from the west, south, and east. But to the north of that ancient home of Abraham runs the Beersheba-Hebron-Jerusalem Road, in those days the main artery of the Turkish line of communications. Newcombe, and one hundred Australians who had volunteered to follow him, crept through the Turkish lines by night just before the attack on Beersheba was launched. Their job was to attempt to cut the Hebron Road and hold up all Turkish supplies and reinforcements until Allenby and his army had routed the Turkish forces and taken Beersheba. It was a desperate thing to attempt, but for three days and nights Newcombe and his band of Australians remained astride that road and outfought fifty times their number. Eventually they were surrounded on a hill-top, and the few lucky enough to be still alive were captured.

It happened that Colonel Newcombe was the highest ranking British officer whom the Turks had thus far captured in Palestine, and so they made quite a fuss over him when he was paraded through the streets of Jerusalem on his way to prison in Anatolia.

But months later, after having survived smallpox and all of the other luxuries of Turkish prison life, the colonel escaped from his cell in Constantinople through the aid of a beautiful Syrian girl, who then concealed him in her home. This was shortly before the Turkish collapse, and Newcombe, preferring the thrills of life in disguise in Constantinople to the monotony that might follow complete escape from Turkey, remained in Stamboul in order to start an underground bureau of propaganda right in the heart of enemy territory. So successful was he that eventually he got into touch with a group of prominent Turks who were opposed to the pan-German policy of Talaat and Enver, and he even helped them arrange the Armistice which resulted in Turkey’s dropping out of the war. Then, as any born hero of melodrama would be expected to do as the climax to his romantic career, he married the beautiful Syrian girl who had helped him escape—and we hope lived happily ever after.

Photograph: FEISAL AND LAWRENCE CONFERRING WITH BEDOUIN SHEIKS

Photograph: SUNSET OVER THE MOUNTAIN OF EDOM

Photograph: OUR CARAVAN APPROACHING THE LOST CITY

Among the men most actively engaged in arranging British aid for the Arabs and in advising them on military matters were Colonel C. E. Wilson, Colonel K. Cornwallis, Lieutenant-Colonel Allan Dawney, and Commander D. G. Hogarth. Colonel Wilson was the governor of the Red Sea Province of the Sudan when Shereef Hussein and his sons first overthrew the Turks in Mecca, and he engineered considerable surreptitious gun-running to keep the revolt alive until the Allies had time to make up their minds officially to help the Arabs. Colonel Wilson loaded British ships with ammunition and rifles at Port Sudan and then transferred them to sailing dhows in the middle of the Red Sea. These dhows then landed the supplies secretly along the Arabian coast, where they were distributed to the Bedouins. But after the fall of Mecca and Jeddah he left his administrative work in the Sudan and crossed over to Jeddah, where he remained in charge of British activities in the southern Hedjaz and as adviser to Shereef Hussein until the termination of the war. In fact it was Colonel Wilson, in company with General Clayton and Ronald Storrs, the Oriental secretary to the high commissioner for Egypt, who opened up the first negotiations between Britain and the leaders of the Arab revolt. In spite of poor health Colonel Wilson did particularly fine work.

Cornwallis, Dawney, and Hogarth spent the most of their time at headquarters in Cairo at what was known as the Arab Bureau. Colonel Cornwallis, who after the war was sent to Mesopotamia as one of the principal British advisers to Feisal when that emir was proclaimed king in Bagdad, was in charge of the Arab Bureau. He personally superintended the political side of the work which coöperation with the Arabs entailed, such as official negotiations between Britain and the newly established government of the kingdom of the Hedjaz, and the important business of the subsidy which was granted to King Hussein to enable him to continue his campaign. In addition Colonel Cornwallis supervised the extremely important work of winning recruits for the Shereefian army from the Ottoman troops of Arab blood who were in the prison-camps of Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. Lawrence often referred to the genius of Cornwallis and seemed to regard him as indispensable to Arab success.

Another brilliant officer who divided his time between the Arab Bureau in Cairo, the desert, and Allenby’s headquarters in Palestine was Lieutenant-Colonel Allan Dawney of the Coldstream Guards. Although responsible for putting the Arabian campaign on a proper and efficient military basis for personnel and service of supply, Dawney’s main task was that of keeping Emir Feisal, Colonel Lawrence, and the other leaders in Arabia in constant touch with Allenby. Lawrence and he were intimate friends and worked in perfect harmony. Dawney did everything possible to wangle the equipment and everything else that Lawrence required. He also saw to it that his own visits to Arabia allowed him enough time to take part in a few raids, for he too was an ardent tulip-planter.

But so unusual was the nature of the desert war that it required the diplomatic genius of at least one man to act as an intermediary between Arabia and the Imperial Government in London. This delicate task was left to a scholarly man of international renoun whose suggestions could therefore hardly be disregarded even by a prime minister and his War Cabinet. Sir Gilbert Clayton here again proved himself a genius at selecting men by choosing D. G. Hogarth, head of the Ashmolean Museum of Oxford, for this post, and in Hogarth he not only picked a man famous as an antiquarian and archæologist but one who had long been looked upon as the foremost living authority on Arabia. Here again Lawrence was favored by fortune in being associated with one who could hardly have been more ideally qualified, for Commander Hogarth (he was given an honorary naval commission to increase his official prestige) had known Lawrence from childhood and had given him his start in the field of archæology. Throughout the campaign Commander Hogarth was looked upon by Lawrence and his colleagues as their counselor, philosopher, and mediator whose delicate task it was to justify the various steps taken in Arabia to the General Staff and the War Cabinet. He also edited the secret publication at headquarters in Cairo called “The Arab Bulletin,” of which only about four copies per edition were printed: one for Lloyd George and his Cabinet, one for Allenby and staff, one for Lawrence and associates in the desert, and one for the file at the Arab Bureau.

Photograph: THE NARROW DEFILE THAT LEADS TO THE LOST CITY

Photograph: A ROSE-RED TEMPLE CARVED LIKE A CAMEO FROM THE FACE OF THE MOUNTAIN

JOYCE & CO., AND THE ARABIAN KNIGHTS OF THE AIR

The forces of the king of the Hedjaz, as previously stated, included both regulars and irregulars; the latter were Bedouins mounted on camels and horses, while the former were deserters from the Turkish army, men of Arab blood conscripted into the Ottoman armies and afterward captured by the British in Palestine and Mesopotamia. There were nearly twenty thousand regulars specially trained as infantry to attack those fortified positions which could not be taken by Lawrence’s irregulars; they were under the leadership of Lieutenant-Colonel P. C. Joyce, who like Lawrence was an Irishman, and who next to Lawrence probably played a more important rôle in the campaign than any one else. Unlike Lawrence, Joyce was a soldier by profession, an officer in the Connaught Rangers with a splendid record for service in the Boer War and in Egypt and the Sudan. Physically there was a further difference between them, for while Lawrence stood barely five feet three his colleague loomed well over six feet three. None but the largest ship of the desert could navigate under Joyce’s bulk, so that he seldom mounted a camel. But when he did, it looked like one mountain on top of another.

Colonel Joyce spent nearly a year building up an army to send against the strongly fortified city of Medina. It was to be under the leadership of Emir Ali. At last, when by the grace of Allah all seemed in readiness, a courier from Emir Ali handed a message to Joyce to be forwarded on to his Majesty the king in Mecca with all possible despatch. The message read:

O Father of Mercies and Lord of the Earth, greetings from thy son:Thy heroic army awaits but the command for its victorious advance upon the Turks. Yet for lack of one mere detail are we delayed. Our valorous officers swear that it would be futile for them to advance without swords. Wherefore I implore thee to send thirty of thy Damascus blades in scabbards of beaten gold in order that they may be satisfied.Thy Slave.

O Father of Mercies and Lord of the Earth, greetings from thy son:

Thy heroic army awaits but the command for its victorious advance upon the Turks. Yet for lack of one mere detail are we delayed. Our valorous officers swear that it would be futile for them to advance without swords. Wherefore I implore thee to send thirty of thy Damascus blades in scabbards of beaten gold in order that they may be satisfied.

Thy Slave.

But fortunately Colonel Joyce proved himself capable of coping with the thousand and one unexpected difficulties that arose, for in addition to his ability to speak Arabic he had many other valuable qualifications. For instance he was tactful and cool and utterly imperturbable, could not be hustled under any circumstances, was painstaking, and above all patient beyond the normal vanishing-point of patience as practised in the Occident. So while Lawrence spent his time with his Bedouin rabble, Joyce demonstrated his military ability by building up the auxiliary force of regulars from the medley of Syrians, Palestinians, and Bagdadis who were attracted to the Shereefian banner. But he also now and then found time to join Lawrence on a raid or to lead a demolition expedition of his own. In fact on one occasion he destroyed seven small bridges and tore up two thousand rails on the Turkish railway, between the stations of Toweira and Hedia.

There were a number of other officers who fought with the Arabs and took part in the fascinating game of planting tulips and blowing up the Turkish railway. Among these were Lieutenant-Colonel W. F. Stirling, Major P. G. W. Maynard of the Irish Rifles, who had been a judge in a remote corner of the Sudan, Major H. W. Young, Major William E. Marshall, Captain E. Scott Higgins, Captain H. S. Hornby, and Lieutenant H. Garland, who taught demolition to the Arabs. Nearly all of the men who fought in Arabia had annexed various military honors long before they were selected to play a part in the war in the Land of the Arabian Nights, but none had been quite so generously decorated as Stirling, who not only was a veteran of the South African War but had found time to serve with high distinction in the Royal Flying Corps before he crashed and nearly lost his life while on a reconnaissance flight over one of the most inhospitable corners of Arabia. Doomed to serve the remainder of the war on the ground, he was selected as the right type of man for the Hedjaz show. He joined the Arabs just as they were about to invade Syria and was with Lawrence when the latter reached Damascus. Young, formerly of the Intelligence Department in Mesopotamia, was another who reveled in the manipulation of high explosives. During the final stage of the campaign he took over the all-important job of organizing the transport system, but among his numerous achievements by no means the least was the success he met in raising a silky beard that was the envy of his colleagues and which transformed him into an ideal sheik.

Perhaps the most universally liked, both by British and Arabs, of all the Europeans who took part in the desert war was Lawrence’s tent-mate and intimate friend, an optimistic Scot of the Royal Army Medical Corps with a Highland brogue thicker than Harry Lauder’s, who divided his affections between his bacillus menagerie and tulip-planting. Under him were two other medical men, Captains Ramsay and McKibbin. But Major Marshall, although a quiet, shy man of science whose whole life had been devoted to the realm of test-tubes, microscopes, and a search for mysterious microbes in the jungles of tropical Africa, had proved himself enough of a soldier to win the Military Cross in the battle of the Somme and other honors in Arabia. When Lawrence was away on an expedition Marshall would transform their tent at Akaba into a zoo for cholera, typhus, and plague bacillus. Incidentally he usually managed to contract most of the diseases the mysteries of which he sought to solve. Then on his trips into the desert he would fill his stretchers with high explosives and after a raid would throw out all the remaining dynamite and substitute the wounded. After inflicting casualties among the Turks he would proceed to bandage them up. So successful was he as a combined medical officer and soldier that after the war he was appointed adviser to the king of the Hedjaz and for several years remained at Jeddah as the British resident.

Photograph: WE RODE INTO THE AUDITORIUM ON OUR CAMELS

Photograph: “PHARAOH’S TREASURY” OR THE “TEMPLE OF ISIS”

But of all the tulip-planters there was certainly none more daring than Captain H. S. Hornby, who like Newcombe had been an engineer. He had received his preliminary schooling in adventure on the Gold Coast, in the heart of the Congo, and in other out-of-the-way corners of the earth, and so reckless was he that even the wild Bedouins regarded him as stark mad. But his career as a dynamiter of trains came to an untimely end when a part of a mine exploded in his face, leaving him partially blind and deaf. The Arabs who were with him had great difficulty in getting him back to Akaba alive, and from then on he spent his time in administrative work.

At the base-camp in Akaba were two other officers, Major T. H. Scott, of the Inniskilling Fusiliers, and Captain Raymond Goslett. Scott specialized in mirth and money, while Goslett dispensed everything from boots to flour. In Scott’s tent were boxes of sovereigns, gold conscripted from every corner of the Empire to help arouse enthusiasm in the breasts of the temperamental Bedouins whenever the spirits of those rather fickle gentlemen began to flag. The only guardian of all these boxes of golden “goblins” was a dog about the size of a squirrel, which Major Scott called his Bulgarian weasel-hound. His associate, Captain Goslett, was the czar of the supply and commissary department, excepting when Auda Abu Tayi or some of Lawrence’s other brigands could no longer resist the temptation of looting their own base-camp.

Then there were the officers in command of the armored cars and light mobile artillery: Captains Gillman, Dowsett, and Brodie, and Lieutenants Greenhill, Wade, and Pascoe. Although seriously handicapped by lack of roads, they somehow managed to scale the barren mountains and get into action on many occasions, and they were mixed up in innumerable thrilling adventures during the latter stages of the campaign.

But of all the unpleasant jobs, surely the airmen who were sent down to satisfy the Arabs, who insisted that their army like the Turks should have birds that laid explosive eggs, were the least to be envied. With Akaba as their base-camp they would sally forth to locate approaching Turkish patrols and bomb the enemy garrisons along the Damascus-Medina Railway. Nowhere in the world have aviators ever taken greater risks except perhaps in East Africa and on the Afghan frontier. When a plane left Akaba the pilot and observer knew full well that if they encountered engine-trouble they were for it, because they were constantly flying over unexplored, unmapped country, as uninviting as the mountains of the moon. On one occasion when we were trekking across the mountains of the Edom on our way to the “rose-red city of Petra,” we heard the drone of a battle-plane overhead, and as we gazed about at that jagged, unfriendly landscape, with the blue Arabian sky punctured everywhere by sharp lava mountains, our admiration for those reckless British Elijahs, soaring thousands of feet above us, increased appreciably.

These sheiks of the air were first under a Captain Harold Furness-Williams; although during the later stages of the campaign an embryo parson, Captain Victor Siddons, became the flight-commander. On one occasion Furness-Williams flew from Egypt to Arabia, by way of the Sinai desert. Hung around the fuselage and back struts he carried a precious cargo consisting of four dozen bottles of Bass, which his fellow-sufferers in that thirsty land had commissioned him to bring. But under the eyes of his expectant friends the unfortunate aviator made a bad landing, the plane turned over, and every bottle was smashed. They told him that they would sooner have seen his blood soaking into the sands of the desert than that priceless liquid.

Captain Furness-Williams and his associates spent a portion of their spare time in taking the Arab chiefs for joy-rides. They gave old Auda Abu Tayi his first “flip,” and that cheerful chieftain, who had already demonstrated his courage by marrying twenty-eight wives, with the inborn poetic spirit of the desert declared upon his return to earth that he deeply regretted he had failed to take his rifle aloft with him. Never, he said, had he had such a splendid opportunity for taking pot-shots at all his “friends” in Akaba.

Among the Arabian knights of the air were Lieutenants Divers, Makins, Oldfield, Sefi, and several others, but the only one of them who went right through the campaign to Damascus was Lieutenant Junor, who dropped bombs during nearly every Arab battle and survived to play a similar rôle on the equally wild Afghan Frontier in India long after the World War.

In the southern area were a number of other officers of whom I saw little or nothing, men like Colonel A. C. Parker, a nephew of Kitchener, who was on the Red Sea coast for a short time and then appointed governor of the vast mountain and desert region called the Sinai Peninsula, where the children of Israel wandered for forty years. There also was Lieutenant-Colonel J. R. Bassett, transferred to Arabia from the War Office in London, who was second in command to Colonel Wilson at Jeddah, and Major H. J. Goldie, who described his headquarters in Jeddah as so hot that nothing could live there but human beings, and they could just gasp. Over around Medina, where Emir Abdullah’s army made things lively for the large Turkish garrison, were two more demolition experts, Majors W. A. Davenport and H. St. J. Garrood.

Photograph: LOOKING OUT THROUGH THE DOORWAY OF THE TEMPLE, IN THE DISTANCE WE SEE THE NARROW DEFILE THROUGH WHICH WE CAME IN ENTERING THE “LOST CITY”

Photograph: AN AMPHITHEATER HEWN OUT OF THE MOUNTAIN

But this brief enumeration of the other Europeans who played a part in the desert war would not be complete without reference to the French. Early in September, 1916, the French indicated their faith in the Arab cause by sending a mission to Jeddah under the leadership of a Colonel Bremond. The French were at a great disadvantage simply because their Government could not give them sufficient backing and the British had to furnish nearly everything for them. This made it difficult for them to get a strong hold over the Arabs, because the latter were aware of the circumstances. But Captain Pisani, who led a detachment of French Algerians throughout the campaign, had had unlimited experience in the Moroccan Desert and did splendid sporting work against the Turkish railway in 1917, and again in the final operations around Deraa in 1918.

The only other foreigners in the Hedjaz were some mixed Egyptian troops and a Mohammedan machine-gun section from India.

One of the finest sporting achievements during the war in the Near East was accomplished by a British civilian official, a Mr. H. St. John Philby, who played no part in the Hedjaz campaign, but who startled King Hussein one day by turning up in Bedouin costume at his summer capital of Taif. Philby had been sent on a secret mission to the court of Ibn Saud in the very heart of Central Arabia, and he had accomplished the remarkable feat of trekking right across Arabia from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea through a totally unknown region. Lawrence was so impressed with Philby’s achievement and his skill in dealing with the Bedouins, that after the war he was instrumental in having Philby appointed adviser to the sultan of Transjordania.

Perhaps the most genuine-looking brigand of all the Europeans who fought in the Arab rebellion was the Earl of Winterton. He wore a huge beard and an Arab head-cloth and rode a tall racing-camel bedecked with gorgeous trappings. Lord Winterton turned out to be as much of a fire-eater in the field as he was back home in the House of Commons when on one occasion a member from the Whitechapel district interrupted him while he was making a speech. The earl wheeled round, gave the disturber a withering look, and shouted, “Silence in the Ghetto,” and the House simply howled.

In the desert the noble earl managed to look as disreputable as possible and in appearance was as successful a brigand as Auda Abu Tayi himself. One day Lord Winterton in his sheik’s regalia came riding along on his camel on his way from Jaffa to Allenby’s headquarters near Ramleh. There is a particularly attractive stretch of road between those two Palestinian cities, but during the war all natives on camels or donkeys or on foot were instructed to take a side path so that the road could be reserved for the interminable caravans of motor-lorries and whizzing staff cars. Right up the middle of that sacred motor highway came Lord Winterton, ambling along on his camel on a mission from the Arab army to Allenby. A military police sergeant, on point duty directing traffic, saw him and shouted, “Get off the road, you black bounder!” Winterton placidly continued on his way; he was not accustomed to being addressed with such levity and naturally assumed that the sergeant was speaking to some one else. But the latter shouted again: “I say, you black beggar,——,——, can’t you hear me talking to you? I said get off this road and over there where you belong.”

Winterton pulled up his dromedary at this and replied as only one of his social standing could reply: “Evidently, old chap, you don’t know who I am. I am a major, a member of Parliament, and an earl!” Whereupon the sergeant nearly collapsed but managed to salute weakly and stammer: “Proceed, my lord, proceed,” or words to that effect.

The most of the officers in Arabia were either colonels, lieutenant-colonels, or majors. But rank made very little difference, and there was a free-masonry among them such as did not exist on any other front. Saluting was taboo, and in addressing each other titles were dispensed with. Even when Lawrence had the opportunity to become a general he declined the honor and gave as his reason that he preferred not to be elevated in rank beyond his associates. Each man had his own task and went his own way. Each was a free-lance and conducted himself with much the same freedom as did the knights of old.

In a letter written home from Arabia during the latter part of the desert war by Colonel R. V. Buxton, who was in command of the Camel Corps sent over from Palestine to coöperate with the Shereefian force, this army officer said of Lawrence: “He is the most wonderful of fellows and is our guide, philosopher, and friend. Although he is only a boy to look at and has a very quiet manner, he is known to every Arab in this country for his exploits. He lives entirely with them, wears their clothes, and eats only their food. He always travels in spotless white and in fact reminds one of the Prophet. He has practically started all this movement here and is a wonderful enthusiast.”

Photograph: THE ROCK SEEMED TO SWIRL LIKE WATERED SILK

Photograph: THE “THREE-STORIED TEMPLE”

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 nextrapidleaves 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.Gloucesteras 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 theGloucesterbecause 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 theGloucestersteamed 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 uswonthe 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

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.

Back to Index Next