Hero_ The Life And Legend Of Lawrence Of Arabia Part 9

Arab losses were about twenty-five killed and forty wounded. Lawrence reproached himself severely for these. Although he would never wear the ribbon or accept the decoration, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order, only one step below the Victoria Cross, for which he had already been recommended.

Wavell's praise for Lawrence's account of the Battle of Tafileh was well earned. Better than any novelist, Lawrence succeeded in describing unflinchingly every moment and movement of the battle, and demonstrating that when called on to do so, he could direct his ragtag army in an orthodox way, while coolly exposing himself to danger.

As was so often the case with Lawrence, success was followed by a humiliating failure. One reason is that victory tended to undo the Arabs' shaky system of alliances, which was always at the mercy of the stronger pull of tribal and clan loyalty. Another was sleet-the foul weather and heavy mud that rendered the camels clumsy and helpless. Lawrence managed to send seventy Bedouin hors.e.m.e.n under Abdulla el Feir to raid the lake port near El Mezraa, at the southernmost end of the Dead Sea, where they overwhelmed a small group of Turkish sailors sleeping on sh.o.r.e, destroyed a motor launch and six lighters, and captured sixty prisoners and ten tons of grain. This interruption of the Turkish grain supply was in some ways more important than the victory at Tafileh, but Lawrence was still anxious to fulfill his promise to Allenby and move the Arab forces north toward Jericho.

He was restless and discontented at Tafileh-forced idleness was never good for Lawrence, and for once even he complained of the vermin. He finally set off for Guweira to meet with Joyce, Feisal, and Lieutenant-Colonel Alan Dawnay. Dawnay had been appointed by Allenby to create a "Hejaz Operations Staff" and to establish some kind of military order. Lawrence might have been expected to object to him-Dawnay was tall and thin; was a perfectly uniformed officer of the Coldstream Guards; and was the brother of Brigadier-General Guy Dawnay, who had come up with the plan of feinting at Gaza and putting the weight of the British attack on Beersheba-but something about Alan Dawnay's cold precision and "brilliant mind" appealed to Lawrence, who called him "Allenby's greatest gift to us."

Lawrence rode down to Guweira in foul weather; it was "freezing once again, and the slabby stones of the valley-slopes became sheets of ice." The camels balked at moving forward, and the men nearly froze to death, and all would have died if Lawrence had not pushed them mercilessly on. Even when they descended into the warmer air of the plain around Guweira, there was no relief. "The pain of the blood fraying its pa.s.sage once more about our frozen arms and legs and faces was as great and much faster than the slow pain its driving out: and as we warmed we grew sensible that up there in the cold we had torn and bruised ourunfeeling feet nearly to a pulp among the stones. We had not felt them tender while each step was deep in icy mud: but this warm salty mud scoured out the cuts, and in desperation we had to climb up on our sad camels, and beat them woodenly towards Guweira."

This pa.s.sage seems to express Lawrence's state of mind, despite his earlier victory. Ostensibly, he had ridden to Guweira to pick up 30,000 in gold sovereigns with which to pay the tribes to the north; but one senses, reading his account in Seven Pillars of Wisdom, that he was briefly in need of friendly company-Joyce and Dawnay, and Feisal, whom he much preferred to his half brother Zeid-and that he was tired of dealing with Zeid and the recalcitrant tribesmen. He seems not to have been downhearted that Feisal's attack on the railway watering station at Mudawara had failed. Lawrence understood the lack of cooperation between the Bedouin tribesmen and the Arab regulars.

He spent three days with Joyce, Dawnay, and Feisal, then set off back to Tafileh, with an escort provided by Feisal. Lawrence split the gold coins into thirty canvas bags, each bag containing 1,000 gold sovereigns; two of these bags could be carried by a single camel. Even this was a heavy burden on the poor beasts, with the ice and frozen mud, and his return journey to Tafileh was as cold and difficult as the journey down. Once there, he found waiting for him a young British intelligence officer, Kirkbride, "a taciturn, enduring fellow," and leaving the gold in Zeid's care, he rode to Dana with the young man, then rode north on a reconnaissance mission of his own "as far as the edge of the Jordan valley," from where he could hear Allenby's guns attacking Jericho. It seemed to Lawrence feasible to bring the Arab army north of the Dead Sea, as he had promised, and he rode back to give Zeid the good news, only to find that Zeid, shamefaced, had been persuaded or browbeaten by the local sheikhs to pay them the gold Lawrence had brought from Guweira. Of the 30,000 in gold coins, he had nothing left, so the plan of advancing north was impossible.

Lawrence's reaction was very like a nervous breakdown. He was "aghast," and realized at once that this meant "the complete ruin of myplans and hopes." He decided on the spot to ride directly to see Allenby and offer his resignation. Admittedly, 30,000 in gold sovereigns* was a substantial sum, but Lawrence was used to handling thousands of pounds in gold coins at a time, and while he was himself scrupulously honest, he was aware that some of it was wasted, money down the drain. British gold was the lifeblood of the Arab Revolt; it had to be handed out in huge amounts; and Lawrence himself, who at times handed out thousands of pounds a week to the tribes, remarked that it was better (and, in the long run, cheaper) to open a bag and let a man take out as much as he could in a single handful than to dole it out coin by coin. Zeid's behavior had been weak and foolish, but that was no fault of Lawrence's. It was an overreaction for him to write that his "will was gone," and that he dreaded more pain, more suffering, more killing, "the daily posturing in alien dress," in short, the whole role that had been thrust upon him, and that he had reached out for so eagerly when it was presented to him at Rabegh a year and a half ago. Now he blamed himself bitterly for "that pretence to lead the national uprising of another race." He was clearly suffering from what was then called sh.e.l.l shock, and is now called post-traumatic stress disorder. He believed that he had lost his nerve, that he had "made a mess of things," and was determined to throw himself on Allenby's mercy. was a substantial sum, but Lawrence was used to handling thousands of pounds in gold coins at a time, and while he was himself scrupulously honest, he was aware that some of it was wasted, money down the drain. British gold was the lifeblood of the Arab Revolt; it had to be handed out in huge amounts; and Lawrence himself, who at times handed out thousands of pounds a week to the tribes, remarked that it was better (and, in the long run, cheaper) to open a bag and let a man take out as much as he could in a single handful than to dole it out coin by coin. Zeid's behavior had been weak and foolish, but that was no fault of Lawrence's. It was an overreaction for him to write that his "will was gone," and that he dreaded more pain, more suffering, more killing, "the daily posturing in alien dress," in short, the whole role that had been thrust upon him, and that he had reached out for so eagerly when it was presented to him at Rabegh a year and a half ago. Now he blamed himself bitterly for "that pretence to lead the national uprising of another race." He was clearly suffering from what was then called sh.e.l.l shock, and is now called post-traumatic stress disorder. He believed that he had lost his nerve, that he had "made a mess of things," and was determined to throw himself on Allenby's mercy.

He rode directly west, making a journey of more than eighty miles in twenty hours over terrible terrain in a countryside at war, where a party of five men on camels might easily be attacked by anyone, or shot by the British. At last he dismounted at Beersheba, thinking he had made his final camel ride, to learn that Allenby had just taken Jericho. By car and train he traveled north through the night to Bir Salem, where, to his surprise, Hogarth was waiting on the platform to greet him. Much as Lawrence may have been astonished by Hogarth's presence, Hogarth was not Merlin, and one may therefore suppose that somebody at Aqaba or at Beersheba pa.s.sed on the message that Lawrence was on his way to Allenby in a desperate state of mind. Hogarth, and the Arab Bureau,would have been at pains to make sure that this meeting did not take place until Lawrence was put in a calmer state of mind, and n.o.body was better suited to this task than Hogarth. To be blunt, no one had more at stake either, for Lawrence was the most visible a.s.set of the Arab Bureau, the brightness of his fame casting the rest of the bureau into shadow, where, as an intelligence agency shaping British policy in the Middle East, it was anxious to remain.

In any case, Lawrence, barefoot in his robe, cloak, and headdress, unburdened himself then and there on the station platform to Hogarth, equally disguised in the uniform of a naval officer. Hogarth listened patiently, as he always did. Lawrence complained that he was "a very sick man, almost at breaking point," that he was "sick of responsibility," that he had been given "a free hand," rather than an order, that "Cairo had put on him the moral responsibility for buoying up the Arabs with promises that might never be fulfilled," and that he had lost faith in the Arabs' ability to handle their own affairs even if those promises were fulfilled. His experience with the British troops manning the armored cars had reawakened his appreciation for his own countrymen, and taught him that vehicles might be as useful as camels for warfare in the desert. He wanted to be in "a subordinate position," handling machines, not people, "a cog himself in the military machine." In the words of Liddell Hart-and he was quoting from his conversations with Lawrence-"The harness of obedience was better than the self-applied spur of command." When Lawrence told Liddell Hart this, of course, it was years later and he was already serving in the ranks, so he may have been retroactively applying this thought to the events of February 1918, but perhaps the decision to serve "solitary in the ranks" had already formed itself in his mind. These moments of complete despair had occurred before in Lawrence's life-he had suffered one on his ride into Syria before Aqaba-and would recur frequently in years to come. Hogarth may also have realized, better than Lawrence himself, the cost of constantly playing the hero among people who were critical judges of heroism.

In any case, it was clear to Hogarth that his protege was in bad straits,and very wisely he did not try to argue with Lawrence, but instead took him off to have breakfast with Brigadier-General Clayton, another of those strong, silent Englishmen who had won Lawrence's trust. An odd little group they must have made in the officers' mess over the toast and marmalade: the small barefoot major in his Arab costume, the neatly bearded Oxford don in his naval uniform, and the tall professional soldier. It would be interesting to know what the other officers in the mess thought of this unlikely trio, but by the time Lawrence had reached the breakfast table he had calmed down considerably. Hogarth may have advised him to forget about the 30,000 worth of gold coins; it was water under the bridge (and "a drop in the barrel as well," considering what the Arab Revolt was costing Britain every month), but in any case the subject did not come up again. Like the skilled producer he was, Hogarth had soothed his troubled star, and Clayton, playing his role, firmly pointed out that Lawrence was indispensable, that Allenby had great things in store for him-the kind of praise that Lawrence, for all his apparent lack of vanity and ambition, could never resist. Clayton added that General Jan s.m.u.ts of South Africa, even then the supreme fixer and stage manager of imperial Britain, had paid a visit to General Allenby on behalf of the prime minister to emphasize the crucial importance of victory over the Turks, and to promise reinforcements in men and weapons. These promises, like so many of Lloyd George's, were not to be fulfilled, since the Germans would launch their great spring offensive in a few weeks' time; but Allenby's mood was optimistic, and neither Clayton nor Hogarth wanted Lawrence to bring his personal loss of self-confidence to the attention of the commander in chief.

In the end Clayton bluntly told Lawrence that there was no question of "letting [him] off," and took him straight from the breakfast table to Allenby, who had for several days been sending airplanes out to find Tafileh and drop messages to Lawrence, ordering him to report in immediately. He was in no mood to listen patiently to Lawrence's problems, even had Lawrence cared to recite them. s.m.u.ts's visit had conveyed Lloyd George's burning desire to s.h.i.+ft focus from the western front to theMiddle East and "to knock Turkey out of the war" as the first step toward victory, although the war cabinet and the CIGS were somewhat taken aback when Allenby replied that he would need an additional sixteen divisions to do it. In the end all he would get was one British division and one Indian infantry division from Mesopotamia, and one Indian cavalry division from France.

If Allenby was going to push his advance north against the Turks, he needed the Arabs to become, in effect, his right wing, taking on the Turkish Fourth Army to the east of the Jordan River. The Arabs would have to concentrate against one objective at a time, quite a different procedure from the irregular warfare they had waged so far. To accomplish that, Allenby needed Lawrence, who seemed to be the only person who could get the Arabs to fight in an organized way. Ironically, Lawrence's success at Tafileh had had the effect of making everybody at headquarters in Jerusalem overestimate the Arab army's ability to fight a conventional battle.

Allenby's overbearing optimism simply rode roughshod over Lawrence's self-doubts, and, with whatever reservations, Lawrence agreed "to take up again my mantle of fraud." No doubt he knew better than to show a glum face. Allenby thus persuaded Lawrence to accept a significant change in tactics. For Lawrence, the Arabs' great advantage over the Turks was s.p.a.ce, the immense and empty desert. The Arabs could appear anywhere on its periphery in small numbers, attack the Turks, and then retire back into the desert, where the Turks could not follow them.

Now, Allenby wanted the Arabs to concentrate on the town of Maan and take it, cutting the railway south to Medina once and for all. Lawrence thought it could be done-or at least said it could be done-and even proposed a refinement of the plan. He suggested cutting the railway some miles north of Maan, so that in order to fight the Turkish garrison would have to come out into the desert, "where the Arabs would easily defeat [them]." This sounds like overconfidence on Lawrence's part, but given his admiration for Allenby, or perhaps out of relief that the subject of the missing 30,000 worth of gold hadn't come up, he may have laid it on a little thicker than he meant to.

In return, Lawrence had demands of his own. He would need at least 700 camels, to bring troops and supplies north from Aqaba-already, his purchases of camels in Arabia had driven up the price and reduced the supply-an immense increase in weapons, and, as usual, a lot more gold. More important, he wanted some a.s.surance that the Turks would be prevented from bringing reinforcements down from Amman, with the obvious risk that the Arabs might be caught "between pincers," from Medina in the south and Amman in the north. Allenby agreed, and explained that he intended to take Salt, and could then destroy as much of the railway as necessary, south of Amman. Lawrence was doubtful about the wisdom of Allenby's plan-he knew the Arabs well enough to suspect that they would lose heart the moment the British fell back from Amman-but he seems to have kept this doubt to himself, though he hinted at his reservations to Allenby's chief of staff. Perhaps this was because Allenby was one of the very few people Lawrence found it impossible to resist.

The next day, February 28, Lawrence was invited to a corps conference, at which the plans were dealt with in more detail, and during which Lieutenant-General Sir Philip Chetwode, who commanded the XX Corps and would "direct the advance," asked Lawrence "how his men were to distinguish friendly from hostile Arabs, since their tendency was to be prejudiced against all wearing skirts." This was an odd-though sensible-question, to which Lawrence, who was of course in his white robe, replied, not very helpfully, "that skirt-wearers disliked men in uniform." This caused some laughter, but did not, of course, answer Chet-wode's question. In fact, during the relatively brief time when the British and the Arab army came into contact, there were many unfortunate incidents in which British and Australian troops took Lawrence's Bedouin for hostiles, particularly because they tended to a.s.sume that all "natives" were thieves or cutthroats. Distrust of "wogs" was fairly widespread in the British army, but Lawrence's victory at Tafileh had made the Arab army briefly more popular, and had given it a certain credibility among the British that it lacked when it was chiefly engaged in looting trains, however important such looting was to the cause.

Confidence in the Arab army was high enough that Lawrence asked for, and got, permission to use the Imperial Camel Brigade, a handpicked unit composed of British yeomanry and Australians mounted on Sudanese camels. The yeomanry were British volunteer cavalry units, usually formed in rural areas, with the local farmers, or their sons or tenants, serving as troopers, and the local gentry, or their sons, as officers. Lawrence complained that both the camels and the men were too heavy to cover long distances in the desert, and insisted that the men and their beasts be slimmed down, and trained to subsist on the bare minimum of water. With them as "shock troops," he hoped to be able to threaten Deraa, when the time came, and fight the Turks as they attempted to retreat.

It was an ambitious plan, but despite the efforts of Lawrence, Alan Dawnay, and Joyce to supply such a widespread advance involving so many different elements, it failed to come off as planned. In the event, these plans were overshadowed by the German spring offensive on the western front in France, which breached the British line and sent the British army "reeling backwards on Amiens." This was Germany's last card, intended to drive the British back to the Channel ports; it used fifty additional divisions, which the Germans could withdraw from the eastern front now that the Bolshevik government had signed a peace. The Germans' hope was to win a victory, or at least a negotiated peace, before American divisions arrived in quant.i.ty in France. Even so convinced an "easterner" as Lloyd George was startled by the size and ferocity of the German attack-it began with the biggest artillery barrage of the war, 1.1 million sh.e.l.ls fired in five hours-and by the horrifying prospect that after four years of trench warfare and millions of casualties the Germans might still manage to drive a wedge between the French and British armies, take Paris, and push the BEF to the sea.* In the circ.u.mstances, Allenby's plan to cross the Jordan River no longer seemed crucial, andvery shortly he would be stripped of two complete British divisions (as well as numerous artillery, cavalry, and machine gun units), and with them his superiority in manpower and firepower over the Turks. In the circ.u.mstances, Allenby's plan to cross the Jordan River no longer seemed crucial, andvery shortly he would be stripped of two complete British divisions (as well as numerous artillery, cavalry, and machine gun units), and with them his superiority in manpower and firepower over the Turks.

It is hard to guess Lawrence's state of mind in March 1918, while he was busy preparing for an advance which would not come off, and about which he was by no means confident. He spent some time in Cairo, where the Arab army now had its own little headquarters in the Savoy Hotel, and then returned to Aqaba, where he had to deal with a newcomer: Captain Hubert Young of the Indian army. Young, a fluent Arabic-speaker, had been designated as Lawrence's "understudy" now that Lawrence's indispensability had been recognized by almost everyone in Egypt. Lawrence went out of his way to be polite about Young, but the two men were a bad match, although they had gotten along well enough at Carchemish before the war. Young had deeply resented Lawrence's presence in Mesopotamia in 1916, and he was not very much more tolerant of Lawrence now, though in the interest of civility he did his best to hide his feelings. A look at Young's portrait in Seven Pillars of Wisdom is enough to tell the story: the touchy superiority, the suspicion in his eyes, the unmistakable look of a man who is standing on his dignity and fears he is about to be made fun of at any moment. It is by far the least appealing portrait in the book. Young at first remarked with some satisfaction that "Lawrence was only one of the many British officers who were helping the Arabs," but then came to what was, for him, the dispiriting conclusion that although Joyce was in theory the senior British officer and Lawrence's commanding officer, and Dawnay was officially the chief staff officer, "Lawrence really counted more than either of them with Allenby and Feisal, and used to flit backwards and forwards between G. H. Q. and Feisal's headquarters as the spirit moved him." The use of the word "flit" expresses perfectly Young's disapproval of Lawrence and his flowing white robes.

No sooner had Young arrived at Aqaba than he was to receive a further shock-instead of a neat chain of command in which Major Lawrence reported to Lieutenant-Colonel Dawnay and through Dawnay to theircommanding officer, Colonel Joyce, it was announced that Lawrence himself had been promoted to lieutenant-colonel, and been awarded the DSO for Tafileh ("For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty"), so that he was now equal in rank to Alan Dawnay, and Young was put even more deeply in the shade. Lawrence later dismissed Young's role, relegating him to taking over "the transport, and general quartermaster work," but that is not how Young saw his job, then or later.

March or April 1918 (the exact date is uncertain) provided another irritation for Young in the form of the unexpected arrival of Lowell Thomas and Harry Chase. Young jumped to the conclusion that Lawrence had invited the two Americans to Aqaba in pursuit of publicity, whereas in fact they had been allowed to go there by Allenby. Indeed Allenby himself made the suggestion to Thomas at a luncheon in Jerusalem for HRH the duke of Connaught (the seventh child and third son of Queen Victoria), who had come to confer on Allenby "the Grand Cross of the Order of the Knights of Jerusalem." The duke had hoped to decorate Lawrence too, but Lawrence took good care to be absent. It is a comment on Lowell Thomas's Yankee persistence, affability, and effectiveness that he had managed to get himself invited to the luncheon, where he was encouraged to go to Aqaba. Thomas's journey there would prove unexpectedly long and difficult-he and Chase "[sailed] fifteen hundred miles up the Nile into the heart of Africa to Khartum, and then across the Nubian Desert for five hundred miles to Port Sudan on the Red Sea, where we hoped to get accommodation on a tramp vessel of some sort." Although Allenby had given his blessing to the expedition, he did not apparently feel obliged to provide transportation, since Thomas and Chase could have taken a train from Cairo to Port Suez, and then been accommodated comfortably on a supply s.h.i.+p or a naval vessel from Port Suez directly to Aqaba, a journey of only a few days. The benefit of the roundabout route was that it allowed the pair to record on film Luxor and Thebes, a sandstorm in Khartoum, a visit to "Shereef Yusef el Hindi ... the holiest man in the Sudan" (whose desert library, Thomas a.s.sured his American readers, apparently with a straight face, contained a volume of speeches by Woodrow Wilson), and a trip across the Red Sea on a steamer loaded with horses, mules, donkeys, and sheep, and a crew consisting of "Hindus, Somalis, Berberines, and fuzzy-wuzzies." At Aqaba, Thomas and Chase were sent ash.o.r.e on a barge loaded with mules and donkeys, and when one of the donkeys "was kicked overboard by a nervous mule," it was immediately torn apart and devoured by two gigantic sharks. Lowell Thomas was not the inventor of "the travelogue" for nothing-all these incidents would play a role in the lecture and film show that would make "Lawrence of Arabia" world famous, so it is perhaps just as well that Thomas and Chase were obliged to take the long way around. Only a few hours after the donkey had been eaten by the sharks, "Lawrence himselfcame down the Wadi Itm, returning from one of his mysterious expeditions into the blue."

Young.

"To accompany Lawrence and his body-guard on an expedition was a fantastic experience," Lowell Thomas would write in his best-selling book With Lawrence in Arabia, though he never actually did go on such an expedition. "First rode the young shereef, incongruously picturesque with his Anglo-Saxon face, gorgeous head-dress and beautiful robes. Likely enough, if the party were moving at a walking pace, he would be reading or smiling to himself over the brilliant satire of Aristophanes in the original. Then in a long, irregular column his Bedouin 'sons' followed in their rainbow-colored garments, swaying to the rhythm of the camel gait.... At either end of the cavalcade was a warrior poet. One of them would begin to chant a verse, and each man, all along the column, would take his turn to cap the poet's words with lines of the same meter."

This vision of the young "prince of Mecca," engrossed in a volume of the Greek cla.s.sics (in "the original" Greek, of course) as he and his colorful bodyguard ride across the desert on "one of his mysterious expeditions into the blue," was one that Lowell Thomas would fix firmly in the popular mind-so firmly that even forty-four years later, when David Lean's award-winning film Lawrence of Arabia was released to international acclaim, the Lawrence it portrayed still owed much to the colorful reporting of Thomas and the inspired photography of Chase. There is a considerable difference between Lawrence's estimate of how much time Thomas spent with them and Thomas's own account. Jeremy Wilson, in his authorized biography of T. E. Lawrence, writes that Thomas "spent less than a fortnight with Feisal's army and saw Lawrence for only a few days." This is surely correct, but it leaves out the intensity of the time Thomas and Chase did spend with Lawrence, and their determination to get as many photographs, reels of film, and interviews as they could, as well as Lawrence's willingness to cooperate. Judging from the number of photographs Chase took (many of them artfully staged), and from Thomas's voluminous notes, Lawrence was not only cooperative but enthusiastic; and in one of the photographs showing Lawrence and Lowell Thomastogether, Lawrence looks unusually relaxed and good-humored, not at all like a man being inconvenienced by two importunate Yankee journalists. Nor can Lawrence have been under any illusion that Lowell Thomas was going to write a series of thoughtful, fact-filled dispatches about the Arab army and the war in the Hejaz. Thomas was a showman, an inspired huckster in the tradition of P. T. Barnum, a lecturer who would prove every bit as successful as Mark Twain; and anybody meeting him, let alone someone as intelligent as Lawrence, would have known all that about him in five minutes or less. As for Chase, he was a Hollywood cameraman, not a doc.u.mentary filmmaker-his job was to put glamour on film. Lawrence himself may have enjoyed pulling the leg of the gullible American, but if so, the American had the last laugh. Thomas may or may not have believed everything he was told, but in either case he managed to sell it, burnished with his own additions, exaggerations, romantic touches, and flamboyant prose, to an audience of millions.

With Lawrence in Arabia is artfully written; it suggests that Thomas was an eyewitness to Lawrence's desert operations, without actually saying so, a familiar journalistic trick. Lawrence himself wrote Thomas out of Seven Pillars of Wisdom altogether, and later made it clear that Thomas "was never in the Arab firing line, nor did he ever see an operation or ride with me." There is no question, however, that Lawrence posed for innumerable staged photographs then and later on, including one in which he is claimed to be lying in the sand beside his kneeling camel's neck, holding his Lee-Enfield rifle at the ready, a bandolier of.303 cartridges around his neck, as if there were Turks on the horizon. In another he (or somebody else) appears disguised, his face covered with an embroidered flowered veil, as "a Gypsy woman of Syria," in which costume he planned to go behind the enemy lines to spy out information-something Lawrence actually did later on. Oddly enough, Thomas went to some trouble to deny that Lawrence cooperated with Chase in these carefully staged pictures. "My cameraman, Mr. Chase," Thomas wrote, "uses a high-speed camera. We saw considerable of Colonel Lawrence in Arabia, and although he arranged for us to get both 'still' and motion pictures of Emir Feisal, Auda Abu Tayi, and the other Arab leaders, he would turn away when he saw the lens pointing in his direction.... Frequently Chase snapped pictures of the colonel without his knowledge, or just at the instant that he turned and found himself facing the lens and discovered our perfidy."

n.o.body looking at Chase's photographs of Lawrence could possibly believe this story. They are not casual "snaps"; they are quite clearly well-thought-out formal portraits or carefully faked "action" scenes, for which the subject's willing cooperation would have been essential; and in fact Lawrence would pose for more of them later on, in London, where studio lighting and a backdrop were required. It suited both Thomas and Lawrence to pretend that Lawrence was the unwitting victim of the photographer-from Thomas's point of view, it made the whole story more of a scoop; and from Lawrence's, it freed him from the accusation of seeking publicity-but it cannot be true.

Feisal, whose understanding of the value of American publicity was a good deal sharper than Lawrence's, played the good host, taking Thomas and Chase on a long trip out into the desert-providing more good footage for Chase of camels, Bedouin, and tents-and sent them on an excursion to Petra, "the rose-red city, half as old as Time," where Thomas wondered whether "we had not been transported to a fairy-land on a magically-colored Persian carpet." Chase's pictures would later appear in Lowell Thomas's show about Lawrence, as well as in future travelogues.

Everybody seems to have been aware of just how important it was to present a positive picture of the Arab Revolt to America. Thomas got Clayton and Hogarth to talk to him about Lawrence, despite the fact that as senior intelligence officers they might have kept their mouths shut. Thomas also interviewed people at Aqaba, where everybody may have embellished stories about Lawrence for Thomas's benefit. Bedouin tribesmen, many of whom believed that the Koran forbade photography, since it involved making a human image, nevertheless meekly allowed Chase to take their pictures, and Feisal provided ma.s.ses of hors.e.m.e.n and camel riders, banners flowing and swords drawn, for action crowd scenes. Whether Lawrence was conscious of it or not, the few days hespent with Lowell Thomas and Harry Chase in Aqaba would eventually be instrumental in creating the legend of "Lawrence of Arabia."

Lawrence may not have realized that he had launched himself on a collision course with a new and potent combination of tabloid newspapers, press photography, and the cinema, but what he did in those few days at Aqaba would change his life far more than the mere acceptance of a few decorations and medals could have done. He had the good fortune-or perhaps the bad luck-to put himself in the hands of one of the most gifted and silver-tongued promoters of the twentieth century, a man who would be a star in media not even invented yet, and who would live on to 1981: a long life devoted to making himself and Lawrence household names.

It was at about this time, after Lawrence had left Thomas and Chase to continue their interviews and filming without him, that he rode north to Shobek, about twenty miles from Petra, and learned there of the death of Daud, the friend of Farraj, one of his two high-spirited servant boys. Farraj himself came to Lawrence with the news that Daud had frozen to death at Azrak.* In Lawrence's account of this, in Seven Pillars of Wisdom, there is a clear change of mood, as if some of the exuberance and joy he had felt in his relations.h.i.+ps with the Arabs was being squeezed out by the war. Fearless as he may have been for himself, Lawrence was not indifferent to the death of others, particularly those whom he loved, or for whom he felt responsible. He wrote of Farraj and Daud that they "had been friends from childhood, going about hand in hand, for the happiness of feeling one another, and diverting our march by their eternal gaiety." He reflected on the "openness and honesty in their love, which proved its innocence; for with other couples we had seen how, when pa.s.sion had thrust in, it had not been friends.h.i.+p any more, but a half-marriage, a shamefaced union of the flesh." The relations.h.i.+p between Daud and Farraj leads Lawrence on to another of those curious speculations about s.e.xuality, which occasionally puzzle the reader of Seven Pillars of Wisdom and make it clear that Lawrence's ideas about heteros.e.xuality were a strange mixture of innocence, idealism, his mother's disapproving eye for the slightest sign of s.e.xual arousal, and the awful example (from Lawrence's point of view) of Thomas Lawrence's having given up his fortune and place in society out of l.u.s.t for his daughters' governess. "European women," Lawrence wrote, "were either volunteers or conscientious objectors in this war to govern men's bodies," whereas, "in the Mediterranean, women's influence and supposed purpose were circ.u.mscribed and the posture of men before her s.e.xual." In Lawrence's account of this, in Seven Pillars of Wisdom, there is a clear change of mood, as if some of the exuberance and joy he had felt in his relations.h.i.+ps with the Arabs was being squeezed out by the war. Fearless as he may have been for himself, Lawrence was not indifferent to the death of others, particularly those whom he loved, or for whom he felt responsible. He wrote of Farraj and Daud that they "had been friends from childhood, going about hand in hand, for the happiness of feeling one another, and diverting our march by their eternal gaiety." He reflected on the "openness and honesty in their love, which proved its innocence; for with other couples we had seen how, when pa.s.sion had thrust in, it had not been friends.h.i.+p any more, but a half-marriage, a shamefaced union of the flesh." The relations.h.i.+p between Daud and Farraj leads Lawrence on to another of those curious speculations about s.e.xuality, which occasionally puzzle the reader of Seven Pillars of Wisdom and make it clear that Lawrence's ideas about heteros.e.xuality were a strange mixture of innocence, idealism, his mother's disapproving eye for the slightest sign of s.e.xual arousal, and the awful example (from Lawrence's point of view) of Thomas Lawrence's having given up his fortune and place in society out of l.u.s.t for his daughters' governess. "European women," Lawrence wrote, "were either volunteers or conscientious objectors in this war to govern men's bodies," whereas, "in the Mediterranean, women's influence and supposed purpose were circ.u.mscribed and the posture of men before her s.e.xual."

It is hard to unravel exactly what this means, but it clearly ties in with Lawrence's a.s.sumption that women endured s.e.x unwillingly in the European world, where as in the East "all the things men valued-love, companions.h.i.+p, friendliness-became impossible heteros.e.xually, for where there was no equality there could be no mutual affection." Of course Lawrence judged eastern domestic life as an outsider, whose relations.h.i.+p with the Arabs was either at work in Carchemish, or at war, when they were far from home. Much as he liked to think he had become part of their lives, he was still excluded from what went on between husband and wife (or wives) and from gauging the degree to which Arabs were invisibly influenced by women or by the demands of domestic life. All that, in the Arab world, took place behind a curtain, but the intrigues of the wives and concubines of the Turkish sultan, and the degree to which a woman of the harem might conspire to put her own son on the throne in place of another, should have cured Lawrence of the notion that women in the East were necessarily without ambition, interest, or influence in public or business affairs, or always submissive to their husband. King Hussein may have been an imposing, if infuriating, figure, but who knows what his four wives had to say to him about the relative positions of their sons when he stepped behind the closed door of his private apartments? The voices of women went largely unheard in the Middle East until very recently in its history, but this does not mean that they did not have ways to make themselves heard in private, or that men did not seek theiradvice, approval, or judgment, as they do elsewhere-or did not have to endure the relentless questioning of a strong-willed mother, as Lawrence himself did. The notion that male Arab society provided a "spiritual union," which complemented "carnal marriage," and that "these bonds between man and man [were] at once so intense, so obvious, and so simple," is a nice tribute to Daud and Farraj, but a very doubtful generalization about marriage in the East, which, while it is certainly different in many ways from marriage in the modern, industrialized West, is perhaps not as different as outsiders may suppose.

Lawrence's plan for the spring campaign was at once ambitious and simple. He would support Allenby's raid on Amman with three separate operations: in the center, Jaafar's regulars, whose numbers were increasing, would seize the railway north of Maan; in the south, Joyce would attack Mudawara with the armored cars, and cut the railway line to Medina once and for all; in the north, Lawrence would join Allenby at Salt, raising the tribes all along the way. Although Lawrence himself still had doubts about whether Jaafar's men could really take Maan, he finally deferred to the optimism of Feisal and Jaafar, and temporarily returned to his position as "an advisor," though he "privately ... implored Jaafar not to risk too great a disaster."

Conveying more optimism than he felt, Lawrence rode north with his bodyguard and "an immense caravan of ... camels, carrying five thousand rifles, great quant.i.ties of ammunition, and food, for the adherents in the north," only a week after a furious blizzard had covered the ground with snowdrifts. In the last light of day, Lawrence rode alone close to the railway line and surprised a solitary Turkish soldier, who had left his rifle a few yards away while he took a nap. Lawrence had the soldier, "a young man stout, but sulky looking," covered with his pistol, but after a moment, he merely said, "G.o.d is merciful," and rode off, faintly interested to see whether the Turk would grab the rifle and shoot him. This is Lawrence at his best-not just the moment of mercy toward an enemy, but the moral courage (and perverted curiosity) to test whether the "Turk was1 What the czar actually said, during a conversation reported by the British amba.s.sador in Saint Petersburg in 1853-in the course of which the czar raised the possibility that Russia and Great Britain might split up the Ottoman Empire between them-was: "We have a sick man on our hands, a man gravely ill; it will be a great misfortune if one of these days he slips through our hands, especially before the necessary arrangements are made. man enough not to shoot me in the back." Note too Lawrence's careful distinction-the right right thing for the Turkish soldier to do would of course have been to shoot Lawrence, but the thing for the Turkish soldier to do would of course have been to shoot Lawrence, but the manly manly thing for him to do was to spare Lawrence, as he himself had been spared. How many British officers would have felt that way? How many would have put their lives at risk to see what the outcome would be? It is one of the most interesting and consistent parts of Lawrence's character that he continually set himself these moral tests, in which he risked everything to see whether he could live up to his own ideals. thing for him to do was to spare Lawrence, as he himself had been spared. How many British officers would have felt that way? How many would have put their lives at risk to see what the outcome would be? It is one of the most interesting and consistent parts of Lawrence's character that he continually set himself these moral tests, in which he risked everything to see whether he could live up to his own ideals.

On the fourth day Lawrence arrived in the Atara region, just south of Amman, where the various clans of the Beni Sakhr were gathering, to take advantage of the "flood-ponds" of water and of the "succulent greenstuff" of the spring. Lawrence's opinion of those on whom he was relying tells its own story: "Mitfleh with honeyed words came out to welcome us, his face eaten up by greed and his voice wheezy with it." The plan was to cross the railway line and meet the rest of the Beni Sakhr at Themed. Turki, one of the tribal leaders, had agreed to serve Feisal while his brother continued to serve the Turks, to keep them from suspecting what was about to happen. Turki would take the four nearest railway stations south of Amman-Lawrence did not think this would be difficult-and bring their garrisons in as prisoners, giving them a safe-conduct to reach British prisoner-of-war camps; then the whole force would move toward Salt to make contact with the British. Salt would then become the center of operations for both the Egyptian Expeditionary Force and the Arab army, which could be supplied by means of a new road from Jericho, and both armies would take advantage of the chaos spread along the Turkish lines of communication south of Amman to advance toward the north and threaten Damascus.

The British often complained that the Arabs did not live up to what they had promised to do, but in this case it was the British who let the Arabs down badly. The weakening of Allenby's forces was fatal, and in addition, the Germans had sent out as many units and specialists as possible to stiffen Turkish resistance. Lawrence seems to have relaxed and enjoyed himself "with every hollow a standing pool and the valley-beds tall with gra.s.s and painted with flowers," while waiting for news. Both he and the Arab chieftains were worried about Allenby's intention to fall back on Salt after taking Amman, and they were right. A report that Allenby had taken Amman was followed almost instantly by the news that it was untrue, and more alarming yet, that he had lost Salt, was in full retreat, and might actually have to give up Jerusalem. The Beni Sakhr would be exposed to the Turks' revenge. The Turks were already using improvised gallows to hang those who had greeted the arrival of the British with too much enthusiasm. The Beni Sakhr prudently returned their 1,200 Turkish prisoners to the four railway stations from which they had been captured, after giving them back all their personal possessions and arms.

Lawrence decided to ride south to see Feisal, but not before examining for himself what had happened in Amman, and how strong its defenses were. He and Farraj eventually made their way into the town with three Gypsy women Lawrence had hired, dressed like them in long robes with flowered veils. Even so, they attracted the attention of the Turkish soldiers, who chased after them, imagining them to be prost.i.tutes. They fled, though not before Lawrence reached the depressing conclusion that the British had not done enough to damage the railway seriously, and that Amman was too heavily defended to be taken easily. Dangerous as all this was, it was also a kind of high-spirited prank, one that Lawrence could play only with someone like Farraj as his companion.

The next day, on the way south, following the railway line, Lawrence's small group of Arabs saw a patrol of Turkish soldiers, perhaps eight in all. Lawrence saw no reason to bother with them-he could easily continue his march out of their sight or range-but his Arabs, including Farraj, wanted to attack and he let them do so. In the brief fight that followed, Farraj was shot, and fell from his camel. Lawrence found the boy "sunken in that loneliness which came to hurt men who believed death near." The Turkish bullet had pa.s.sed through his spine, and he could not move. Then one of the Arabs shouted an alarm-fifty more Turkish soldiers were coming toward them, and a motor trolley could be heard on the line. The tribesmen tried to pick Farraj up, but he screamed in pain so terribly that they had to give up the attempt.

One senses Lawrence's sadness in this pa.s.sage-perhaps the saddest and most moving in Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Seven Pillars of Wisdom. He could not leave Farraj there alive for the Turks to find. They treated European prisoners of war with cruel neglect, but they tortured Arabs unmercifully, sometimes mutilating them or burning them alive. "For this reason," Lawrence wrote, "we were all agreed before action to finish off one another, if too badly hurt to be moved away, but I had never realized that it might fall upon me to kill Farraj." He could not leave Farraj there alive for the Turks to find. They treated European prisoners of war with cruel neglect, but they tortured Arabs unmercifully, sometimes mutilating them or burning them alive. "For this reason," Lawrence wrote, "we were all agreed before action to finish off one another, if too badly hurt to be moved away, but I had never realized that it might fall upon me to kill Farraj."

"I knelt down beside him, holding my pistol near the ground by his head, so that he should not see my purpose, but he must have guessed it, and clutched at me with his harsh, scaly hand.... I waited a moment, and he said, 'Daud will be angry with you,' the old smile coming back strangely to his grey face. I replied, 'Salute him from me,' and he gave the formal answer, 'G.o.d give you peace,' and shut his eyes to make my work easier."

The number of people with whom Lawrence had a lighthearted and intimate relations.h.i.+p is very small, and there were very few among the Arabs in the two years that he fought with them. However close he may have felt to Feisal, Feisal was a prince and a major political figure with ambitions to win his own crown. Even Auda, with whom Lawrence got along well, was an older man, shamelessly avaricious and ambitious. None of these were people with whom Lawrence could indulge in his own undergraduate high jinks, or who would have responded well to playfulness. Only with his two servants, Daud and Farraj, could he let that side of him appear, and now they were both dead, one by his own hand, the other because he had been left in Azrak to freeze to death. Of Dahoum, the only other young man with whom Lawrence felt totally at ease, little is known. All evidence suggests that Dahoum died of typhus in 1916, along with much of the workforce remaining at Carchemish, though some have speculated that he worked as a spy for Lawrence behind the enemy lines in Syria. Indeed, one of Lawrence's British machine gunners, Thomas Beaumont, claimed to have met Dahoum, and alleged that his real name now that he was "a grown man and past the nickname stage" was Salim Ahmed, but since Beaumont frequently made up stories about Lawrence to sell to the press later on, this is doubtful. In any case, Dahoum was unreachable to Lawrence. Daud and Farraj had played something of the same role as Dahoum for him, though on Lawrence's part there was never the same intensity of feeling that he had for Dahoum, who was almost certainly the only person that Lawrence loved in every possible way except s.e.xually. Now he was alone.

When Lawrence arrived "in sight of Maan," on April 13, he found that Jaafar's Arab regulars had indeed captured a nearby railway station in the hope of tempting the Turkish garrison out into the desert to fight; but, carried away by their success, they had decided to make a full-scale a.s.sault on the town, despite the fact that they had neither the forces nor the artillery sh.e.l.ls to carry it off. It was another military failure. The plan was too complicated, involving three columns: the center one composed of Arab regulars and Auda's hors.e.m.e.n; the northern one, of more Arab regulars under Jaafar himself; and the southern one, of armored cars and Egyptian camelry, under Dawnay, since Joyce had been evacuated to Egypt with pneumonia at the last minute. When the British had failed to take Amman and had retired beyond Salt, the attack on Maan should in any case have been canceled, but it went forward anyway and miscarried badly, in the absence of a single commander who could pull the disparate forces together. Feisal himself was present, but did not attempt to fill a role as a battlefield commander. Lawrence went forward to watch the battle from a Ford car, instead of riding his usual camel, and was disappointed to see that even his old warhorse Auda Abu Tayi had done little to help the Arab regulars-Lawrence soon realized that it was a mistake to mix regulars and Bedouin forces, though he did not forgive Auda. The next day, when Auda entered Feisal's tent, and said, "Greetings, Lurens," Lawrence merely replied coldly, "Greetings for yesterday evening, Auda."

Lawrence went south to join Dawnay in yet another attack on the railway station at Mudawara, which this time was captured by a joint Arab-Egyptian force, aided by British armored cars. The victory sparked an epic splurge of looting (in which Lawrence managed to walk off with the station bell), and prolonged fighting between the Arabs and the Egyptians over the spoils. Lawrence quelled the disorder without raising his voice, "like the hypnotic influence of a lion-tamer," according to one witness. As usual the Arab force disintegrated as the men made for home with their loot, but Dawnay took his armored cars and the Egyptians south and destroyed nearly eighty miles of railway track, as well as seven stations and numerous causeways and bridges, severing the link to Medina. The town was now isolated; the Turks were left there until they chose to surrender.

Lawrence proposed to move north and destroy another eighty miles of railway line north of Maan, thereby isolating it like Medina; but first he and Dawnay sailed to Egypt, to meet with Allenby, only to learn to their dismay that, on the vague promise that "twenty thousand tribesmen" would come to their support, the British were proposing to advance on Salt again. Lawrence was infuriated that Allenby's staff was dealing with the Arabs directly, instead of going through him, and he was right. The promised tribesmen did not appear, having been bought off by a higher bid from the Turks. The subsequent British attack against the well-prepared Turkish defense failed, and the British were obliged to retreat back to the Jordan valley.

Lawrence was neither surprised nor completely displeased. He felt this experience would teach Allenby's staff a lesson-that communications with the Arab tribesmen were best left in his hands-and would reinforce the importance of Feisal as the one Arab leader the staff could trust. As for Allenby, he decided to make a virtue of necessity, and made plans to attack the Turks up the coast, while keeping their attention fixed on Salt and Amman.

While he was in Egypt Lawrence took advantage of the moment by persuading Allenby to give him 2,000 riding camels, which were made available by the imminent disbanding of the Imperial Camel Brigade and which would hugely improve the mobility of Feisal's army. Lawrence also received a commitment to make more aircraft available to bomb Turkish strongholds and destroy their communications. By May 1918 Lawrence was already a master of "combined operations," as they would become known in the next world war, involving irregular camel-mounted tribesmen and hors.e.m.e.n, armored cars operating far out in the desert, regular infantry, artillery, and "ground attack" aircraft. He was, in fact, one of the first to use aircraft to support ground attacks directly, with the enthusiastic help of Brigadier-General Geoffrey Salmond, commander of the Royal Flying Corps in the Middle East.

From May through July the war in what is now Jordan went on in a steady succession of raids, train and bridge demolitions, and hit-and-run attacks against the Turks. While Allenby prepared for his big offensive-for he, like Lawrence, was determined to take Damascus in 1918-Lawrence continued to put his life at risk to keep the Turks on the defensive to the east of the Jordan River and the Dead Sea. Much of this action was small-scale but desperate fighting. He wrote about one example with unusual frankness in Seven Pillars of Wisdom: Seven Pillars of Wisdom: "When combats came to the physical, bare hand against hand, I used to turn myself in. The disgust of being touched revolted me more than the thought of death and defeat.... Anyway I had not the instinct to sell my life dearly, and to avoid the indignity of trying not to be killed and failing, rode straight for the enemy to end the business, in all the exhilaration of that last and terrific and most glad pain of death." In this case, it turned out that the "enemy" were friendly tribesmen: they had donned the clothes of Turks whose post they had rushed, and at the last minute they recognized "Lurens." It is interesting that Lawrence was able to write so clinically about his revulsion at being touched, as well as the fact that he "felt fear, disgust, boredom, but anger very seldom," or that "Only once or twice, when I was alone and lost heart in the desert, and had no audience, did I break down." Lawrence apparently felt no revulsion at killing, except when he had to execute a friend. Long ago, he had set out to cut a notch in the stock of hisrifle for every Turk he shot, but he gave up after the fourth, either because he thought the notches boastful, or because this count no longer mattered to him-after all, he killed far more Turks with dynamite. "When combats came to the physical, bare hand against hand, I used to turn myself in. The disgust of being touched revolted me more than the thought of death and defeat.... Anyway I had not the instinct to sell my life dearly, and to avoid the indignity of trying not to be killed and failing, rode straight for the enemy to end the business, in all the exhilaration of that last and terrific and most glad pain of death." In this case, it turned out that the "enemy" were friendly tribesmen: they had donned the clothes of Turks whose post they had rushed, and at the last minute they recognized "Lurens." It is interesting that Lawrence was able to write so clinically about his revulsion at being touched, as well as the fact that he "felt fear, disgust, boredom, but anger very seldom," or that "Only once or twice, when I was alone and lost heart in the desert, and had no audience, did I break down." Lawrence apparently felt no revulsion at killing, except when he had to execute a friend. Long ago, he had set out to cut a notch in the stock of hisrifle for every Turk he shot, but he gave up after the fourth, either because he thought the notches boastful, or because this count no longer mattered to him-after all, he killed far more Turks with dynamite.

It is also interesting to note his awareness of the extent to which his courage required an "audience," which is something most men would not have admitted, and which perhaps explains the breakdown of his will at Deraa. Not many men can be this objective about their courage, or admit that they have areas of disabling fear. Every hero fears something, something, however unlikely or irrational, and Lawrence was no exception: he would rather have been killed than physically touched in any way by another human being. It is hardly surprising to learn that less than four years later Bernard Shaw would base the character of Saint Joan in part on Lawrence; indeed Sir Michael Holroyd writes in his biography of Shaw: "To some degree however unlikely or irrational, and Lawrence was no exception: he would rather have been killed than physically touched in any way by another human being. It is hardly surprising to learn that less than four years later Bernard Shaw would base the character of Saint Joan in part on Lawrence; indeed Sir Michael Holroyd writes in his biography of Shaw: "To some degree Seven Pillars of Wisdom Seven Pillars of Wisdom may be read as a cross-referring work to may be read as a cross-referring work to Saint Joan: Saint Joan: the two chronicles, Stanley Weintraub [a Shaw scholar] has suggested, providing a parallel between the saintly Maid and the ascetic Prince of the desert." Even Shaw's physical description of Joan in the play bears a startling resemblance to Lawrence's face: "an uncommon face: eyes very far apart and bulging as they often do in very imaginative people, a long, well-shaped nose with wide nostrils, a short upper lip, a resolute but full-lipped mouth, and handsome fighting chin." This is a perfect description of Lawrence's face in Augustus John's famous 1919 portrait, so much so that it reads like something of a private joke between Shaw and Lawrence, perhaps in payment for a number of suggestions Lawrence offered Shaw about the play. the two chronicles, Stanley Weintraub [a Shaw scholar] has suggested, providing a parallel between the saintly Maid and the ascetic Prince of the desert." Even Shaw's physical description of Joan in the play bears a startling resemblance to Lawrence's face: "an uncommon face: eyes very far apart and bulging as they often do in very imaginative people, a long, well-shaped nose with wide nostrils, a short upper lip, a resolute but full-lipped mouth, and handsome fighting chin." This is a perfect description of Lawrence's face in Augustus John's famous 1919 portrait, so much so that it reads like something of a private joke between Shaw and Lawrence, perhaps in payment for a number of suggestions Lawrence offered Shaw about the play.*

The failure to take Amman had consequences. As the b.l.o.o.d.y stalemate on the western front showed no sign of ending, and the war in the Middle East seemed to have slipped into a similar stalemate, the British government, which had antic.i.p.ated a surrender by the Turks, began once more to explore the possibility of a negotiated peace. Aubrey Herbert, Sir Mark Sykes's protege in the Arab Bureau, met in neutral Switzerland with Mehmet Talat Pasha, one of the triumvirate who governed Turkey, and the man who had carried out the Armenian genocide. That the British government was willing to negotiate with the most ruthless of the Turkish leaders shows to what extent the fortunes of war had suddenly s.h.i.+fted in Turkey's favor. The Bolshevik government had been quick to sign a peace treaty with Turkey, freeing it from any further threat to the east and north; the United States had not declared war on the Ottoman Empire; and the French, while antic.i.p.ating their share of the empire, had made only a minimal contribution to the war in the Middle East-just enough to stake their claim at the peace conference. When it came to Turkey, the British were on their own. They held Basra, Baghdad, and oil-rich Mosul, and Turkey might have been willing to give up the area that is now Iraq in exchange for peace-and a free hand to deal with the Arabs.

Inevitably the news of these negotiations made its way rapidly to the Middle East, further discouraging the Arabs' confidence in Britain. As a result Feisal's off-again, on-again secret negotiations with Jemal Pasha grew more intense and specific. If the British were willing to sell out the Arabs and negotiate with Turkey, why should the Arabs not seek the best terms they could get from the Turks? Lawrence seems to have been involved in the correspondence between Feisal and Jemal, or so Jeremy Wilson believes, arguing that "As contacts between the two sides were inevitable, it seemed best to know what was going on," and that Lawrence hoped in fact to control the correspondence. Given Lawrence's natural gift for duplicity and his close relations.h.i.+p with Feisal, it was perhaps inevitable for Lawrence to have become involved. In fact, he seems to have been alarmed both by the generosity of the terms Jemal was willing to offer and by Feisal's interest in them, and he took the extreme step of securing a copy of Jemal's latest letter "without Feisal's knowledge," and pa.s.sed the information on to Clayton in Cairo.

Lawrence was also involved in an even more delicate matter: Feisal's reaction to the Balfour Declaration, which was almost more troubling to the Arab leaders.h.i.+p than the Sykes-Picot agreement. Nowhere were the words of the declaration pa.r.s.ed with more attention than in the Middle East, where the deliberately ambiguous phrase "a national home for the Jewish people," so carefully crafted by Balfour and the cabinet* to steer a middle course between the Zionists' aspirations and the Arabs' fears, raised more questions than they had in London. In June Clayton arranged a meeting between Dr. Chaim Weizmann and Feisal "at Arab Headquarters." Clayton had stressed that "It is important that [Lawrence] should be present" at the interview, but Lawrence was up-country with Nasir, so Joyce took his place. to steer a middle course between the Zionists' aspirations and the Arabs' fears, raised more questions than they had in London. In June Clayton arranged a meeting between Dr. Chaim Weizmann and Feisal "at Arab Headquarters." Clayton had stressed that "It is important that [Lawrence] should be present" at the interview, but Lawrence was up-country with Nasir, so Joyce took his place.

No two men could have been more polite, or more careful to guard their real ambitions from each other, than Feisal and Weizmann (who combined an "almost feminine charm ... with a feline deadliness of attack"). But behind their diplomatic discussions about respect for the holy places of other monotheistic faiths, and the benefits that Jewish scientific, industrial, and agricultural knowledge, as well as capital, might bring to a new Arab state, it was apparent that what Hussein and his sons wanted was the maximum Jewish investment with the minimum number of Jewish settlers. Feisal's goodwill toward the idea of a "Jewish national home" was dependent on his father's getting everything he had been promised in the McMahon-Hussein correspondence of 1915. The implementation of the Balfour Declaration would, in the eyes of the Arab leaders.h.i.+p, therefore depend on whether the Sykes-Picot agreement was dropped or enforced. Hussein and his sons were anything but unsophisticated-they were very much aware of European and, more important, American sensitivity on the subject of Jews, a sensitivity which, being Semites themselves, they did not share. They were therefore carefully gracious about an event that they hoped would never happen, or, if it did happen, would take place under Arab political control. Lawrence would later meet with Weizmann in Jerusalem, and would conclude very realistically that whatever he said, Weizmann and his followers wanted a Jewish state, though Lawrence thought it might not happen for another fifty years. (Lawrence was off by twenty years, but he could hardly have predicted the effect the Holocaust would have on the creation of Israel.) Since the Zionists would come "under British colours," Lawrence was guardedly in favor of them, if only because he thought they might bring Jewish capital into Syria, and t