Lawrence and the Arabs

by Robert Graves

XIV

What follows next is the brief and unsatisfactory story of what seems to have been the maddest and most dangerous adventure undertaken by any man in the whole course of the World War: a four-hundred-mile tour through the Turks’ country with visits to their key-positions, without any disguise but the unbelievable folly of the journey. Lawrence decided to visit Damascus and the railway to the north of it. The exact account of it he has never given, even in his Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and I have been unable to piece it together accurately from the casual fragments which he has from time to time given his friends. But the motive of the journey seems clear, and the fact of it is beyond dispute. At Nebk Lawrence had time to think about his own part in the Revolt, and was not pleased with it. He began to see clearly things that he had been hitherto content to put into the background.

First of all, he was more or less an Englishman and bound to the hope of staving off his country’s defeat. Successful war in the East, with the present deadlock in the West, might turn the scale and save further slaughter. Next, he was an Arab by adoption: the tribes trusted and loved him, and he was bound to do his honourable best for them. The Arabs could help the British to success while fighting their own war for freedom. So far, so good, but then came the difficulty. The Revolt had begun on false pretences. The British Government through the High Commissioner of Egypt had agreed to Sherif Hussein’s demand for Arab freedom not only in Arabia but in parts of Syria and Mesopotamia, ‘saving the interests of our ally France.’ This clause concealed the secret Sykes-Picot treaty between England, France and Russia, in which it was agreed to annex some of the promised areas and establish ‘spheres of influence’ over the rest: in fact there was no genuine freedom possible. The High Commissioner had not been told beforehand of this treaty and so the Sherif did not know about it either. What apparently had happened was that the Foreign Office had two departments, each responsible for one of these agreements, and neither had taken the other into proper confidence. The High Commissioner, it may be noted, when instructed by the Government to make the agreement, had sent a strongly worded message of warning. He had said that in helping the Nationalist cause in Arabia a most dangerous thing was being done. Freedom for the Arabs might grow one day into a Frankenstein’s monster: and he urged that great care should be taken to deal honourably with the Arab leaders; particularly he recommended that a single Government Department should be entrusted with all negotiations.

The Russian revolution took place in the spring of 1917, and the Bolsheviki published the secret treaty, copies of which the Turks sent about where they would do harm to England. Nuri had just had a copy sent him and confronted Lawrence with it; it was a great shock to Lawrence to be asked which of two contradictory pledges was to be believed. Lawrence did not know what to answer; he felt that the most honourable thing to do would be to send the Arabs home, and yet perhaps only by Arab help could the war in the East be won. So he said that England kept her word in letter and spirit, and that the later pledge cancelled the former treaty. This comforted Nuri, and the Arabs thereafter trusted Lawrence and fought finely with him: but instead of being proud he was bitterly ashamed of his deception. Later, he quieted his conscience as well as he might by telling Feisal all he knew and by refusing all decorations, rank and moneys that his part in the Revolt brought him personally. He would make the Revolt so well-armed a success that the Powers could not in honour or common sense rob the Arabs of what they had won: and he would fight another battle for the Arab Cause in the Council Chamber after the War ended.

But this was not all. He knew now that the War was entering another stage. In Syria the reputation of England was powerful and the reputation of the Bedouin leaders and of Mecca was low. He was the only man who, knowing the Syrians from before the War and having the confidence of the Arabians and being a representative of England, could carry the Revolt successfully north. All the responsibility fell on him. Was he strong enough to undertake it? He never had counted himself a man of action; books and maps were more in his line and he had left the Cairo office only under protest. And, again, towards what freedom was he leading the Arabs? A Confederation of Arab States, even if such could be founded against the wishes of France and England, would be necessarily the inheritor of the Turkish Empire. Town Syrians like Nesib and Zeki would run these states: their Governments might be more enterprising than the Turkish Government, but would be as corrupt; and the innocence and idealism of the desert Arabs on whose account alone he hoped for freedom would be infected by the filth of Damascus or Basra. Was the gift of freedom worth giving?

In this tangle of thought and shame he seems to have decided in Bedouin style to throw himself on the mercy of fate. He would go out on this mad ride and, so far from taking precautions, would expose himself to every possible danger. If the Turks were so foolish as to let him get back safely, they must pay the penalty of their folly, for he would carry the Revolt through to a finish with no more qualms. If they caught him, on the other hand, the Revolt would get no farther than the deserts of Arabia.

On June the third, 1917, in the fifth week of the journey from Wejh, he started off northward with a few of his body-guard and was away a fortnight. How he reached Damascus—he admits the visit—is not known, but it is possible that he went by way of the Druse mountains and the Lebanon, there visiting his friends the Christian Syrians, and that he turned south near Baalbek. He is said to have been convoyed by relays of local tribesmen, beginning with the Ruwalla, and changing them at each tribal boundary. Apparently none of his own men nor of Nasir’s completed the journey with him. He is said to have been franked by private letters of Feisal’s, but, as I say, nothing certain is known of his immediate purpose, his route or the results of his journey. At Ras Baalbek, south of Hama, considerably beyond Damascus and Baalbek, the farthest points associated by rumour with his journey, there was an important bridge over which all the railway traffic between Constantinople and Syria passed. An intercepted enemy report of that month mentions the destruction of the bridge and one hesitates to regard this as a coincidence; yet its demolition must have meant the use of a great deal of explosive and Lawrence appears to have ridden light.

Of the Damascus visit little more than negative information can be given. Lawrence neither dined, lunched nor breakfasted with Ali Riza Pasha the Governor (as Mr. Lowell Thomas and others have stated), nor did he then or at any time since set eyes on Yasin, another Arab patriot. But it seems that he made arrangements with prominent members of the Freedom Committee in Damascus for the action to be taken when the Turks were finally expelled. There is a circumstantial story current that he rode into Damascus in English uniform on a camel and that seeing a notice pasted up offering a large reward for the capture alive or dead of ‘El Orens, Destroyer of Railways,’ with a portrait at the top, he decided to put the matter to a supreme test; he sat down to coffee under one of these notices: but, nobody connecting the man and the portrait, after an hour or two he went on. That while he was in the city the men with him camped outside the walls in a cherry orchard: that there they were disturbed by some inquisitive Turkish policemen who, however, lie buried under the cherry trees. The poster story at least is untrue: none such were put up, nor was any camera-portrait of enlargeable size available. On the positive side, Lawrence has told me that he was never disguised during this ride, either as a woman or as anything else, but instead put off necessary visits to dangerous places until after darkness had set in. In the dark his figure could not be distinguished from that of any other Arab of the desert fringe. And the reference in Seven Pillars of Wisdom to his usually wearing British uniform when visiting enemy camps may well refer to a practice begun on this ride. Whether or no he regarded Damascus as a ‘dangerous place’ I cannot say. Other picturesque incidents reported of this journey are as demonstrably untrue as the poster story. For instance, the Lowell Thomas account of his attempted visit to a military academy at Baalbek is disproved by there not having been a military academy there—only an infantry depot and a training camp. It is possible, though, that he visited these. Nor did he enter Rayak junction (‘for the purpose of inspecting the railway repair shops’—another story) during the War. He seems, however, to have visited one or more of the bridges over the River Yarmuk, of which an account will be given in a later chapter, and to have been at Ziza, the headquarters of the Beni Sakhr tribe.

At all events, Lawrence’s reticence about this ride is deliberate and based on private reasons, and it is my opinion that he has found mystification and perhaps statements deliberately misleading or contradictory the best way to hide the truth of what really happened, if anything of any serious importance did happen. His return journey was possibly by a Yarmuk bridge and across the Deraa-Amman railway to Azrak, and so to Nebk. I have marked the route, in the map, with dots to show my uncertainty.