English statesmen, from the Premier downwards, weep tears over the burden thrust on us in Mesopotamia. “If only we could raise a local army,” said Lord Curzon, “but they will not serve” (except against us, his lordship no doubt added to himself). “If only we could find Arabs qualified to fill executive posts.”
In this dearth of local talent the parallel of Syria is illuminating. Feisal had no difficulty in raising troops, though he had great difficulty in paying them. However, the conditions were not the same, for he was arbitrarily deprived of his Customs’ revenue. Feisal had no difficulty in setting up an administration, in which the five leading spirits were all natives of Bagdad. It was not a very good administration, but in the East the people are less exigent than we are. Even in Athens Solon gave them not the best laws, but the best they would accept.
The British in Mesopotamia cannot find one competent person, but I maintain that the history of the last few months has shown their political bankruptcy, and their opinion should not weigh with us at all. I know ten British officials with tried and honourable reputations in the Sudan, Sinai, Arabia, Palestine, each and all of whom could set up an Arab Government comparable to Feisal’s, in Bagdad, next month. It also would not be a perfect government, but it would be better than Feisal’s for he, poor man, to pull him down, was forbidden foreign advisers. The Mesopotamian effort would have the British Government behind it, and would be child’s play for a decent man to run, so long as he ran it like Cromer’s Egypt, not like the Egypt of the Protectorate. Cromer dominated Egypt, not because England gave him force, or because Egypt loved us, or for any outside reason, but because he was so good a man. England has stacks of first-class men. The last thing you need out there is a genius. What is required is a tearing up of what we have done, and beginning again on advisory lines. It is no good patching with the present system. “Concessions to local feeling” and such like rubbish are only weakness-concessions, incentives to more violence. We are big enough to admit a fault, and turn a new page, and we ought to do it with a hoot of joy, because it will save us a million pounds a week.
When in Arabia I would occasionally draw Lawrence into conversation about the statesmen and leaders of the day. He invariably had something amusing to tell about each. It was from him that I first learned that Mr. Lloyd George employed a barber to visit No. 10 Downing Street daily to dress his famous head of hair.
On another occasion I asked him to tell me something about Lord Curzon, he replied: “In order to give you an idea what Lord Curzon is like I must explain to you his outlook on life. Lord Curzon divides all the inhabitants of this earth into two groups, the masses and the classes. The classes are Lord Curzon and the king. Everybody else belongs to the masses.”
So while we were still at Covent Garden Opera-House, when I heard a story about Lawrence and his first meeting with the aloof and pompous marquis, I recalled what the colonel had said to me about his lordship in Arabia.
Lawrence’s name was on every one’s lips at that time, and the anecdote is a good one whether true or not. I will recount it as told to me:
“Lord Curzon said to one of his satraps at the Foreign Office: ‘I say, who is this person, Lawrence? See that he is brought into our presence.’ Eventually another member of the cabinet unearthed the hero of Arabia and lured him to the Foreign Office. When ushered before the Great One, the latter waved his meek-looking and diminutive visitor into a chair and proceeded to deliver a lecture on the Near East to this young man who was an authority on the subject. Lawrence stood it as long as he could, and finally, unable to restrain himself longer, he said to the noble marquis: ‘But, my dear man, you don’t know what you are talking about!’”
Even while fighting in the desert Lawrence had foreseen the complications that were going to arise after the war was over; and, as noted before, in his advance on Damascus he was extremely anxious that Emir Feisal’s men should enter the city ahead of the British and French because he realized this would make it doubly difficult for the Allies to disregard their friends the Arabs when the tumult and shouting was over.
Lord Winterton, who was with the Arab forces during the fighting around Damascus, in an article in “Blackwood’s Magazine,” pays an eloquent tribute to Lawrence and tells us how he was always thinking far in advance of the problem of the moment.
“I am of the opinion,” writes the Earl, “that we owed much in those few days, before we finally effected a junction with the British, to the good generalship displayed by General Nuri, backed by L.’s advice and genius for thinking ahead of nine people out of ten.” Then in another place Lord Winterton adds: “He had no intention that the Arabs should take a back seat in the final destruction of the Turkish army. There were political as well as military considerations at stake, as the Arabs knew well, and L. was only playing on a highly keyed-up instrument. L. infected us all with his enthusiasm, and I began to feel, despite my temperamental dislike of adventure qua adventure, that it would be monstrous, if when the Turkish fox came to be broken up, the British got the body, head, and brush, and the Arabs, who had helped to hunt him for three and a half years, only got a bit of the pad. If we were in at the military death of Turkey, ‘Brer Fox,’ it would make it the more difficult to refuse the Arabs a big share of the results—spoils, if you will—of the victory.”
