I should like to use Lawrence’s own words in defining just what the Arabian movement means. “There is no reason to expect from the Arabian movement,” Lawrence told me, “any new development of law or economics. But Feisal has succeeded in restating forcibly the vital doctrine of the Semites, Other Worldliness; and his ideals will have a profound effect on the growing nationalist movements in Syria, Mesopotamia, Arabia, and Palestine, which are the present homes of Semitic political life.
“It is like watching the waves of the Atlantic coming in and breaking themselves against the cliffs of the west coast of Ireland. To look at them you would say the cliffs were made of iron, and the waves quite futile. But when you study a map you see that the whole coast is torn open by the wearing of the sea, and you realize that it is only a matter of time before there will cease to be an Irish question. In the same way the successive Semitic protests against the material world may seem simply so much waste effort, but some day the Semitic conviction of the other world may roll unchecked over the place where this world has been.
“I rank Feisal’s movements as one more protest against the utter uselessness of material things. I was only trying to help roll up the wave, which came to its crest and toppled over when we took Damascus. It was just rolling up the Arabs in a tremendous effort and joining the whole nation together in pursuit of an ideal object that had no practical shape or value. We were expressing our entire contempt for the material pursuits exalted by others, from money-making to making statues.”
Lawrence expresses the conviction that the Arabian movement is nothing more than a protest against outside interference. This time the protest has been directed against Turkey, but the next time it may be launched against France, Italy, Britain, or any Western nation that develops a tendency to be disregardful of another people’s deep-seated racial sentiments.
“When you can understand the point of view of another race, you are a civilized being,” once remarked Lawrence to me in the desert. “I think that England (out of sheer conceit, and not because of any inherent virtue in my countrymen) has been less guilty in its contacts than other nations. We do not wish other people to be like us, or to conform to our customs, because we regard imitation of ourselves as blasphemous.”
Later on, in Paris, Lawrence summed up for me the whole Near Eastern situation in a few words. He is of the opinion that France, in receiving the mandatory for Syria, is merely obtaining control of a temporary phase of the Arabian movement.
“The Hedjaz will be absorbed in a few years by an Arabian state to the north of it. Damascus has always been the center of Arabian self-determination, but Syria is a small country and too poor to look forward to a great agricultural or industrial future. It acts merely as a front door to Kurdistan, Armenia, and Mesopotamia. When Western enterprise restores Assyria and Babylonia to their former level of agricultural prosperity, and when advantage has been taken of the mineral wealth of Armenia and the cheap fuel of Mesopotamia, then the Arabian center will inevitably be transferred from Damascus eastward to Mosul, Bagdad, or some new capital. Mesopotamia has three times the irrigable area of Egypt. Egypt now has a population of more than thirteen millions, while there are only five millions in Mesopotamia. In the near future Mesopotamia will increase to forty millions, and Syria, which now has a population of three million five hundred thousand, will have perhaps five million. This is rather a bad outlook for Syria. But no matter where the center of Arabian gravity may shift, nothing can change the Arabian Desert and the ideals of its people.”
Despite Lawrence’s desire to live in retirement, with only his books for his companions, his countrymen would not listen to it. When Winston Churchill took up the cabinet post of colonial secretary, one of the first things he did was to force Lawrence to come and help the Government straighten out the Near East tangle. He appointed Lawrence adviser on Near Eastern affairs, and the latter reluctantly agreed to remain at the Colonial Office for just one year. During this time the Mesopotamian problem was solved along the lines that Lawrence had originally suggested, and Emir Feisal was called to Bagdad and made king of Iraq, the modern successor to the great Calif Harun al Rashid of Arabian Nights fame. Thus Feisal, despite the fact that he had lost the throne of Syria, became the founder of a new Mesopotamian dynasty and the ruler of a far more important state.
CHAPTER XXXI
THE SECRET OF LAWRENCE’S SUCCESS