As to what will happen to Lawrence in the future, only Allah knows. One thing is certain, that he will not permit his country to make a hero out of him. The maker of history has once more become the student of history. But Lawrence may live to see the effect of the wave that he rolled up out of the desert, in the form of an important new power in the East. As a result of the Arabian war of liberation, which was not a foolish dream on paper, and as a result of Allenby’s smashing campaign in Palestine and Syria, three new Arabian states have come into existence: the kingdom of Hedjaz under Hussein I, of Mecca; the independent state of Transjordania under Hussein’s second son, the Sultan Abdullah; and the kingdom of Iraq in Mesopotamia, where Hussein’s third son, King Feisal I, occupies the throne. It is the dream of these three, assisted by Hussein’s eldest son, the Emir Ali, who remains in Mecca, one day to form a United States of Arabia.
Much depends on King Feisal. Colonel Lawrence played the dominate part in making him the greatest Arab in five centuries. But the task before Feisal is stupendous. He has vision and high ideals for his people. Will he be strong enough to maintain his position in Bagdad and remain the leading figure in the Arabian world? Events are now moving swiftly in the Near East. If King Feisal can, through the quiet force of his personality, continue the work of wiping out the ancient quarrels between the tribes and cities of the desert in which task he and his father and brothers were given such effective help by Lawrence, and if the nations of the West will send railway, sanitary, and irrigation engineers and disinterested military and political advisers; coöperate in the establishment of schools; and lend financial support, the glory that once was Babylon’s may come again in Mesopotamia. The future of King Feisal and his brothers may be the future of Arabia. None may know the end of the story. But one thing is certain, and that is that Feisal, like his romantic predecessor, Harun al Rashid of the Arabian Nights, is a just and merciful monarch; but had it not been for the youthful Lawrence, Feisal would not be ruling in Bagdad to-day, nor would his brother Abdullah be the sultan of Transjordania, nor would the Arabs recently have had the opportunity to proclaim King Hussein as the Calif of all Islam and Commander of the Faithful. For it was this young man who destroyed the thousand-year-old network of blood-feuds, who built up the Arabian army, who planned the strategy of the desert campaign and led the Arabs into battle, who swept the Turks from a thousand miles of country between Mecca and Damascus, who was the brains of the epic Arabian campaign and rode in triumph through the bazaars of Damascus, and established a government for Prince Feisal in the capital of Omar and Saladin, the oldest surviving city in the world. But without a complete understanding of the mentality and instinct of Arabia, and without a sincere love for the peoples of the desert, this would never have been possible. Nor is it surprising that with such love and understanding from such a man, translated into successful policies and glorious deeds, he won the adoration of the Arab race.
Little did young Lawrence dream, when he was studying Hittite ruins, that it was his destiny to play a major rôle in building a new empire, instead of piecing together, for a scholar’s thesis, the fragments of a dead-and-buried kingdom. Captain Tuohy has tersely said in his brief note in “The Secret Corps,” for “romantic adventure his career has probably been unexampled in this or in any other war.”
This twenty-eight-year-old poet and scholar had started across the Arabian Desert in February, 1916, to raise an army, accompanied by only three companions. I do not know of a more helpless task than this that has been essayed during the last thousand years. They at first had no money, no means of transportation except a few camels, and no means of communication except camel-riders. They were trying to raise and equip an army in a country which has no manufacturing interests, which produces very little food and less water. In many parts of Arabia water-holes are a five days’ camel trek apart. They had no laws to help them, and they were trying to raise an army among the nomadic Bedouin tribes that had been separated from one another by blood-feuds for hundreds of years. They were trying to unify a people who quarrel over the possession of the water-holes and pasture-lands of Arabia, and war with one another for the possession of camels; a people who, when they meet one another in the desert, usually substitute volleys of pot-shots for the conventional rules of Oriental courtesy.
In habit, instinct, and mental outlook Europe is utterly at variance with Asia, and it is rarely, only once in hundreds of years, that there comes forward some brilliant Anglo-Saxon, Celt, or Latin who, possessing an understanding that transcends race, religion, and tradition, can adopt the Eastern temperament at will. Such men were Marco Polo, the Venetian, and General Charles Gordon. Such a man is Thomas Edward Lawrence, the modern Arabian knight.
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