Lawrence believes that Feisal has a combination of qualities admirably fitting him for the leadership of the new Arab state which may rise out of the ashes of the old Ottoman Empire. Lawrence is of the opinion that Feisal will go down in history, next to Mohammed and Saladin, as the greatest Arab who ever lived. He was and still is the soul of the Arab movement. He lives only for his ideals and for his country. His only thought is for the future of Arabia. That he and his father were liberal-minded enough to take advantage of the genius and unique ability of a European unbeliever, a mere youth many years their junior, seems incredible to any one who knows the Mohammedans of the Near East, because, to the average Moslem Arab, all Christians are dogs; but King Hussein and his enlightened son even went so far as to accept their fair-haired British advisor as a fellow-Arabian prince and an honorary shereef of Mecca, a title which had always been reserved in the past for direct descendants of the Prophet, and which had never before been awarded to any other person, either Moslem or Christian.
CHAPTER XXX
LAWRENCE FLEES FROM LONDON, AND FEISAL BECOMES KING IN BAGDAD
After the peace conference, and after Emir Feisal had returned to Damascus, Lawrence vanished. Many of his friends thought that he had returned to Arabia to resume the rôle of mystery man. But I doubted this, for when I had last talked to him in Paris I had asked him point-blank if he intended to go back to the East in order to help the Arabs build up their new state. His answer was most emphatically in the negative.
“I am not going to return for some years—perhaps never,” he said. “It would not be for the good of the Arabs for me to be there. As a matter of fact, I haven’t the remotest idea of what I will do. The war has so completely upset my life that it may take me several years to find myself. In the meantime I hope to discover a secluded corner somewhere in England, far from war, politics, and diplomacy, where I can read a bit of Greek without being interrupted.”
His attitude regarding return to the Near East seemed to me another indication of his far-sightedness. During their war of liberation, the Arabs had followed Lawrence partly because of his own personality but mainly because he offered them a substitute for Turkish oppression. He well knew that as soon as the excitement of war disappeared his power over them would diminish. What would have happened if he had returned to the Near East? What would have been the outcome if he had temporarily gained a position of political authority equivalent to the military position he had attained in Arabia? It is conceivable that, because of his tremendous influence over the Arabs during the war, he might at the outset have had a large following. But in a few months some one would have raised the cry, “Away with the infidel!” If he had returned to Damascus simply in the capacity of advisor to Feisal, that alone might have undermined the emir’s hold over his people. The Arabs are jealous, fickle, and suspicious, and they would have accused Feisal of being a mere puppet. If Lawrence had craved power he might conceivably have made himself an Arabian dictator by turning Moslem. But nothing could have been more remote from his mind. He had not led the Arabs to gratify personal ambition. His sole motive was to defeat the Germans and Turks, and at the same time to help his friends the Arabs win their freedom.
While the peace conference was still in session, many people said to me that young Lawrence was the person best equipped to represent Great Britain in the Near East and that he no doubt would return to Syria and Arabia in an official capacity. But Lawrence’s one ambition was to take off his uniform, drop out of political and military life, and return to his archæological studies.
I asked Nuri Pasha, one of the generals on Emir Feisal’s staff in Paris, how the Arabs intended to repay Colonel Lawrence for his great service to their country. He replied: “We have offered him everything we have, but he refuses to accept anything. But if he will consent, we wish to give him the exclusive archæological rights to all the buried cities of Arabia and Syria.”
Lawrence had other plans, however.
For months after the Peace Conference not even his most intimate friends knew what had become of him. Meanwhile I had returned to America and started a tour of the continent presenting the pictorial records of the Allied campaigns which Mr. Chase and I had prepared. But we were unexpectedly invited to appear for a season at Covent Garden Royal Opera-House, London, a thing we had never dreamed might occur, because our material had been obtained solely for America. Naturally one of the first things I endeavored to do upon arrival in England was to find Colonel Lawrence. I wanted to show him what Auda Abu Tayi and the rest of his Arabian knights looked like on the screen. Both at the War Office and the Foreign Office no one seemed to know what had become of him. He had apparently vanished into the blue just as he used to do in the desert. But a fortnight later I received a note from him. All it said was: