He returned to Cairo during the tail-end of the Peace Conference to collect his diaries and photographs of the war-period and on his way by Handley-Page was in a bad crash at Rome. Both the pilots were killed and Lawrence had three ribs and a collar-bone broken, with other injuries. It was at Paris that he began writing his book Seven Pillars of Wisdom, of which the next chapter will treat. In July 1919 he was demobilized and at the conclusion of the Peace Conference returned to London and lived there until November 1919, when he was elected to a seven-year research fellowship at All Souls’ College, Oxford. 1920 he again spent in London.
Meanwhile things were developing politically. After Clemenceau retired, the French Government’s attitude to Syria became stiffer, and the working agreement that had apparently existed was replaced by a veiled state of war. This soon gave an excuse for open hostilities, and Feisal, not himself resisting, was turned out of Damascus. He withdrew to Palestine and thence to Italy and England, where he pleaded to the British Government for help. Nothing could be done for him and he returned to Mecca. Here he lived for some while until he received an invitation, through his father, from influential elements in Bagdad to visit Mesopotamia as their nominee for the now vacant throne of that country. He obtained assurances from the British Government that his acceptance of the throne would be welcome to it; and was duly crowned in Bagdad with the assistance of Sir Percy Cox, the British High Commissioner.
It had seemed after Feisal’s expulsion from Damascus that Lawrence’s worst fears were realized, that having duped the Arabs with false hopes he had been unable even to win them a small degree of independence. But he did not give up hope. Finally, in February 1921, the crisis in Mesopotamia became so acute that Middle Eastern affairs were transferred to the sphere of the Colonial Office and the appointment was made of Mr. Winston Churchill as Colonial Minister. He sent for Lawrence and offered him the post of adviser to himself, with the promise of a fair deal if he would help to put things straight in the East. Lawrence consented on one condition, that the war-time pledges given to the Arabs should at last be honoured. His ‘straight means or crooked’ are plainly given in the following letter which he wrote to me in reply to certain queries of mine as to his motives and intentions during this very obscure period:
‘Events in Mecca had changed much between June 1919, when I found the Coalition Ministry very reluctant to take a liberal line in the Middle East, and March 1921, when Mr. Winston Churchill took over. The slump had come in the City. The Press, with help from many quarters, including mine, was attacking the expense of our war-time commitments in Asia. Lord Curzon’s lack of suppleness and subtlety had enflamed a situation already made difficult by revolt in Mesopotamia, bad feeling in Palestine, disorder in Egypt and the continuing break with Nationalist Turkey. So the Cabinet was half persuaded to make a clean cut of our Middle East responsibilities; to evacuate Mesopotamia, “Milnerize Egypt,” and perhaps give Palestine to a third party. Mr. Churchill was determined to find ways and means of avoiding so complete a reversal of the traditional British attitude. I was at one with him in this attitude: indeed I fancy I went beyond him in my desire to see as many “brown” dominions in the British Empire as there are “white.” It will be a sorry day when our estate stops growing.’
(The Lawrence who wrote that last sentence is difficult to reconcile with the nihilistic Lawrence without national predilections, but both are Lawrence—or rather Shaw—and you can take your choice.)
The War Office (under Sir Henry Wilson) was a strong advocate of Mesopotamian withdrawal, since the minimum cost of military occupation was twenty million pounds a year. Winston Churchill persuaded Sir Hugh Trenchard, the Air Chief of Staff, to undertake military responsibility there for less than a quarter that cost. The Royal Air Force was to be used instead of troops and the Senior Air Officer would command all forces in Irak. This was a new departure in Air history: but Sir Hugh Trenchard was confident in the quality of the men and officers under his command. And Lawrence, who advocated the change with all his powers, believed that such early responsibility would be the making of the young Service. (Lawrence again in a purposeful mood!)
But this policy would only be practicable if it were joined with a liberal measure of Arab self-government controlled by a treaty between Irak (the Arabic name for Mesopotamia) and Great Britain, instead of a Mandate. The Cabinet agreed after an eventful discussion and the new policy brought peace.
‘British and native casualties in the five years since the treaty was made with Irak have only been a few tens, whereas before the treaty they had run to thousands. The Arab Government in Irak, while not wholly free from the diseases of childhood, is steadily improving in competence and self-confidence. There is a progressive reduction in the British personnel there. The country has financial independence in sight. Our aim is its early admission to the responsibility of membership of the League of Nations. Our hope is that it will continue its treaty relations with Great Britain in return for the manifest advantages of intimate connection with so large a firm as the British Empire.
‘I told Lloyd George at Paris that the centre of Arab Independence will eventually be Bagdad, not Damascus, since the future of Mesopotamia is great and the possible development of Syria is small. Syria now has 5,000,000 inhabitants, Irak only 3,000,000. Syria will only have 7,000,000 when Irak has 40,000,000. But I envisaged Damascus as the capital of an Arab State for perhaps twenty years. When the French took it after two years, we had to transfer the focus of Arab nationalism at once to Bagdad; which was difficult, since during the war and armistice period British local policy had been sternly repressive of all nationalist feeling.
‘I take to myself credit for some of Mr. Churchill’s pacification of the Middle East, for while he was carrying it out he had the help of such knowledge and energy as I possess. His was the imagination and courage to take a fresh departure and enough skill and knowledge of political procedure to put his political revolution into operation in the Middle East, and in London, peacefully. When it was in working order, in March 1922, I felt that I had gained every point I wanted. The Arabs had their chance and it was up to them, if they were good enough, to make their own mistakes and profit by them. My object with the Arabs was always to make them stand on their own feet. The period of leading-strings could now come to an end. That’s why I was at last able to abandon politics and enlist. My job was done, as I wrote to Winston Churchill at the time, when leaving an employer who had been for me so considerate as sometimes to seem more like a senior partner than a master. The work I did constructively for him in 1921 and 1922 seems to me, in retrospect, the best I ever did. It somewhat redresses, to my mind, the immoral and unwarrantable risks I took with others’ lives and happiness in 1917–1918.