The worst thing about the Brethren is that they have learned Turkish methods of war and employ them even against Arabs who are not Brethren. A body of about a thousand of these fanatics came marching up in 1922 from the Central Oases in an eight-hundred-mile raid on Amman. They surprised a little village close to the railway, twenty miles south of Amman, and massacred every man, woman and child. The chief of the Faiz Beni Sakhr, however, caught them a day or two later and few escaped back to Arabia to tell the tale: no prisoners were taken. The Faiz victory was accidentally helped by a British aeroplane which happened to be flying over: the Brethren thought that it was going to bomb them and threw down their arms.
Against further inroads Abdulla has an efficient defence force with British advisers. It is unlikely that the Wahabi faith will spread to the settled country from the desert. The new prosperity in the north of the Arabic-speaking area since the departure of the Turks will discourage this. The railway south from Damascus is working again, but only as far as Maan and not very busily; a branch-line is, however, planned to Akaba.
Of Lawrence during this political period there are many stories which one day will be collected, true and false together, in a full-length ‘Life and Letters’ which this book does not, of course, pretend to be. I can, however, vouch for the truth of two or three typical ones. Lawrence went to Jiddah in June 1921 and tried to make the treaty with Hussein to which he refers in the letter that I have quoted. Hussein kept him arguing for two months in the heat, hoping to break down British opposition to his claim for a paramount position above other Arab princes, and finally put him off altogether, suggesting that he should continue the negotiations with his son Abdulla in Amman. Lawrence sent a cipher cable to Lord Curzon, the Foreign Minister. ‘Can do nothing with Hussein. Are you fed up or shall I carry on with Abdulla?’ Curzon, who was a stickler for the diplomatic phrasing of official despatches, asked his secretary: ‘Pray, what does this term fed up signify?’ The secretary, who had a sense of humour, replied, ‘I believe, my lord, that it is equivalent to “disgruntled.”’ ‘Ah,’ said Curzon, ‘I suppose that it is a term in use among the middle classes.’ When ‘carry on’ had also been explained, Curzon gave consent to the Abdulla negotiations and Lawrence carried them on. Meanwhile the secretary, a friend, had told him in a private letter of the ‘fed-up’ episode. So Lawrence, having successfully concluded his negotiations with Abdulla, again cabled to Curzon in cipher: ‘Have wangled things with Abdulla. Details follow by letter. Note, the necessary verb “wangle” is absent from the diplomatic cipher. I submit that a letter-group be allotted to it to save spelling it each time.’ The word is now in the cipher book.
A late member of the Foreign Office staff, who wishes to remain anonymous, has told me an even odder story of Lawrence and Lord Curzon. ‘It was at the first meeting of the British Cabinet held to discuss the Middle-Eastern situation. Curzon made a well-turned speech in Lawrence’s praise, introducing him. I could see Lawrence squirming at the praise, which he seemed to think was misplaced, and at the patronage. Lawrence already knew most of the ministers present. It was a very long speech and when it ended Curzon turned to Lawrence and asked him if he wished to say anything. Lawrence answered sharply, “Yes, let’s get to business. You people” (imagine Curzon addressed as “you people”!) “don’t understand yet the hole you have put us all into!” Then a remarkable thing happened. Curzon burst into tears, great drops running down his cheeks, to an accompaniment of slow sobs.
LAWRENCE AT VERSAILLES
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‘It was horribly like a mediæval miracle, the weeping of a church image. I felt dreadful; probably Lawrence did too. However, Lord Robert Cecil, who seemed to be hardened to such scenes, of which hitherto I only knew by hearsay, interposed roughly: “Now, old man, none of that!” Curzon wiped his eyes, blew his nose in a silk pocket-handkerchief, and dried up. And business proceeded.’
At Paris Lawrence had several rows with politicians and soldiers. The most sensational was in the hall of the Hotel Majestic, the headquarters of the British delegation. A major-general began treating him as an interfering young fellow who had no business to be poking his nose into matters that did not concern him. Lawrence retorted warmly. The general barked out, ‘Don’t dare to speak to me in that tone. You’re not a professional soldier.’ This stirred Lawrence. ‘No,’ said he, ‘perhaps I’m not; but if you had a division and I had a division, I know which of us would be taken prisoner.’
Throughout these years Lawrence lived in great retirement. The advertising of his Arabian adventure both by the Press and by Mr. Lowell Thomas’s cinema lecture-tour proved most unwelcome to him. He received an enormous mail, including, it is said, over fifty offers of marriage from unknown women, and was relentlessly and unsuccessfully pursued by lion-hunting hostesses. Most of the time that he was not writing his book or engaged in politics he spent reading, catching up with modern literature after a four years’ break, and looking at pictures and sculpture.