The prospect of the French installed in Syria disturbed Kitchener and his acolytes in Cairo. On 16 March 1915, he warned the Cabinet that once the war had ended ‘old enmities and jealousies which had been stilled by the existing crisis in Europe may revive,’ and he predicted that Britain might again find herself at ‘enmity with Russia or with France’ as she had been before the entente cordiale of 1904. France had been deeply aggrieved by Britain’s occupation of Egypt and in 1898 an expedition led by Colonel Marchand had challenged Britain’s control of the Nile at Fashoda. Kitchener with superior forces had politely expelled the intruder and for a few months a war had seemed likely. Wingate and Clayton, both officers in Kitchener’s army, had been eyewitnesses to the clash. For six years after there had been fears that the French would seek revenge for the humiliation. Tucked away in Cairo’s military files were contingency plans for the defence of Egypt against a Franco–Russian invasion, drawn up in the early 1900s with Kitchener’s advice. The Egyptians would welcome the invaders and the British garrison would be overwhelmed, but final rescue would come in the form of the men-of-war from Malta, which would destroy the enemy’s fleet in a second battle of the Nile.
Lawrence appears to have seen these plans; certainly, he knew of them. A revised version was offered to Hogarth in a letter of 18 March 1915 in which Lawrence foresaw the terrifying consequences of France being let into Syria:
In the hands of France it [Alexandretta on the Syrian coast, now Iskanderun] will provide a sure base for naval attacks on Egypt — and remember with her in Syria, and compulsory service there [since the 1840s France had used her colonies in Senegal and Algeria as reservoirs of soldiers], she will be able any time to fling 100,000 men against the canal in 12 days from declaration of war.
This was the nightmare which was haunting Kitchener and officials in Cairo. Lawrence had been completely swept away by their strategic dogma and, like all converts, he preached his new faith with a wild zeal. His parents were told on 20 February 1915, ‘So far as Syria is concerned it is France and not Turkey that is the enemy.’ On 22 March, Hogarth was told that if successful, which it was not, an alliance with Idrissi of the Yemen would mean that ‘we can rush right up to Damascus and biff the French out of all hope of Syria.’ Lawrence had both swallowed the ideas of Cairo’s imperialists and picked up the Hentyesque slang of the subaltern empire-builder.
Private apprehension mingled with public fears for the future safety of the empire. Lawrence’s objections to French paramountcy in Syria rested ultimately on his older fear that the Syrians would be irredeemably diminished by imported French culture and commercial exploitation. His views on this were reinforced by what he had seen in Egypt. ‘I only hope,’ he told Hogarth in April, ‘that Aleppo and Damascus will escape a little the fate that has come upon Cairo. Anything fouler than the town building, or its beastly people, can’t be.’ How unlike Karkamis, undefiled by the West, ‘a village inhabited by the cleanest and most intelligent angels’.
At about this time, Lawrence may have written his ‘Fragmentary Notes’ on Syria, destined presumably for the intelligence bulletin but never circulated, presumably on the advice of either Clayton or Newcombe, who may have been taken aback by their vehemence.21 According to Lawrence, francophile Beirut ‘produces nothing’ and was just a sewer through which ‘shop-soiled foreign influences flow into Syria’. The city was crammed with ‘Mohammedans talking and writing like the doctrinaire cyclopaedists who paved the way for the Revolution in France’. Many of these, political exiles, were already in Egypt but they spoke for no one since their home, Beirut, ‘is as representative of Syria as Soho is of the Home Counties’. So much for the French-educated elite who talked about the Rights of Man and wanted to modernise their country along Western lines. Worse still were the German Jews of the Zionist settlements who were ‘the most foreign, most uncharitable parts of the whole population’. Another immigrant community, the Algerians (expelled by Napoleon III in 1860), were lawless ruffians. Only the rural, patriarchal villages (like Jerablus) were praised. As to the future, Lawrence believed that Damascus, ‘a lodestone to which Arabs are naturally drawn’ and ‘a city which will not easily be convinced that it is subject to any alien race’, should become the centre of the region. Foreign protection was ruled out and Lawrence hoped that the area would be given just enough central government to preserve public order.
These views broke surface again and again whenever Lawrence was asked to give his opinions on the future of Syria. They were reactionary in so far as Lawrence wished to keep the region quarantined from external forces even though, as he had admitted, they already dominated Beirut. There was also a dash of true Toryism, since Lawrence wished to preserve existing religious and social institutions and his admiration for rural village life may have owed a little to his reading of William Morris’s idealised versions of medieval times. Implicit throughout was Lawrence’s assumption that, even in the form he desired, the new Syria would be created from above and by outsiders, not by Syrians.
While Lawrence’s formula for the new Syria may not have found many sympathisers among his colleagues, they all shared a common apprehension about the establishment of French colonies and bases in the region. The lead here came from Kitchener, whose views were transmitted through Maxwell and Clayton. Yet unlike Lawrence, who could indulge in reckless francophobia, his seniors had to be more circumspect since they had to deal personally with French officials and commanders. Furthermore, as Lawrence never appreciated, Britain depended heavily on French naval co-operation in the Mediterranean as her own fleet, by common consent, had been concentrated in home waters to face the German navy.
All these strands of intrigue came together during the spring and autumn when military and naval intelligence officers were ordered to produce extensive plans for an Allied landing at Alexandretta. Lawrence was a fierce partisan of the project and was involved in various stages of its preparation. It became something of an incubus, making him lose touch with reality. In 1929 he went so far as to tell Liddell Hart that ‘the Alexandretta scheme ... was, from beginning to end, my invention’, which was untrue. Liddell Hart knew this and prudently omitted Lawrence’s claim from his biography.22
Kitchener, not Lawrence, was the begetter of the Alexandretta scheme. Shortly before he left Egypt in 1914, he had discussed with Maxwell possible strategies in the event of a war with Turkey, which both men knew would imperil the Suez Canal. Kitchener favoured a swift, aggressive blow delivered against the newly modernised port of Alexandretta which, if successful, would enhance British prestige, humble Turkey and divert Turkish troops away from the canal. The plan had a further attraction since, once Alexandretta was taken, British forces would be well placed to move inland and sever the Berlin-Baghdad railway. Ottoman armies in Syria, Palestine, Arabia and Iraq would be cut off from Constantinople and a wedge would be driven into the Ottoman empire which could bring down the whole gimcrack structure.23
Maxwell, keen to take the offensive, reminded Kitchener of the plan in December 1914 but was told to be patient. Every reserve of men and energy was needed on the Western Front. In the meantime, Kitchener canvassed the Cabinet with the Alexandretta project, presenting it as a valuable secondary operation which would draw Turkish troops away from Gallipoli.
While Kitchener was persuading the Cabinet to approve the landing, Maxwell ordered his intelligence staff to gather information about the port and its hinterland. There was close co-operation with Naval Intelligence, which undertook offshore reconnaissance of possible landing sites, a task carried out by Lawrence’s Oxford acquaintance and sometime traveller in Syria, Harry Pirie-Gordon, now a commander. Lawrence was also busy with topographical work and on 15 January 1915 asked Hogarth for photos of the Beilan Pass which Maxwell was hoping he could seize by an inland cavalry dash after Alexandretta had fallen.
All involved were encouraged by a stream of reports which suggested that the local people would welcome the invasion and do all they could to
assist the landing force. Pirie–Gordon had watched the opéra bouffe scene on 23 December when Arab soldiers, based at Alexandretta, fired charges laid by bluejackets from HMS Doris, which blew up engines and rolling-stock. This extreme case of benevolent neutrality not only heartened intelligence staffs, but raised the question of whether dissident Arabs would desert en masse. Naval Intelligence was receiving reports early in January which revealed that dissatisfaction among Arab conscripts was so deep and widespread that they would throw down their arms the moment the British came ashore.24
Similar information was coming the army’s way. Clayton, who had taken charge of intelligence-gathering in the area, was told that there was much pro-British feeling among local communities. His Armenian agent, Joseph Catoni, formerly the Beirut Vice-Consul who had helped despatch the crates of antiquities excavated at Karkamis, was certain that local help would be forthcoming. He controlled Nasariyah chiefs and one of his ablest spies, ‘a Monocular Armenian’, had collected so many pledges of assistance from village headmen that GHQ intelligence were considering a campaign of guerrilla warfare to coincide with the landings.25
Catoni and his henchmen were also contributing to a body of evidence which suggested that there was a ‘widespread’ local wish for British occupation.26 Cautiously, Clayton approached the Foreign Office on 15 January to enquire what arrangements had been negotiated with France and Russia for the region’s political future. He did not think that the Syrians would accept a permanent British occupation and did not want Alexandretta in Russian hands. Neither did Lawrence, who on 18 March was pressing Hogarth to wake up the Admiralty to the dangers of Russian or French occupation of the port. There was no need to ring the alarm bell: Churchill, Lord Fisher, the First Sea Lord, and Lloyd George were well aware of the necessity to hold Alexandretta and in principle were sympathetic towards the operation to take it.
Clayton understood the military and propaganda value of swinging local Syrian opinion behind Britain, but he also thought that ‘partition of the Arab country between different powers would be deeply resented,’ a judgement he may have owed to Lawrence.27 Lawrence may also have been the author of a memorandum which argued that ‘there is amongst all classes and religions a very widespread desire for interference by Great Britain.’ A further report prepared in January 1915 reflected views which Lawrence would hold later on Arab national feeling: ‘Judiciously nurtured, this national sentiment might in a few generations create an Arabspeaking nation, prepared to claim in the British Empire, such a part as India is now beginning to take.’28 With the Arabs under British tutelage, imperial strategic needs would be met. Furthermore, and this would have appealed to Lawrence, French claims would be utterly confounded.
Planning ahead for Alexandretta brought the possibility of an alliance with the Arabs into the forefront of intelligence thinking. Clayton, with a background of practical administration, was opposed to a burdensome protectorate which might meet resistance.29 Lloyd was instinctively annexationalist. Where did Lawrence stand? He agreed that Alexandretta had to become a British naval base which would serve to guard the canal, and he wanted Syria closed to French influence and left to what amounted to her own devices. If this was impractical, the only alternative was indirect British control, which might be more sensitive to local customs than French.
All these solutions were in the end pipe–dreams. In mid–March the Cabinet decided to shelve the scheme. The French had deep misgivings about the plan and their approval and co–operation were essential for the larger operation against the Straits. Furthermore, neither ally possessed enough warships, transports and reserves to mount two simultaneous seaborne landings. The Gallipoli invasion would go ahead; the Alexandretta diversion was abandoned. It had, however, given the French food for dark thoughts about the sort of coup de main the British might deliver in an area pledged to them. On 4 May, Woolley repeated to Newcombe a conversation he had just had with Admiral D’Artigi de Fourneir in which the Frenchman said that, as soon as men could be spared from the Dardanelles, a landing force of 30,000 would be put ashore to occupy the hinterland of Alexandretta and Adana, a region he believed the British wanted for themselves.
In September 1915, when he realised that the Gallipoli expedition was running out of steam, Clayton suggested the revival of the Alexandretta project to the Foreign Office. He had already put the idea to naval colleagues and had been told they favoured an assault on Ayas Bay, twenty–eight miles north of the original landing place.30 His plea was ignored, but by the end of October, when the time had come for a clear–cut decision on the future of the Gallipoli front, the Syrian project was again on the agenda. On 4 November Kitchener, then at Marseilles on his way to the eastern Mediterranean, ordered Colonel Guy Dawnay to collect the old Alexandretta plans from Cairo. It was a fool’s errand, since GHQ intelligence had mislaid the relevant files, but, as Dawnay recalled, Clayton and Lawrence came forward with a fresh project. ‘I was put on to Ayas Bay by Bertie Clayton and T.E. Lawrence ... owing to the fact that we could not find a copy of the official Alexandretta scheme in Cairo.’31 In a hugger-mugger rush, Dawnay, Clayton, Lawrence and Philip Graves cobbled together a completely new operational plan. What Lawrence called the ‘unnecessary’ effort took thirty-six hours, which gave Dawnay enough time to take ship from Alexandria on 8 November. Two days later the papers were read over and approved by Kitchener, Maxwell, Generals Monro and Birdwood (the Dardanelles commanders), Admiral de Robeck and McMahon at their conference on Mudros Island.
They had been pondering gloomily on the prospects of the Gallipoli campaign, which Monro wanted to terminate and whose lack of headway was provoking public criticism of the government. More was at stake than reputations, since Kitchener believed that evacuation from Gallipoli would indelibly tarnish Britain’s prestige throughout the Muslim world. Another aggressive gesture, this time against the Syrian coast, would therefore be a timely reminder that Britain still held the initiative. The War Cabinet was not impressed. On 17 November the Ayas Bay plan was dismissed without discussion at a conference of Allied ministers and commanders in Paris. Militarily it squandered men and resources needed in France and Flanders, and politically it created a rift between Britain and her ally. The French suspected that the project was a thinly disguised piece of legerdemain designed to promote British interests in Syria at the expense of theirs. The French Commander–in–Chief, Marshal Joffre, was particularly incensed and threw a tantrum, threatening to resign if the plan was adopted. The ruffled French demanded and got British assistance for another gamble: reinforcement of the expeditionary force at Salonika, which was there to shore up the faltering Serbs (who were soon knocked out of the war) and to encourage Roumania and Greece to join the entente. It was Kitchener’s turn for fury and he warned Asquith by telegram that the decision would cheer the Germans and Turks and dishearten the Arabs, who would now think again before seeking Britain’s friendship.32 Other voices, from Cairo and the Admiralty, joined the chorus of dismay. For a further six months a persistent lobby, which included Lawrence, kept up the backstairs pressure in Cairo for opening a Syrian front through Alexandretta.
Lawrence was not only galled by what he regarded as mistaken deference to any ally; his pride was bruised. Soon after the news reached Cairo that the Ayas Bay project was off, the War Office staff sent out a detailed criticism of its planning. Cairo’s HQ staff were out of touch with the realities of modern war since they seemed unaware that experience on the Western Front proved that at least 160,000 and not 100,000 men would be needed to defend the proposed perimeter around the beachhead. There was also, the War Office noticed, vagueness about just how many Turkish troops would be deployed to throw back the invaders. Lawrence later shifted the blame for miscalculations on to Clayton, who, he said, had reduced his and Graves’s estimates. He could not sidestep the final criticism of the plan which questioned its broad strategic aims. A landing in Syria ‘offended against the fundamental principle of strategy’ since, even if it succeeded
, it would have done nothing to harm the Allies’ most formidable adversary, the German army. Moreover the plan created mischief because, if carried out, it would drive a wedge between Britain and France. For the first but not last time, the War Office called in question the competence and reasoning of officers in GHQ Cairo and in its intelligence section in particular.
III
A Secret War
By the beginning of 1916 Lawrence found himself increasingly immersed in the secret war of subversion and counter-subversion being waged between Britain and Turco-German intelligence services in the Middle East. Hitherto his routine duties had brought him into only occasional contact with this struggle. It offered exciting opportunities for adventure and he was keen to join in. The chance had almost come in March 1915 when he believed he was about to be ordered to the Yemen and he was full of schoolboy enthusiasm. ‘It’s a big game, and at last one worth playing,’ he told Hogarth. The players were secret agents who penetrated their enemy’s territories with gold, guns, promises and propaganda with which to stir up unrest and tribal rebellions. Turco-German agents appealed to the religious zeal of Muslims, their British counterparts preached Arab nationalism. Those who waged this new kind of warfare needed courage, daring and imagination, and were free to make their own rules.
The contest had begun on 23 November 1914 in Constantinople, where the Sultan Mehmed V had declared a jihad or holy war against the Allies. He spoke as Caliph, the successor to Muhammad and spiritual leader of the world’s Sunni Muslims. He called on them to unite and make common cause with Turkey in defence of their endangered faith. The ‘Muscovite government’ and its allies had unleashed a war for the destruction of Islam. The past record of British, French and Russian colonisation was clear evidence of their malevolence.1 ‘The Alliance which calls itself the Triple Entente has during the past century stolen the political independence, governments and freedom of the Muslims of India, Central Asia and much of Africa.’
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