Lawrence could never escape what he had become through his own and other people’s efforts. The best he could manage was publicly to admit he had cut himself off from his past and sought only obscurity and tranquillity. This plea did not convince many, who sensed that he still adored being the centre of attraction, and it was ignored by journalists for whom any story, real or imaginary, about the ‘Uncrowned King of Arabia’ was good copy. His eremetical existence added to the curiosity, as it did with Greta Garbo, the film star recluse, with whom Lawrence sympathised–‘The poor soul. I feel for her.’
There were compensations which Lawrence was less than willing to acknowledge. It was because he was Lawrence of Arabia, war hero, that All Souls College, Oxford granted him a fellowship. In the same guise he first penetrated the society of men of letters like Bernard Shaw and Thomas Hardy. The label was also a passport for social and political circles into which he might otherwise not have been invited. People he mixed with there soon discovered a remarkably intelligent, complex, charming but sometimes insufferable fellow determined to live life on his own terms.
PART SIX
MAKI.NG THE BEST OF IT
November 1918–May 1935
I
Diplomat, 1918-1919
For many of his contemporaries, the last part of Lawrence’s life seemed an untidy anticlimax to the glorious two years of adventure in the desert. Robert Graves, who knew him intimately from 1919, considered that his friend was ‘an intuitive, affectionate Galahad-like man of action who came a frightful crash before his war was over, and is to be judged hereafter a broken hero who tried to appear whole and make the best of it’. Vansittart, who observed Lawrence closely but from a distance, detected in him an ageless schoolboy who ‘did not grow up but grew older’, having lost his ‘vital spark’.1 Something more might have been expected after the promise of the early years, but it never materialised. Lawrence may have felt this and blamed it on the fact that he was part-Irish. ‘Irishmen are disappointing men,’ he told his friend, the writer Edward Garnett. ‘They go so far, magnificent, and cease to grow. They bring forth promise and less fruition than the rest of the English world massed against them.’
Yet Lawrence had retained his physical strength. Although he had ‘overexerted himself’ during the war, he proudly informed John Buchan that the ‘wreckage of his body’ had been judged fit for the rigours of service life by three doctors. Furthermore, his fragmented career as an author, translator, civil servant and aircraft mechanic confirmed that he possessed his former powers of concentration and quickness of mind.
Lawrence’s post-war collection of occupations was unplanned. Until at least October 1917 he had seen his future in terms of picking up old threads, such as his much postponed scheme to found a printing press. Looking beyond the war, he revealed to George Lloyd that ‘there was so much for him to do in the world, places to dig, peoples to help’, and discussed the possibility of a joint camel trek across Arabia. By now Lawrence’s foremost ambition was to write a book about his experiences. Lloyd heard something of this and thought his friend perfectly fitted to the task. ‘Generally,’ he wrote to Storrs, ‘the kind of man capable of these adventures lacks the pen and wit to record them adequately. Luckily Lawrence is gifted with both.’2 Lawrence started work on the Seven Pillars in Paris during the spring of 1919.
Unfinished business made it impossible for Lawrence to give all his attention to writing. His war had ended unsatisfactorily. Faisal’s position in Damascus was precarious, he depended upon British money and the kingdom Lawrence had promised him was occupied by an Allied army including a growing French contingent which, by the end of 1918, controlled the Lebanon. Worst of all, events had shown Lawrence that the British government was still inclined to implement the Sykes—Picot agreement and install the French in Syria, establish direct rule over Palestine and annex Iraq, leaving the Arabs with Hejaz.
All this was wormwood to Lawrence and, for the next four years, he hurled himself into the world of international diplomacy solely to help the Arabs achieve what he passionately believed was their rightful reward. It was more than a matter of natural justice: he felt personally affronted by the government’s apparent abandonment of the Arabs, whom he had led to expect more for their efforts. The promises which he had made to Faisal and others, perhaps rashly and certainly illicitly, were now exposed as worthless. They never had any substance, as the Arabs probably realised, for no mention of them was ever made to members of the Crane-King Commission in Syria during the summer of 1919, nor by Faisal when he confronted Lloyd George soon after in London. What mattered for Lawrence in what he called his ‘dog-fight’ in the corridors of power was that he vindicate his own integrity as well as secure Arab political rights.
The intensity and one-sidedness of Lawrence’s feelings made it impossible for him to think or act dispassionately. Vansittart, with whom he crossed swords several times during the Paris Peace Conference, recalled him as ‘too big for a cherub, too small for an angel, too angry for either’. Lawrence was never a natural civil servant, as Storrs recognised. ‘He was an individual force of driving intelligence, yet nothing of an administrator; having as much of the team spirit as Alexander the Great or Lloyd George.’ As ever, routine bored him and throughout the Paris conference he did as he pleased, much to the irritation of more punctilious officials. ‘Lawrence,’ Lord Hardinge complained, ‘used to come and go irrespective of any authority.’3
Curzon (who acted as Foreign Secretary while Arthur Balfour was in Paris) was exasperated by Lawrence’s uncritical, pro-Arab partisanship and at least once he was reduced to tears by his abrasiveness. Although Lawrence later thought this was something to crow about, it had been a petty triumph, since the Marquess often wept publicly. In this case he had good reason, because Lawrence’s intemperate language constantly threatened to drive a wedge between Britain and France at a time when co-operation between the two powers was vital for a European peace settlement. Lawrence never understood this. ‘He has no belief in an Anglo-French understanding in the East,’ wrote the diplomat George Kidston after hearing Lawrence’s views on the subject. ‘He regards France as our natural enemy in those parts and acts accordingly.’ Lawrence had not shed the francophobia he had first picked up in Cairo in 1914 and, characteristically, he never missed a chance to vent his prejudice. His exchanges with the French and those Foreign Office officials whose job it was to reach an accord with France were stormy, as Vansittart remembered. ‘Lawrence regarded perfidy to our Allies [the French] due to his protégés [the Arabs] and looked askance at those concerned in the dirty work of keeping our word.’4
Curzon feared that Lawrence encouraged Faisal’s stubbornness and made him unreceptive to French offers over Syria. In July 1919, when Faisal was expected to return to Paris, Curzon insisted that he be kept apart from Lawrence since ‘further co-operation between these two will cause serious embarrassment with the French.’ Officials who had watched Lawrence at work were more forthright. Archibald Kerr of the Foreign Office’s Eastern Department had ‘grave misgivings’ about his participation in future negotiations with Faisal. ‘We and the War Office feel strongly that he is to a large extent responsible for our troubles with the French over Syria,’ he told Vansittart. He concluded that if Lawrence again ‘bear lead him [Faisal] there is sure to be a recrudescence of our troubles with the French over Syria’. Sir Arthur Hirtzel of the India Office agreed and hoped that Lawrence would never be re-employed by any department. Vansittart was willing to concede that Lawrence could be useful. ‘If there is a settlement,’ he told Curzon, ‘the only way of reaching it–without bloodshed–is through Faisal and Lawrence alone could bring him to his senses.’ This was also Kidston’s view. If Lawrence was ‘properly handled’ he could make Faisal tractable.5
The root of the trouble was Lawrence’s divided loyalty. From Faisal’s arrival in London at the end of November 1918 until his departure from Paris the following April, Lawrence was his confidential counsello
r, bursar (managing his cash grant from the Foreign Office) and translator. Lawrence was also a servant of the British government from January 1919, holding the position of a technical adviser to the British delegation in Paris. As in the desert, he faced a clash of loyalties, although now his position was more exposed since, as the conference progressed, it was clear to everyone that he was out of step with his government’s Middle Eastern policies.
There was another parallel between Lawrence’s military and diplomatic careers. In both he took part in a sideshow, since Arab affairs were peripheral to the Paris negotiations. The conference sessions, which ended with the signing of the Versailles Treaty on 28 June 1919, were primarily concerned with European matters. The admission of the small Hejaz delegation to the conference was no more than a formal acknowledgement that it was a belligerent power. Like Portugal and Brazil, its status was marginal. The power to make decisions rested with the ‘Big Four’: Presidents Clemenceau of France and Wilson of the United States and Prime Ministers Lloyd George of Britain and Orlando of Italy.
The Arab case for self-determination was laid before the full conference on 6 February by Lawrence, acting as Faisal’s interpreter and commanding attention in his Arab headdress. He spoke first in English and then, at the unexpected request of the French and Italians, delivered an impromptu version in French. According to the correspondent of Petit Parisien, he spoke ‘with much patriotism’, presumably Arab.
The arguments advanced by Lawrence then and later during the intensive lobbying of influential delegates were as much his own as Faisal’s. Their outline had been contained in a memorandum written by Lawrence and presented to the Cabinet’s Eastern Committee on 4 November 1918. After a preamble in which he lauded the wartime steadfastness of the Hashemite princes (conveniently forgetting how close Faisal had come to an accord with Turkey a few months earlier), Lawrence proposed him as King of Syria with total freedom in his choice of foreign advisers. On the thorny subject of Palestine, Lawrence indicated that the Arabs would allow Jewish immigration, but correctly prophesied that they would resist attempts to create a Zionist state. Two weeks later he devised a new and radical scheme for the partition of the Arab world into three Hashemite kingdoms under British guidance: Faisal would rule Syria, Abdullah Lower Iraq and Zaid Upper Iraq.
Lawrence had every reason to feel confident that these plans would be treated seriously by the government. When he had visited the Foreign Office on 28 October and discussed Arab matters with Lord Robert Cecil, Assistant Secretary for Foreign Affairs, he had been shown the draft of an Anglo-French proclamation which embodied a completely new approach to the Arabs. The key statement was the admission that Britain and France sought ‘the complete and definitive liberation of the peoples so long oppressed by the Turks and the establishment of national Governments and Administrations drawing their authority from the initiative and free choice of indigenous populations’. Britain and France would stand godparent to these new governments and lend them every practical assistance they needed to follow humane and modernising policies. It seemed to Lawrence that at last the Allies had abandoned the Sykes–Picot agreement.6
What Lawrence failed to understand was that a formidable body of French public and official opinion wanted the Lebanese and Syrian provisions of the Sykes–Picot agreement to be honoured. It was an emotional issue: the deaths and mutilation of over 2 million Frenchmen demanded compensation in excess of Alsace and Lorraine. Catholics sought to extend their already extensive missionary and teaching activities in Syria and the Lebanon and right-wing nationalists and the colonial lobby trumpeted France’s historic rights in the region. When General Henri Gouraud, France’s Commander-in-Chief and Civil Commissioner in Syria, took up his duties in January 1920 he spoke proudly of ‘the memories and interests which unite France and Syria’ and recalled the ‘knightly prowess’ of the French Crusaders who had once conquered in the region. The allusion was popular among right-wing Catholics, although Faisal often asked who had won the Crusades.
Faisal may have scored a debating point, but both he and Lawrence had no strong cards to play against the French. Throughout the conference, Clemenceau and his Foreign Minister, Aristide Briand, were willing to have private discussions with Faisal in the hope that an accommodation could be reached. Their aim was to persuade him to concede French paramountcy in a zone which encompassed Damascus according to the terms set down in the Sykes–Picot agreement. The scope for manoeuvre was severely limited, since the French government wanted to control Syria as tightly as it did Morocco and Tunisia. Furthermore, there was a fear that any bargain struck with Faisal, however advantageous to France, would stir up restlessness in these protectorates.
Discussions about Syria’s future were further complicated by French fears that Britain was giving covert encouragement to Faisal. His choice as the head of the Hejazi delegation had been influenced by the Foreign Office, with Lawrence’s support. The French immediately and rightly concluded that Faisal would use the conference to publicise his claims to Syria. Unable to keep him away, French officials made a fuss about the validity of Hejaz’s claim to seats at the conference. Lawrence, after badgering Balfour, was able to arrange seats for the Arabs. The French press concluded that Faisal was Britain’s stooge: on 7 February Gaulois described him as a ‘zealous adherent of the British empire’ and, shortly after, Petit Parisien suggested that he was a party to a British conspiracy by which France would be swindled out of Syria as she had been out of India in the eighteenth century. As Lawrence had predicted four years before in Cairo, old imperial jealousies were breaking surface and throughout the conference he did what he could to exacerbate them, believing such behaviour would assist Faisal.
Faisal had already sensed undercurrents of French hostility during his journey from Marseilles to Boulogne in November. Once installed in the Hejazi delegation’s lodgings at 72 Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, Faisal faced more officially instigated slights and unpleasantness. On 20 January he complained to Lawrence that the French had deciphered, censored and delayed his telegrams to Mecca. Lawrence sympathised and asked whether in future they could be transmitted by the Foreign Office, but was told that such an arrangement would deepen French suspicions about Anglo-Arab collusion. Incidentally, as Lawrence knew well, British intelligence had regularly intercepted and deciphered all secret Arab telegrams for the past twelve months.7 The French were also spreading disinformation about affairs in Hejaz, issuing a communique on 28 January with details of a signal defeat of Hussain’s army by Ibn Saud’s Wahabbis at Taif. This news alarmed Faisal, who immediately considered returning to Hejaz to assist his father, which was just what the French wanted.8
These and other affronts were reminders that France would not willingly relinquish overlordship of Syria nor accept Faisal as the independent sovereign. Lawrence believed that this intransigence might collapse under Anglo-American pressure and so he encouraged Faisal to cultivate the goodwill of both powers. This would be more easily forthcoming if Faisal first came to a cordial accommodation with the Zionists, whom Lawrence knew were a powerful lobby in America. Lawrence was too conscious of the possibility of future clashes of Arab and Jewish political and economic interests in Palestine to be a wholehearted Zionist. (When they worked together in the Colonial Office in 1921, Meinertzhagen detected Lawrence’s hostility towards Jewish immigration in Palestine.) Nevertheless, in 1919, he was enough of a realist to appreciate that the Balfour Declaration was irrevocable and that continued Arab–Jewish bickering would damage Faisal’s cause.
So, with strong Foreign Office backing, Lawrence arranged a series of London meetings between Faisal and Weizmann which concluded with a joint declaration on 3 January. Faisal accepted Palestine’s permanent separation from Syria and the principle of Jewish immigration, and both parties pledged themselves to future co-operation. The signed statement was in Lawrence’s handwriting.9 This accord opened the way for approaches to American Zionists, one of whom, Stephen Wise, arranged through Lawren
ce a meeting between Faisal and President Wilson on 21 January. No notes survive of their conversation.
American sympathy for the Arabs was useful, but what really counted were the views of the British and French governments, which were preoccupied with European affairs. In spite of the Anglo-French declaration of 8 November, which seemingly guaranteed popular self-determination in the Middle East, Lloyd George was primarily concerned with keeping on good terms with France and achieving traditional imperial goals in the Middle East. When he and Clemenceau met in London at the beginning of December 1918, the French President had conceded British control over the oil-rich Mosul district of northern Iraq and offered no objections to continued British rule over Palestine. In making this private agreement both statesmen behaved as if the Sykes–Picot agreement still held, since Mosul had previously been allocated to France.
Once in Paris, Lawrence quickly discovered that the French government believed that the Sykes–Picot agreement was the only basis for a Middle Eastern settlement. France was strong, one official warned Faisal soon after his arrival, and advised him to ignore the clamour of Arab nationalists in Damascus. Briand took a more compromising line when he, Faisal and Lawrence discussed Syria’s future on 25 February.10 Briand opened with an apology for the antipathy shown towards Faisal by sections of the French press and proceeded to prepare the way for a Franco-Arab understanding. ‘Our Foreign Office has made a hopeless muddle of its eastern policy,’ he candidly admitted, but past errors would be corrected. Faisal, probably at Lawrence’s bidding, probed for the means to set the French against the British. ‘You are always harping on my anglophile attitude,’ he challenged. ‘Please understand that there is an Arab–English entente as a result of their help towards us during the war and peace [my italics]. This entente is too strong for you to break; but it would be possible to make it triple.’ ‘That is our dearest wish,’ Briand replied. Faisal was not placated and questioned the honesty of French policy. Compromise, Briand insisted, would have to be reached eventually to save France’s face.
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