Nevertheless, successive sympathetic Lawrence biographers have accepted this anti-French motive in explaining Lawrence’s disclosure. Taking matters a step further, Wilson even asserts that Lawrence made this disclosure because “in the long run it would surely serve Britain’s interests best.” Perhaps in Lawrence’s conception of Britain’s interests, but most certainly not that of the British government at the time.
18 “[Brémond] ended his talk”: Lawrence, Seven Pillars, p. 168.
19 “I had dreamed”: Ibid., p. 661.
20 “to reply to the guns”: Lawrence, Diary, February 18, 1917; PRO-FO 882/6, f. 180.
21 “to retire from”: Lawrence, Seven Pillars, p. 169.
22 “I am still of the opinion”: Joyce to Wilson, April 1, 1917; PRO-FO 882/6, f. 227.
23 “inestimable value”: Pearson to Clayton, March 4, 1917; PRO-FO 882/6, f. 194.
24 “The news horrified”: Stitt, A Prince of Arabia, pp. 177–78.
25 With his usual propensity: Wilson, Lawrence of Arabia, p. 379.
26 “In spite of General Clayton’s”: Lawrence to Wilson, as cited by Wilson, Lawrence of Arabia, p. 380.
27 “rose, as ever”: Lawrence, Seven Pillars, p. 177.
28 “I think the weak point”: Lawrence to Wilson, as cited by Wilson, Lawrence of Arabia, p. 380.
29 “when the more difficult”: Lawrence, Seven Pillars, p. 180.
30 “An account of profit”: Ibid., p. 176.
31 “He went on calling”: Ibid., pp. 181–82.
32 “the Eternal One”: 1 Samuel 15:29, as translated in ZY Archives.
33 Reginald Wingate was: Wingate to Balfour, February 7, 1917; PRO-FO 371/3049, File 41442.
34 “extortionate parasite”: Personalities of South Syria: North Palestine, May 1917; PRO-FO 371/3051.
35 “The attitude of the Jews”: Aaronsohn, Present Economic and Political Conditions in Palestine, pp. 20–21; PRO-FO 882/14, f. 342–43.
36 “General Clayton listened”: Aaronsohn, Diary, April 3, 1917; ZY.
37 At sunset on March 28: T. E. Lawrence’s account of his journey to Abdullah’s camp, the attack on Aba el Naam, and his ruminations on guerrilla warfare are drawn from Lawrence, Seven Pillars, book 3, chapters 32–36, pp. 183–215.
38 “graciously permitted”: Lawrence, Seven Pillars, p. 216.
39 “The Turk was harmless”: Ibid., p. 225.
40 With the Turks put on: In the absence of evidence pinpointing when Lawrence came up with the Aqaba-by-land scheme, most biographers have concluded he did so in early February 1917, and that he shared the idea with Faisal at that time as a way to dissuade him from the Aqaba-by-sea plan urged by Brémond and others. On closer examination, this conclusion seems unlikely.
Lawrence’s idea for taking Aqaba was such a radical departure from anything previously considered, and if successful would so dramatically alter the political chessboard in Arabia, that implementing it surely would have become his overriding goal once he’d conceived of it. If that had occurred in February, it’s hard to imagine why he would have then removed himself from Faisal’s camp for the thirty-seven days he spent going to and from Abdullah’s camp in Wadi Ais.
Similarly, had Faisal known of an inland plan in February, it’s hardly credible that he would have then thrown aside Lawrence’s counsel and resumed his support for a British-assisted coastal attack on Aqaba, as he did in early March, and again in early April. Although Lawrence may have offered Faisal vague palliatives in February over how Aqaba might best be taken to secure the Arabs’ move north, it almost certainly wasn’t until the two men were reunited in Wejh in mid-April that the inland plan took tangible form.
41 “I was very sorry”: Faisal to Lawrence, undated but notated “about the end of March,” 1917; PRO-FO 882/6, f. 18A.
Chapter 12: An Audacious Scheme
1 “So far as all ranks”: Dobell, as cited by Keogh, Suez to Aleppo, p. 102.
2 “a fit partner for”: Wilson, War Message to Congress, April 2, 1917.
3 “You beat us at communiqués”: Moore, The Mounted Riflemen in Sinai and Palestine, p. 67.
4 “He has married”: Lawrence, “The Howeitat and their Chiefs,” Arab Bulletin no. 57 (July 24, 1917): 309–10.
5 “Faisal always listened”: Lawrence to Liddell Hart, October 31, 1933; Graves and Hart, T. E. Lawrence: Letters to His Biographers, Pt. 2, pp. 188–89.
6 “The move to Aqaba”: Clayton directive of March 8, 1917, with copies to Wingate, C. Wilson, and Lawrence; PRO-FO 686/6, f. 46.
7 “The occupation of Aqaba”: Clayton to Wingate, May 29, 1917; PRO-FO 882/6, f. 388.
8 “After a moment I knew”: Lawrence, Seven Pillars, p. 222.
9 “Of course it is impossible”: Lyndon Bell to Lloyd, March 17, 1917; GLLD 9/3.
10 “a venerable and”: Sykes to Wingate, February 22, 1917; PRO-FO 882/16, f. 58.
11 “it does not appear”: Foreign Office to Wingate, March 14, 1917; SADD Wingate Papers, 145/3/38.
12 “obliterate” the thought: Grey to Buchanan, ambassador to Russia, March 16, 1916; PRO-FO 371/2767, Registry 49669.
13 These discussions had: Adelson, Mark Sykes, p. 220.
14 “a Jewish State in”: As quoted by Friedman, The Question of Palestine, p. 130.
15 “offering to make War Office”: Adelson, Mark Sykes, pp. 220–21.
16 “the French have no”: As quoted by Friedman, The Question of Palestine, p. 131.
17 After initially giving: Hardegg to Glazebrook, April 2, 1917; NARA RG84, Entry 448, Volume 3.
18 Even if she had bowed: The best English-language source on the life of Sarah Aaronsohn is Engle, The Nili Spies.
19 One measure of her steeliness: Florence, Lawrence and Aaronsohn, p. 287.
20 According to Sarah: Aaronsohn, Diary, April 19, 1917; ZY.
21 “I said I considered”: Ibid., March 12, 1917.
22 “Main difficulty”: Sykes to War Office, April 30, 1917; PRO-FO 371/3053, f. 191–93.
23 He quickly dispatched: As Aaronsohn noted in his diary on April 27, 1917, “I went to see [Wyndham] Deedes and told him that Sir Mark [Sykes] wanted me to submit the telegrams announcing the sacking of Jewish Jaffa through him.”
24 In writing on the plight: Aaronsohn, “Addendum to ‘Report of an inhabitant of Athlit,’ ” undated but November 1916; PRO-FO 371/2783.
25 “Aaron Aaronsohn asks me”: Sykes to Graham, April 28, 1917; PRO-FO 371/3055.
26 “It is with profound”: Jewish Chronicle (London), May 4, 1917; PRO-FO 371/3055.
27 Over the next few days: See PRO-FO 371/3055, File 87895.
28 In the case of the British: Oliphant, minutes to “Jews in Palestine,” May 4, 1917; PRO-FO 371/3055, File 87895.
29 “I think we ought to use”: Ormsby-Gore to Sykes, May 8, 1917; MSP-47, p. 4.
30 “During Passover”: Wingate to Foreign Office, May 11, 1917; PRO-FO 371/3055.
31 “Djemal Pasha Blamed”: New York Times, June 3, 1917.
32 After initially refusing: One of the most interesting documents related to the Jaffa evacuation was a report written by Heinrich Brode, the German consul in Jerusalem, to Richard von Kuhlmann, the new German ambassador, on April 5, 1917. Sensitive to any governmental actions that might alienate the Jewish population in Palestine, Brode had taken his concerns about the Jaffa evacuation order to Djemal Pasha. At their meeting, Djemal clarified that those Jaffa Jews involved in agriculture could stay on, while those being evacuated could proceed to Jerusalem if they wished, a destination denied “Ottomans.” Brode to Kuhlmann, April 5, 1917; NARA T120, Roll 4333, Turkei 195, Band 12, Frames K178502–8.
33 These assertions were seconded: Turkish Legation to the Netherlands, May 24, 1917; PRO-FO 371/3055. Also, Alvarado to Hardinge, June 8, 1917; PRO-FO 371/3055.
34 To lend further authority: Deedes to Egypt High Commissioner’s Office, Cairo, June 1, 1917; PRO-FO 141/805.
35 “Turkish atrocities”: Aaronsohn to Sulzberge
r, June 2, 1917; PRO-FO 141/805.
36 “In many ways”: Report to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Sweden, August 25, 1917; NARA RG84, Entry 58, Volume 399.
37 “grossly exaggerated”: Townley to Balfour, August 10, 1917; PRO-FO 371/3055.
38 Even Aaron Aaronsohn: Aaronsohn, “The Evacuation Menace,” undated but late July 1917; PRO-FO 141/805.
39 Of even greater import: Lawrence to Wilson, Intelligence Memo, undated but circa April 21, 1917; PRO-FO 686/6, f. 88.
40 “a highly mobile”: Lawrence, Seven Pillars, p. 224.
41 “Everyone was too busy”: Ibid., p. 225.
42 “Auda is to travel”: Wilson to Clayton, “Note on the Proposed Military Plan of Operations of the Arab Armies,” May 1, 1917; PRO-FO 882/6, f. 351.
43 “The element I would”: Lawrence, Seven Pillars, p. 226.
44 “We now have a chance”: Wilson to Clayton, March 21, 1917; PRO-FO 882/12, f. 199–201.
45 When Wilson forwarded: Wingate to Foreign Office, April 27, 1917; MSP-41d.
46 “On 2nd May”: Sykes to Wingate, May 5, 1917; MSP-41d.
Chapter 13: Aqaba
1 “Never doubt Great Britain’s”: As related by Wilson to Clayton, May 24, 1917; PRO-FO 882/16, f. 113.
2 “His Sherifial Majesty”: Wingate to Wilson, July 20, 1917; PRO-FO 882/7, f. 35.
3 Now it required: Lawrence’s account of his journey to and capture of Aqaba is drawn from Seven Pillars, book 4, chapters 39–44, pp. 227–312.
4 After a tense three-hour: Sykes to Wingate, May 23, 1917; MSP-41b, p. 3; slightly different version in PRO-FO 371/3054, f. 329.
5 “Monsieur Picot received”: Sykes to Wingate, May 23, 1917; MSP-41b, p. 5; slightly different version in PRO-FO 371/3054, f. 330.
6 Even those senior officials: Tanenbaum, France and the Arab Middle East, 1914–1920, pp. 17–18.
7 “Although Sykes and Picot”: Wilson to Clayton, May 25, 1917; PRO-FO 882/16, p. 5.
8 “[Hussein] stated to Faisal”: Newcombe, “Note” on Sykes-Picot meeting with King Hussein, May 20, 1917; GLLD 9/9.
9 The only way Hussein: Despite Sykes’s repeated assertions to the contrary, there is ample evidence that he didn’t disclose the terms of the Sykes-Picot Agreement to King Hussein at their May 1917 meetings. Well into 1918, Cyril Wilson and other British officers in conference with Hussein consistently reported that the king had no knowledge of the partitions of the Arab “nation” called for in that agreement, but instead continued to believe that the far more generous framework specified in the McMahon-Hussein Correspondence remained in effect. To cite only the example discussed here, it’s exceedingly hard to imagine that Hussein would have agreed to the Baghdad-Lebanon formulation had he known beforehand of the proposed dispensation of Baghdad province as specified in Sykes-Picot. As Tanenbaum (France and the Arab Middle East, p. 17) points out: “It did not make sense for a leader of a rebellion to ask an outside power to annex the territory for which he was fighting and hoped to rule.”
10 In their back-and-forth: McMahon to Hussein, October 24, 1915, as cited by Antonius, The Arab Awakening, p. 420.
11 “for a short time”: Report by Political Intelligence Department, Foreign Office, “Memorandum on British Commitments to King Husein [sic],” December 1918; PRO-FO 882/13, p. 7, f. 225.
12 “he knows that Sir Mark”: “Note by Sheikh Fuad El Khatib taken down by Lt Col Newcombe,” undated but May 1917, p. 3; PRO-FO 882/16, f. 133.
13 “If we are not going to see”: Wilson to Clayton, May 24, 1917; PRO-FO 882/16, f. 111.
14 “we are deeply grateful”: Faisal Hussein, “To All Our Brethren—The Syrian Arabs,” trans. May 28, 1917; SADD Wingate Papers, 145/7/89.
15 “I do not attach very”: Clayton to Sykes, July 30, 1917; SADD Clayton Papers, 693/12/30.
16 “short statement of fact”: Wilson to Symes, June 20, 1917; PRO-FO 882/16, f. 127. Many historians contend that it was King Hussein and Faisal, not Mark Sykes, who dissembled about the substance of their meetings in May 1917. In The Question of Palestine, Isaiah Friedman wholeheartedly accepts Sykes’s version, asserting (p. 206) that at their preliminary, early May meeting, “Feisal’s misgivings were set at rest by Sykes’s explanation of the Anglo-French Agreement … The interview with Hussein on 5 May went off equally well.” Sykes’s only fault, in Friedman’s view, was a failure to make a personal record of his and Picot’s subsequent talks with Hussein. “For this omission,” he writes, “Sykes had to pay the penalty when a year later, to his surprise, Hussein feigned ignorance of the Anglo-French Agreement and pretended to have learned of it first from Djemal Pasha’s Damascus speech … ”
Not only Hussein’s protestations, but Sykes’s own actions, belie this contention. On May 12, 1917, just one week after his first meeting with Hussein, Sykes attended a high-level strategy meeting at Reginald Wingate’s Cairo office. At that meeting, Sykes described in detail the agreement he and Picot had reached with the Cairo-based Syrian “delegates” nearly three weeks earlier, but made no mention of the vastly more important accord he had supposedly reached with Hussein just days prior. One reason may have been that this May 12 conference was attended by Colonel Cyril Wilson, the official British liaison to Hussein, and a person uniquely positioned to refute such an assertion.
As for the subsequent meetings Sykes and Picot held with Hussein, it’s difficult to discern any possible motive for two career military officers, Stewart Newcombe and Cyril Wilson, whose missions in the Hejaz would have been made markedly easier if Sykes’s account of those meetings were true, to so vehemently refute it.
17 “The whole question”: Symes to Wilson, June 26, 1917; PRO-FO 882/16, f. 129–30.
18 As for Faisal: Wilson to Clayton, May 20, 1917; SADD Wingate Papers, 145/7/36.
19 “They saw in me”: Lawrence, Seven Pillars, pp. 25–26.
20 “Can’t stand another day”: Lawrence as quoted by Wilson, Lawrence, p. 410 n. 40.
21 “Clayton. I’ve decided”: Ibid., p. 410 n. 41.
22 Lawrence’s northern: Lawrence, Seven Pillars (Oxford), chapter 51.
23 “Very old, livid”: Lawrence, Seven Pillars, p. 546.
24 “I saw that with my answer”: Lawrence, Seven Pillars (Oxford), chapter 51.
25 “In other words”: Lawrence, Seven Pillars, p. 26.
26 In debriefings: In his debriefing of July 6, 1917, in London, Samuel Edelman, the U.S. consul in Damascus, reported a 25 percent desertion rate among Anatolian Turkish soldiers brought to Syria, a rate surely surpassed by less loyal elements of the empire; PRO-FO 371/3050.
27 The more perceptive: See PRO-FO 371/3050, File 47710.
28 The spare diary: Prüfer, Diary, May 21–July 18, 1917; HO.
29 As he reported to: Prüfer to Mittwoch, April 12, 1917; NARA T149, Roll 365, Frame 399.
30 “the High Command has”: Engle, The Nili Spies, p. 129.
31 Now, in mid-June 1917: The account of William Yale’s 1917 return to the United States is drawn from Yale, It Takes So Long, chapter 7.
32 The situation was even worse: Yale, “Palestine–Syria Situation,” to U.S. State Department, June 27, 1917; NARA 763.72/13450.
33 “the disposition of”: Yale to Secretary of State Lansing, June 30, 1917; YU Box 2/ Folder 48.
34 “no guns, no base”: Lawrence, Seven Pillars, p. 306. For an account of the battle at Aba el Lissan, see also Lawrence, “The Occupation of Akaba,” undated; PRO-FO 882/7, f. 63–68.
35 Their reports noted: See field reports of Herbert Garland, May 1917; PRO-FO 686/6.
36 “It is somewhat difficult”: Dawnay, “Notes on Faisal’s Proposed Advance Northward,” May 29, 1917; PRO-WO 158/606, f. 43A.
37 By the time Clayton penned: Clayton to Director of Military Intelligence (London), July 5, 1917; PRO-FO 882/7, f. 1.
38 “The enemy had never”: Lawrence, Seven Pillars, p. 310.
Chapter 14: Hubris
1 “Do not try to do”: Lawrence, Twenty
-Seven Articles, August 1917; PRO-FO 882/7, f. 93–97.
2 “nothing has occurred”: Clayton to Military Intelligence Director (London), July 11, 1917; PRO-FO 882/7, f. 18–23.
3 Ironically, some of: Lawrence’s account of his return to Cairo and his first meeting with Allenby is to be found in Seven Pillars, book 5, chapters 55 and 56, pp. 317–22.
4 “considerably enhanced”: Wingate to Robertson, July 14, 1917; PRO-WO 374/41077.
5 On the opposite side: Wilson, Lawrence of Arabia, p. 422.
6 “there is little hope”: Lawrence to Clayton, July 10, 1917; PRO-FO 882/16, f. 249.
7 To make use of: Allenby to Robertson, July 16, 1917; PRO-WO 158/634, f. 4A.
8 “The advantages offered”: Allenby to Robertson, July 19, 1917; PRO-WO 158/634, f.10A.
9 “A slave brought up”: Lawrence, Twenty-Seven Articles, August 1917; PRO-FO 882/7, f. 93–97.
10 “are no good”: Aaronsohn, Diary, July 1, 1917; ZY.
11 “I no longer had”: Ibid., July 2, 1917.
12 his local “representative”: Sykes to Graham, May 5, 1917; MSP-41a.
13 So vague had his: Clayton to Sykes, June 22, 1917; PRO-FO 371/3058, f. 156.
14 This the German government: Cecil to Hardinge, June 13, 1917; PRO-FO 371/3058, f. 145.
15 “There can be no doubt”: Cecil to Hardinge, June 13, 1917; PRO-FO 371/3058, f. 146–48.
16 “very much inclined”: Aaronsohn, Diary, July 17, 1917; ZY.
17 “I gather”: Wingate to Graham, July 23, 1917; PRO-FO 371/3083, f. 55.
18 In his discussions with Generals: As Clayton wrote to Sykes after interviewing Lawrence in Cairo, “Faisal’s name is one to conjure with.… Already he is accepted in practically all of the [Syrian] districts through which Lawrence passed.” Clayton, July 22, 1917; PRO-FO 882/16, f. 145.
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