But we are left with the fact that in conception his theory had a general application. That fact brings him into relation with the whole of war, and gives a new meaning to his exploits in Arabia and Syria. Military history cannot dismiss him as merely a successful leader of irregulars. He is seen to be more than a guerrilla genius—rather does he appear a strategist of genius who had the vision to anticipate the guerrilla trend of civilized warfare that arises from the growing dependence of nations on industrial resources.
He has thus a claim to historical consideration among those we call the Great Captains. Quality of art, not quantity of force, is the true standard. Napoleon’s genius is far clearer in his masterpiece of 1796, executed with 30,000 men, than in his grandiose failure with 450,000 in 1812.
If the mere size of the armies they commanded were to be the gauge we should reach the palpable absurdity of counting Joffre greater than Napoleon, and of ruling out altogether such great commanders as Cromwell and Stonewall Jackson, or even Marlborough and Turenne, by reason of the comparative puniness of the forces they handled. No one would challenge their position on this ground, so that one cannot question Lawrence’s because his forces were on a still smaller scale. Indeed, they bore a far closer relation to Cromwell’s 11,000 men at Dunbar or Stonewall Jackson’s 6,000 in the Shenandoah Valley, than did these to the army that Moltke commanded, or than the latter itself bore to the march of millions that Foch directed.
And if we reckon force in terms of fire power, as we should, Lawrence’s forces were more considerable than their numbers appear—in his operative bodyguard, normally about thirty men, every other man was armed with a light automatic, so that this handful possessed more fire power than battalions of a thousand men in 1914.
If smallness of force is no ground for excluding Lawrence from the roll of great strategists, largeness of area is a strong ground for his inclusion. To quote his own dictum, historically just—“Range is more to strategy than force.”
There are few of the Great Captains whose operations have ranged over a thousand miles of territory, and in his the geographical extent was magnified by the racial content. Another possible objection which shrivels on examination lies in the fact that his strategic independence was qualified by its relation to the British campaign in Palestine. If such be counted a disqualification, we should have to rule out Marlborough because of his closer ties with Eugène, and Wellington for his relationship first to the Spanish in the Peninsula and then to Blücher in 1815. Turenne and Conde” would likewise come under the guillotine, and Bonaparte would be severed from Napoleon.
Can we, however, go further than admit Lawrence’s claim to consideration on this roll? His strategy was so much an inversion of tradition that comparison with his forerunners may seem difficult. In method it certainly is, yet hardly more difficult than to compare the strategy of Hannibal or Marlborough with that of Napoleon, who profited by the revolutionary change that the advent of the “divisional system” had brought. There was an immense gulf between the strategic manœuvre of armies that moved as a single unit and that of the Napoleonic army, distributed in separate and self-contained “divisions”—as well might one compare tennis and football. And there was a fresh gulf between Napoleon’s road-moves and modern rail-moves.
The true line of comparison between the strategists of different ages lies through their art and not through their mechanism. It is possible to make a comparative study of the use they made of the means at their disposal to achieve their effects; particularly the use they made of surprise and mobility to upset their opponent’s mental and physical balance, and thereby change the balance of the campaign in their own favour. By this test Lawrence comes out high.
It is even possible, with such as have disclosed their conception of strategy, to gauge how far their effects were a matter of calculation. Few have done so as fully as Lawrence, yet by this severe test he comes out still higher.
Moreover, by general recognition the supreme art of the strategist is to convert his opponent’s advantages to their disadvantage, while minimizing his own disadvantages. By this test Lawrence has no peer. For the dominant idea in his strategy was to turn the weakness of the Arabs into an asset, and the strength of the Turks into a debit!
Even from the point of view of orthodox strategy, which seeks a decision rather than a creeping paralysis, there is rare value to be gained from a study of the Arab campaign, especially in its later phase. For the possibility of a decision depends on the success of the preliminary distraction. This fundamental truth of war has been under-emphasized, and its importance grossly underrated, by military historians—to the recurrent cost of their countries in war. Distraction is far more than “half the battle”; nine-tenths would be nearer the mark. And nowhere have I found in the records of war such subtly conceived and skilfully gauged distraction as that developed by Lawrence in aid of the Arabs and Allenby. If it offers a lesson for soldiers to study, it offers a proof of what he had learnt by having studied the eighteenth century masters—the last who gave due attention to this vital subject. Similarly, in Lawrence’s invariable care to provide his plan with variants, or alternative courses, we may trace his debt to Bourcet, the first military thinker to enunciate the principle that “every plan ought to have branches.”
As a tactician, there is less cope for comparison between Lawrence and his forerunners. Not merely because his tactics were mainly irregular but because his strategy went so far to minimize the need for tactics. Rightly, strategy is put before tactics in judging commanders even in regular warfare, for the better the strategic prelude the more assured will be the tactical issue. Few of the Great Captains can offer more than three or four battles for examination. Lawrence can only offer one. But that is a gem. His own mockery of his achievement cannot hide the fact that at Tafila he displayed a tactical artistry, based on consummate calculation, in the purest classical tradition. It was Cannæ, or still more, Ilipa, adapted to modern weapons.
Here also, but not here alone, Lawrence revealed what he himself has so aptly described as “the irrational tenth” which is “like the kingfisher lashing across the pool.” it is the flair which makes the great executant. Lawrence can bear comparison with Marlborough or Napoleon in that vital faculty of generalship, the power of grasping instantly the picture of the ground and situation, of relating the one to the other, and the local to the general. Indeed, there is much to suggest that his topographical and geographical sense was more remarkable than theirs.
He generated too, the same electric current of command, and one might justly argue that he generated a stronger current than theirs. For in contrast to them he was not in command, yet there is overwhelming witness to the fact that, in reality, he exercised command. His power of command triumphed over a double handicap such as no other general of fame has borne. Like Bourcet, who certainly deserves to be counted among the masters of war, Lawrence had to give directions under the disguise of advice, yet his personality rose above his handicap more successfully than Bourcet’s. Like Marlborough, he had to combine the operations and reconcile the discordant aims of allies, yet suffered fewer set-backs. It is true that he received an unwavering support from Allenby such as Marlborough did not receive from Anne, but while Marlborough had to deal with several allies, Lawrence had to deal with a multitude.
This raises a further reflection. The more one studies Lawrence’s military career the more points of resemblance one finds with the man who is justly regarded as England’s most representative military genius. In Lawrence, as in Marlborough, one finds the profound understanding of human nature, the power of commanding affection while communicating energy, the knack of smoothing out troubles, the consummate blend of diplomacy with strategy, the historic English instinct that there is more in war than the winning of battles, the sense of ground combined with the wider sense of geography, and perhaps above all, the uncanny calm that acts like oil on a turbulent sea.
To Lawrence, by the verdict of those who have s
een him in crisis and confusion, may aptly be applied the words with which Voltaire depicted Marlborough—“He had to a degree above all other generals of his time that calm courage in the midst of tumult, that serenity of soul in danger, which the English call a cool head, and it was perhaps this quality, the greatest gift of nature for command which formerly gave the English so many advantages over the French in the plains of Crécy, Poitiers and Agincourt.” it was repeated in the wider plains of Arabia.
There is a further likeness between Lawrence and Marlborough—in one of the means they employed to assist their strategy. Ignorance of the way Marlborough used money to maintain the alliance against France may explain much of the ignorant disparagement of Lawrence’s military achievement on account of the bags of gold at his disposal. It would be difficult to find in our history a coalition war where Britain’s subsidies have not played an indispensable part in the victory and equally difficult to find one where so great effects have been produced at so small an expenditure.
The explanation, and the fairest verdict upon Lawrence, has been expressed by the one among his companions in arms who was the most regular in outlook.
Sir Hubert Young has written—“Lawrence could certainly not have done what he did without the gold, but no one else could have done it with ten times the amount.”
If Marlborough also made good use of the gold he handled there is a profound difference between Marlborough’s venality and Lawrence’s incorruptibility: as also between Marlborough’s use of his allies as pawns in the game of war that took increasing possession of his soul, and Lawrence’s sensitive regard for their interests and his country’s honour, as well as his own honour. So many military senses had these two in common, but there is an unfathomable gult between their sense of honour. The difference is to be explained not so much in terms of character, but of thought.
Lawrence plumbed depths over which Marlborough was content to sail by the chart of his age. If this habit of taking deep surroundings was an increasing hindrance to Lawrence’s progress towards personal success, it was of inestimable service to him in avoiding the unknown reefs on which generalship has so often been wrecked. He profited not only from the experience of his forerunners through the ages, but from his own deep reflection. To their instinct for war he added a reasoned theory of war more profound than any of the Great Captains have revealed. If this statement be questioned I can only refer the reader to Chapter IX of this book, and pose him the counter question as to where among the writings, dispatches, and recorded utterances of the Great Captains there is to be found an “appreciation” of war that can compare with this for breadth and depth. When I first read it in 1920 it made an instant impression, but I am forced to confess that it was only when I came back to it after another’ twelve years spent in continuous study of war that I came to realize how far Lawrence’s thought had travelled, and how much I had originally missed. It is only now, if even now, that I appreciate its full significance.
One of the most common experiences when men converse on a subject that they have studied is the sudden jolt of finding that one of them is out of his depth. It is quite a different feeling from that of disagreement—indeed, it more often comes when men are exploring a subject in unison than when they are arguing opposite views, for then they are making the debating points they know. The relevance of this phenomenon of human intercourse is that it helps to explain both the impatience which Lawrence often showed towards opinionated generals and the respect in which he was held by some of the most exalted in rank but humble in mind, who had worked with him. What the depth of his understanding of war may be I do not know, and may never discover, but I know that almost every other man I have met would be out of his depth long before.
The power of Lawrence’s personality is generally recognized, but its radiance has obscured the deeper power that his knowledge gave him. Yet here lies the main message that his war achievement bears for the world, and especially the military world.
For the truth is that Lawrence was more steeped in knowledge of war than any of the generals of the last war.
At first sight this statement may seem startling, but it is essentially matter of fact. Many of the generals of the last war certainly knew more about the working of the military machine than Lawrence, but in all else that counted he had the advantage. His youth helped him. They had spent so many years in rising to command that, naturally, they could not hope to have his intimate experience in using the weapons on which tactics are based. As young officers some of them may have been musketry or gunnery experts, but that experience had inevitably lost much of its value through the evolution of weapons and the methods of handling them. The machine-gun which dominated the battlefields of 1914–1918, was a new development since their youth, and the light automatic, scarcely less important in its influence, had only been introduced’ since the war began. All these he mastered, showing an aptitude rare even in receptive youth, and adding something of his own to their tactical use. Aircraft were another novelty that he came to understand through actual flying experience that no other commander of land forces enjoyed. He also overrode the barriers that in former days prevented infantry and cavalry soldiers from intruding into the sapper’s or gunner’s field; thus he added to his equipment an expert grasp of demolitions and a working grasp of gunnery.
This first-hand knowledge of the tools of command, if not essential, was at least invaluable. In the light of history we can perceive that if other high commanders of 1914–1918 had possessed a similar knowledge it would have saved them from their most fatal errors, and would also have shown them how to gain full value from their new tools. The great commanders of old, when weapons were simple and slow-changing, built up their strategic plans 011 a personal knowledge of the groundwork. Their modern successors, unfortunately, had exchanged it for a too exclusive knowledge of staff-work. The increasing specialization of warfare is largely responsible for the sterilization of generalship. It is likely to become worse as warfare becomes more scientific. It can only be overcome by wide thought and hard work. But of few can we expect the prodigious capacity for both that Lawrence revealed, helped by a remarkable sense of proportion and a still more remarkable ability to free himself from social distractions.
It was through this that in youth he had acquired his knowledge of the history and higher theory of war—I have never known a general who had read as widely. In particular did he profit by having studied those eighteenth century thinkers who paved the way for the revolution in strategy that began on the eve of the French Revolution, and of whom Napoleon was the pupil. This profound knowledge of historical experience, enriched by a general knowledge of many subjects that indirectly concerned war, formed an intellectual equipment such as no other commander of his time possessed.
When checked by personal experience it gave him a theoretical mastery of war that was also unique. His personality transmitted this into a practical mastery. The real message of his astonishing war career is best given in his own words—the explanation with which he confirmed the impression that had grown on me in examining the course of the Arab campaign. “I was not an instinctive soldier, automatic with intuitions and happy ideas. When I took a decision, or adopted an alternative it was after doing my best to study every relevant—and many an irrelevant—factor. Geography, tribal structure, religion, social customs, language, appetites, standards—were at my finger-ends. The enemy I knew almost like my own side. I risked myself among them many times, to learn.
“The same with tactics. If I used a weapon well, it was because I could handle it. Riles were easy. I put myself under instructors for Lewis, Vickers and Hotchkiss. I learned about explosives from my R.E. teachers, and developed their methods. To use aircraft I flew. To use armoured cars I learned to drive and fight them. I became a bad gunner at need, and could doctor and judge a camel.
“For my strategy, I could find no teachers in the field: but behind me there were some years of military reading, and even in the little t
hat I have written about it, you may be able to trace the allusions and quotations, the conscious analogies.
“Do make it clear that generalship, at least in my case, came not by instinct, unsought, but by understanding, hard study and brain-concentration. Had it come easy to me I should not have done it as well.”
By his own standard he fell short—“The perfect general would know everything in heaven and earth.” He must be judged, however, by historical standards. It may be true as he said to me, when regretting the “fundamental, crippling, incuriousness” that he felt among so many soldiers, that “with 2,000 years of examples behind us we have no excuse when fighting, for not fighting well.” How few, nevertheless, profit by that experience. Because he did, he not only earns a place among the masters of war, but stands out among them by the clearness of his understanding of his art. To give him priority in such a company is not so high a tribute as it may sound. As one’s study has deepened one has discovered their limitations, while one failed to find his—in the military sphere. Legend rising from idolatry fed by tradition, and supported by ignorance, has given most of them a legendary stature for exceeding the reality.
Nevertheless, if his right to enter that company can be conceded with less doubt than attaches to others, he remains incongruous. The reason is that in spirit he transcends them. Whatever be the admiration evoked by the Great Captains, even the finest character among them would hardly be regarded as a spiritual force, more potent as such than as a man of action. Yet this is the deeper impression that Lawrence left. And like the proverbial pebble in the pool, its ripples spread.
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