“Thomas Lawrence worked another way. His extraordinary achievement was wonderful beyond measure. But it was not a miracle. It was but the outworking of intelligence, imagination, sympathy, character.”
Robert Louis Stevenson in “An Apology for Idlers” deplores that “many who have ‘plied their book diligently’ and know all about some branch or other of accepted lore, come out of the study with an ancient and owl-like demeanor, and prove dry, stockish and dyspeptic in the better and brighter parts of life.” But in Lawrence Stevenson would have found a kindred spirit. Though scholar and scientist, he is neither bookish nor owlish. During the early days of the Arabian Revolution, a Captain Lloyd, now Sir George Lloyd, recent governor of Bombay, was in the desert with him for a short while. He once said to me: “It is difficult to describe the delight of intimate association with such a man. I found him both poet and philosopher, but possessor of an unfailing sense of humor.”
Mr. Luther Fowle’s description of that “U-shaped room” at Carchemish is an illustration of this same sense of humor which makes Lawrence so thoroughly human, and which saved his life on more than one occasion. Major Young, of the Near Eastern Secret Corps, who in pre-war days had known Lawrence in Mesopotamia, relates another incident. Representatives of England, Germany, France, Russia, and Turkey met in 1912 and agreed to an arrangement which gave the Germans control of the important strategic harbor of Alexandretta, and also permission to continue the railway which they long had wanted to extend through from Berlin to Bagdad in order to open up a direct route to the treasure-vaults of Hindustan and Far Cathay. Lawrence, with his intimate knowledge of history, saw in this a bold Prussian threat against British power in Asia. Upon learning of the agreement he immediately hurried down to Cairo, demanded an audience with Lord Kitchener, and asked K. of K. why Germany had been permitted to get control of Alexandretta, the vital port to which Disraeli referred when he said that the peace of the world would one day depend on the control of that point on the coast of Asia Minor toward which the finger of Cyprus pointed. Kitchener replied:
“I have warned London repeatedly, but the Foreign Office pays no attention. Within two years there will be a World War. Unfortunately, young man, you and I can’t stop it, so run along and sell your papers.”
Although deeply chagrined because Britain, wrapped in slumber, had allowed Germany to extend her sphere of influence all the way from the Baltic to the Persian Gulf, Lawrence decided to amuse himself by “pulling the leg” of the German engineers who were working with feverish haste on the Berlin-to-Bagdad Railway. Loading sections of drainage-pipe on the backs of mules, he transported them from Carchemish to the hills which looked down on the new railroad right of way. There he carefully mounted them on piles of sand. The German engineers observed them through their field-glasses, and, as Lawrence had hoped, they mistook these harmless and innocent pipes for British cannons. Frantically they wired to both Constantinople and Berlin declaring that the British were fortifying all the commanding positions. Meanwhile, Lawrence and Woolley were laughing up their sleeves.
At Jerablus, northeast of Aleppo, the Germans were at work on a great bridge over the Euphrates. In their typically German way they painted numbers on the coats of their native workmen as a means of identifying them. They never even attempted to learn their names. They even committed the folly of allowing blood-enemies to dig together. Of course, instead of digging holes for bridge-piles, they dug holes in each other. This went on for a time, and then the seven hundred Kurd workmen turned on their German masters and attacked them. Three hundred of the digging gang at Carchemish joined their relatives and started a simultaneous attack from the rear. Fortunately for the kaiser’s myrmidons, Lawrence and Woolley arrived on the scene in time to prevent a massacre. As a result of their heroism both archaeologists were awarded the Turkish order of the Medjidieh by the sultan. That was early in 1914, before the Great War found Lawrence.
One of his first expeditions in the Near East was for the Palestine Exploration Fund. Lawrence and Woolley attempted to follow the footsteps of the Israelites through the Wilderness. Along with other discoveries they found what is believed to be the Kadesh Barnea of the Bible, the historic spot where Moses brought water gushing from the rock. First they located a place in the Sinai Peninsula which the Bedouin called Ain Kadis, where there was one insignificant well; and perhaps it was there that the Israelites began complaining to Moses regarding the shortage of water.
“If that really was the place,” remarked Lawrence, “one could hardly blame the Israelites for grousing.”
Some five miles distant the two archæologists came upon a number of fine springs in a little valley called Gudurat, and they are of the opinion that this was where Moses succeeded in regaining the confidence of the children of Israel, by quenching their thirst with the sparkling waters of these springs. Later on Woolley and Lawrence wrote a small book concerning this expedition entitled, “The Wilderness of Sin.” In it they tell of finding traces of a civilization dating back to 2500 B. C., the oldest traces of human habitation ever discovered on the Sinai Peninsula.
Woolley has written a delightful book published by the Oxford University Press entitled, “Dead Towns and Living Men,” in which he describes the archaeological experiences of Lawrence and himself before the World War. One story throws considerable light on the differences between the methods of these two men in dealing with the natives and the tactics of the Germans at work on the Berlin-Bagdad line:
Our house-boy, Ahmed, was coming back one day from shopping in the village, and passed a gang of natives working on the railway whose foreman owed him money. Ahmed demanded payment of the debt, the foreman refused, and a wordy wrangle followed. A German engineer on his rounds saw that work was being hindered by an outsider, but instead of just ordering him off, he called up the two soldiers of his bodyguard, seized the unfortunate Ahmed, and without any inquiry as to the origin of rights of the dispute, had him soundly flogged. Ahmed returned to the house full of woe, and as I was away Lawrence went up to the German camp to seek redress.
He found Contzen and told him that one of his engineers had assaulted our house-servant and must accordingly apologize. Contzen pooh-poohed the whole affair. When Lawrence showed him that he was in earnest, however, he consented to make inquiries and sent for the engineer in question. After talking to him he turned angrily on Lawrence: “I told you the whole thing was a lie,” he said; “Herr X——never assaulted the man at all; he merely had him flogged!”
“Well, don’t you call that an assault?” asked Lawrence.
“Certainly not,” replied the German. “You can’t use these natives without flogging them. We have men thrashed every day; it ’s the only method.”
“We’ve been here longer than you have,” Lawrence retorted, “and have never beaten one of our men yet, and we don’t intend to let you start on them. That engineer of yours must come down with me to the village and apologize to Ahmed in public.”
Contzen laughed. “Nonsense!” he said, and then, turning his back; “the incident is closed.”
“On the contrary.” replied Lawrence, “if you don’t do as I ask I shall take the matter into my own hands.”
Contzen turned round again. “Which means—” he asked.
“That I shall take your engineer down to the village and there flog him!”
“You could n’t and you dare n’t do such a thing l” cried the scandalized German; but Lawrence pointed out that there was good reason for assuming that he both dared and could; and in the end the engineer had to make his apology coram publico, to the vast amusement of the villagers.
For seven years Lawrence wandered up and down the desert, often accompanied by Woolley but more frequently alone in native garb. At one time the British Museum sent him on a short expedition to the interior of the island of Sumatra, where he had escapes from head-hunters almost as thrilling as his adventures in Arabia. But of these we could never persuade him to speak. Some day, perha
ps, he may tell us of them in his memoirs.
I had often wondered why he had chosen Arabia as the field for his archæological work, instead of Egypt, which is the Mecca and Medina for most men who love to dig among the ruins of antiquity. His reply was typical of him. He said:
“Egypt has never appealed to me. Most of the important work there has been done; and most Egyptologists to-day spend too much of their time trying to discover just when the third whisker was painted on the scarab!”
CHAPTER III
THE ARCHÆOLOGIST TURNED SOLDIER
LORD KITCHENER’S advice and his own personal observations led Lawrence to believe that a crash was imminent. When it came he at once attempted to enlist as a private in the ranks of “Kitchener’s Mob.” But members of the Army Medical Board looked at the frail, five-foot-three, tow-headed youth, winked at one another, and told him to run home to his mother and wait until the next war. Just four years after he had been turned down as physically unfit for the ranks, this young Oxford graduate, small of stature, shy and scholarly as ever, entered Damascus at the head of his victorious Arabian army. Imagine what the members of the medical board would have said if some one had suggested to them in 1914 that three or four years later this same young man would decline knighthood and the rank of general and would even avoid the coveted Victoria Cross and various other honors!
After his rejection Lawrence returned to his ancient ruins and toiled lovingly over inscriptions that unlocked the secrets of civilizations that flourished and crumbled to dust thousands of years ago. But, with many other scientists, scholars, and a few young men of exceptional ability, such as Mark Sykes, Aubrey Herbert, Cornwallis, Newcombe, and others, he was summoned to headquarters in Cairo by Sir Gilbert F. Clayton. Though he was then only twenty-six years old, he was already familiar with Turkey, Syria, Palestine, Arabia, Mesopotamia, and Persia. He had lived with the wild tribesmen of the interior, as well as with the inhabitants of the principal cities such as Aleppo, Mosul, Bagdad, Beyrouth, Jerusalem, and Damascus; in fact, his knowledge of some parts of the Near East was unique. He not only spoke many of the languages, but he knew the customs of all the different nationalities and their historical development. To begin with, he was placed in the map department, where generals spent hours poring over inaccurate charts, discussing plans for piercing vulnerable spots in the Turkish armor. After working out a scheme they would turn, not infrequently, and ask the insignificant-looking subaltern if, in view of his personal knowledge of the country, he had any suggestion to offer. Not infrequently his reply would be:
“While there are many excellent points in your plan, it is not feasible except at the expense of great loss of time in building roads for transport of supplies and artillery, and at needless expense of lives in maintaining lines of communication through the territory of hostile native tribes.”
Then, as an alternative, he would point out a safer and shorter route, with which he happened to be familiar because he had tramped every inch of it afoot while hunting for lost traces of the invading armies of Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, and Crusaders. The most staid old army officers on the staff put their confidence in this quiet-voiced junior lieutenant, and in a short time he had established a reputation for himself at G. H. Q.
Later on in Arabia, Lawrence frequently outwitted the Turks because of this same superior knowledge of the topography of the country. He was better acquainted with many distant parts of the Turkish Empire than were the Turks themselves.
From the map department he was transferred to another branch of the Intelligence Service, which dealt mainly with affairs inside the enemy lines. It was his duty, as one of the heads of the Secret Corps, to keep the commander-in-chief informed of the movements of various units of the Turkish army. Sir Archibald Murray, then head of the British Forces in the Near East, has told me how highly he valued the knowledge of this youth under whom were the native secret agents who passed back and forth through the Turkish lines.
It was in the summer of 1915 that the Hedjaz Arabs broke out in revolt against their Turkish masters in that part of the Arabian peninsula which lies mainly between the Forbidden City of Mecca and the southern end of the Dead Sea, known as Holy Arabia.
In order to understand the reasons for the out break of this revolution, and in order to appreciate the delicate and complicated problems which Lawrence was to face upon his arrival in Arabia after the Arabs had won a few initial victories and were confronted with the probability of their revolt collapsing, let us digress for a moment and glance in retrospect through the pages of Arabian history and refresh our memories regarding the romantic story of this historic peninsula and its picturesque peoples.
Legend tells us that Arabia was the home of our common ancestors, Adam and Eve, the land of the queen of Sheba, home of the heroes of “The Arabian Nights, ” and a country peopled by a race that lived and hoped and loved before even the prehistoric mound-builders dwelt on the plains of North America, and before the druids in woad built their rock temples in Britain. Tradition tells us that it is a land whose peoples founded empires centuries before Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt, perhaps even before Khufu built the Great Pyramid. Archaeologists, who have risked their lives to solve Arabia’s mysteries, tell us that great cities flourished and fell there long before the days of Tut-ankh-Amen and that in one distant corner of the country the great King Hammurabi formulated his code of justice long before Buddha taught on the banks of the Ganges and before Confucius enunciated the principle of the Golden Rule.
Jazirat-ul-Arab, the Peninsula of the Arabs, is larger than England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Holland, Belgium, France, and Spain all combined. The Greeks and Romans traded, fought, and studied there and divided it into three geographical parts: Arabia Petræa to the north, Arabia Deserta to the east, and Arabia Felix (Arabia the blest) to the west.
Although some scholars believe it to have been the birthplace of the human race, we have better maps of the north pole; in fact, we have better maps of Mars than we have of some parts of the interior of Arabia from whence came many of the fighting men of Lawrence’s army.
The distance from the city of Aleppo, at the extreme north, to the city of Mecca, half-way down the western coast of Arabia, is as great as the distance from London to Rome. Yet Lawrence and his men trekked all the way from Mecca to Aleppo on the backs of camels, over country as barren as the mountains of the moon.
In order to keep from becoming confused by the strange Arabic names it would be well for the reader to keep in mind that the Arabian campaign opened at Mecca and moved steadily north to Akaba, and then on to Damascus and Aleppo in Syria. Each event described in this account is a little farther north than the last.
Although some authorities on the Near East estimate that there is a total population of twenty million people in the whole of Arabia, for centuries a large portion of them have been held together only by loose travel alliances, like those which existed between the Red Indian tribes of America a hundred years ago.
The peoples of Arabia since time immemorial have been divided into two distinct classes: those who dwell in villages and cities, and those who wander from place to place with all their worldly possessions in their camel-bags. Both classes are called Arabs, but the wandering nomads are referred to as Bedouins whenever it is desired to differentiate between them and their kinsmen of the cultivated areas. The true Bedouin knows nothing about the cultivation of land, and his only animals are his camels and horses. The Bedouins are the more admirable of the two. They are the Arabs who have preserved the love of freedom and the ancient virtues of this virile race.
The foremost of all Arabian travelers was an Englishman, Charles M. Doughty, poet, philosopher, and author of that great classic, “Arabia Deserta,” written in quaint Elizabethan style. With the exception of Colonel Lawrence, he was the only European who ever spent any considerable length of time traveling about the interior of Holy Arabia without disguising himself as a Mohammedan. Doughty found, w
hat all who know them have discovered, that the Bedouins are kind hosts if visited in their camps. But frequently the stranger who falls into their hands in the desert, under circumstances which according to their unwritten law do not cause them to regard him as a guest, finds them ruthless. In savage wantonness the Shammar Arabs may even cut his throat. There is a proverb in the desert that a man will slay the son of his mother for old shoe-leather; but, despite this, their hospitality is so sweeping that it has become proverbial throughout the world. “The Bedouin says: ‘Be we not all guests of Allah?’” Then adds Doughty, “After the guests eat ‘the bread and salt’ there is a peace established between them for a time (that is counted two nights and a day, in the mos whilst their food is in him).”
The word “Arab” comes from “Araba,” the name of a small territory in an ancient province south of the Hedjaz, which is said to have been named after Yarab, the son of Kahtan, the son of Abeis, the son of Shalah, the son of Arfakhshad, the son of Shem, the son of Noah, who they say was the first to speak Arabic, “the tongue of the angels.” They are a Semitic people, of the same race as the Jews.
The world owes much to the Arabs. Not only did they invent many of our boyhood games, such as the humming top set spinning by pulling a cord, but they made great strides in medicine, and their materia medica was but little different from the modern. Their highly skilled surgeons were performing difficult major operations with the use of anesthetics in the day when Europe depended entirely upon the miraculous healing of the clergy. In chemistry we have them to thank for the discovery of alcohol, potassium, nitrate of silver, corrosive sublimate, sulphuric acid, and nitric acid. They even had experimented in scientific farming and understood irrigation, the use of fertilizers, and such things as the grafting of fruit and flowers. They were world-famous for their tanning of leather, their dyeing of cloth, their manufacture of glass and pottery, of textiles, and of paper, and for their unsurpassed workmanship in gold, silver, copper, bronze, iron, and steel.
With Lawrence in Arabia Page 4