Hero

 From 1875, when Disraeli, with the help of the Rothschilds, purchased Khedive Ismail Pasha's shares in the Suez Canal Corporation for £4 million, to 1956, when Britain and France went to war with Egypt over Nasser's nationalization of the canal, the protection of the canal had always been regarded as one of the most vital of British interests. The canal was the priceless link between Britain and its vast colonial possessions and domin-ions in the East. The fear that in the event of war the Turks might attack the canal as a surrogate for the Germans was one of the main reasons for British control of Egypt and the Sudan. Mention of any threat to the canal or any improvement to its defenses therefore invariably produced an instant response, so it is hardly surprising that despite the relatively slow communications of the period, the holiday season, and the normal languor of government and private committees, Woolley and Lawrence (accompanied by Dahoum) arrived in Beersheba on January 9, 1914, after having spent Christmas in Carchemish, and got to work immediately. From Beersheba south and east there were no roads or railway. Quite apart from the difficulties of the terrain, which were considerable, the Turks wanted nothing that might encourage the British to advance north from Egypt in the event of war, and the British would have regarded any attempt to build roads or a railway as a threat to the canal. "The place is
an absolute wilderness," Lawrence wrote home about the Sinai. "Not even any Arab tribes there: empty, they say." Gaza was, in those days, "a picturesque little crusading town of about 20,000 people: a fine xiith Cent. Church." Nothing appeared to have been prepared for them, although a telegram informed them that Captain (later Colonel) S. F. Newcombe of the Royal Engineers was on his way with a caravan of cam-els. Woolley and Lawrence bought themselves tents, "camp outfit, hired servants, etc. (all on credit, since the P.E.F. had sent our money to Jerusa-lem)," and made their way to Beersheba with their gear on a donkey, to wait for Newcombe. Lawrence noted that already, "the Turkish Gov. is exceedingly shy of us, and is doing its best to throw all possible difficul-ties in our way"; this problem would grow worse throughout the expedi-tion. Whatever had been decided about the map survey in Constantinople, here, only a few miles from the Egyptian border, the police recognized a foreign, Christian intrusion when they saw one, and acted accordingly. Fortunately, Lawrence and Newcombe liked each other at once, and their friendship would last throughout the war years and beyond. Law-rence's attitude toward professional soldiers was, and would remain, ambivalent. From an early age he felt he had mastered the art of war—very few professional soldiers had anything like his broad knowledge of military history and literature, his ability to inspire others, his endurance, or his sense of terrain and topography. Whatever Lawrence's preference for the methods of Marshal de Saxe over those of Napoleon, he would not have disagreed with the latter's comment, "In war, as in prostitution, the amateur is often better than the professional." As time would show, Law-rence was something of a self-taught genius in tactics and strategy, and he already knew it; this knowledge must have made it all the more difficult for him to accept that he could never have been a regular officer in the Post-Edwardian British army.
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The sharifian family was respected as being descended from the prophet and as guardian of two of
the three holiest cities in Islam. Consequently, the family was an object of suspicion to the Turkish government, all the more so since Mecca, in the Hejaz, was so far removed from the centers of Turkish power that before the building of the single-line railway to Medina, the journey to Mecca could take weeks or months. Even after the completion of the rail-way, there was still a daunting journey of 250 miles on camel or on foot from Medina to Mecca across a forbidding desert dominated by preda-tory Bedouin. Abdulla's importance and diplomatic skill were such that he not only met with Ronald Storrs but may have met with Kitchener himself; but neither of them was able to offer any meaningful support so long as Great Britain and the Ottoman Empire were at peace (or to pro-vide Abdulla with the half a dozen modern machine guns he wanted). The moment they were at war, however, Storrs suggested reopening the discussion with Abdulla; and Kitchener, now in London as secretary of state for war, agreed. Abdulla, speaking for his father, sought British support against the Turks, and after a series of messages from Mecca to Cairo to London and back, it was given, on the condition that the sharif (and "the Arab nation") assist Britain in the war against Turkey. Kitchener not only had given his approval but had sought the approval of the prime minister and Sir Edward Grey, the foreign secretary, thus committing Britain in principle to arm and finance a revolt in the Hejaz against the Turks under the lead-ership of Sharif Hussein. The timing of the revolt and the exact meaning of the phrase "Arab nation" were left undefined for the moment; still, at one stroke, Great Britain had committed itself to the creation of an Arab state and to the leadership of Sharif Hussein and his sons. Kitchener went even farther. In his message to Abdulla, he not only alluded to an Arab state but as good as pledged Britain to support Sharif Hussein as a new caliph, replacing the Turkish sultan: "It may be," Kitchener wrote, falling into language as stately and opaque as that of Hussein himself, "that an Arab of the true race will assume the Caliphate at Mecca or Medina, and so good may come by the help of God out of all the evil which is now occurring."
Since Kitchener's utterances, not unlike those of the sharif, tended to be Delphic, it is hardly surprising that his message of October 30, 1914, has been a source of controversy for the past ninety-five years. That and the Balfour Declaration of 1917 are among the most fiercely disputed documents in the history of British diplomacy. It is clear enough, though, that British policy now promised "the Arabs" (without as yet defining who and where they were) a state carved out of the Ottoman Empire if they helped to defeat the Turks, and offered the sharif (and his family) a role of special political and religious importance within such a state, as well as suggesting that he should assume spiritual leadership of all Mus-lims everywhere (something that was hardly in the gift of the British government). Not surprisingly, these assurances were accepted with alacrity by the sharif, and very shortly afterward he offered the first proof of his allegiance to the Allies' cause. Almost immediately after the outbreak of war between the Allies and the Ottoman Empire the sultan, though now hardly more than a figure-head, in his role as calpih proclaimed a jihad against the Allies. The proc-lamation appeared to have had little effect on Muslims in India, in North Africa, or even in Egypt. Although the sharif of Mecca had been expected to announce his adherence to the jihad, he showed no sign of doing so. His silence on the matter was deafening, and registered clearly in Con-stantinople and Berlin. It may or may not be true that the British acquired their empire "in a fit of absence of mind,"* but certainly their policy for the Middle East was improvised in haste and as something of an afterthought, by men who were overwhelmed by the sheer size and ferocity of the war only three months after it had begun. However, when Lawrence arrived in Cairo, British policy, at any rate on the surface, appeared to coincide with his own view, except for the intrusion of the Indian army and government into Mesopotamia, which Lawrence opposed from the start. He plunged into his duties in Cairo with enormous enthusiasm—and daily expanded