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  In contrast with the internal situation within the Ottoman Empire, the political outlook among the international rivals was equally fragmented. Both Germany and Great Britain maintained a bifurcated and flawed understanding of the fundamental issues that motivated the Turks and Turkish political existence. The two countries saw internal revolution as both a danger (Germany) and an opportunity (Great Britain). In 1905, when Kaiser Wilhelm II considered a European war a real possibility, he was adamant in securing his eastern flank against a viable Turkish bulwark. The British saw Arab unrest as a fulcrum point, where the lever of revolution would dislocate that bulwark. But both assessments were based on an exaggerated misperception of pan-Islamism and the Muslim community, which saw Islam as a monolithic entity under the guiding and benevolent hand of Muhammad’s religious successor, the caliph in Istanbul, and whoever controlled the caliph would command the Muslim world.

  Because of the vital economic and strategic role of the Suez Canal, the British window into the Muslim world and into the Ottoman Empire was through Egypt. This perspective gave a natural but biased geostrategic outlook that ranged upon the Arab question. In 1911, Lord H. H. Kitchener, the conqueror of Sudan (1898) and Britain’s most revered living hero, became consul-general in Egypt. His long service in the region led to a fully developed policy toward the Turks. He was acutely aware of the recent Turkish turmoil in the Balkans and especially the loss of Libya at the hands of Italy during 1911. The loss of Libya to a Christian nation like Italy caused special outrage among the Arabs of the province and throughout the empire. Kitchener believed that the Ottoman Empire was slowly sliding toward collapse. In his view, the only way Turkey could save itself was through an accommodation with Germany. For their part, the British ought not to aid the Turks so as to foster their eventual demise. He believed that the collapse would begin through an incipient Arab uprising and urged Great Britain to seize the Arab lands in the Middle East as vital to the British security arrangement from Gibraltar to Bombay. Kitchener saw southern Syria as particularly vulnerable and as a potential core, pro-British autonomous state.

  From 1911 until the beginning of World War I, Kitchener’s views in forming British relations toward the Arabs and the Turks began to eclipse those of the ambassador in Constantinople. In support of his views, it was Kitchener, for instance, who sent T. E. Lawrence and Leonard Woolley on a covert intelligence mission into southern Palestine in September 1913. It was Kitchener, more than any other British figure, who clearly saw the potential of the Hejaz and its Arab watchman of the Muslim holy places, Prince Hussein ibn Ali, toward fostering British advantage in a clash against Germany through a process of “detaching the Arabs from the Turks.” British success on the diplomatic front, however, eased tensions vis-à-vis Germany in the short run over issues in the Middle East. British foreign policy, directed by Sir Edward Grey, was reluctant to antagonize German interests by directly supporting an Arab insurgency in the region. But Kitchener continued to maintain an open line with the Arabs in the Hejaz. On February 5, 1914, Hussein’s second son, Abdullah, visited Egypt. He met with Kitchener and wondered aloud if Britain would aid Hussein if the Turks were to remove him from power. After much winking and nodding, Kitchener declined to make a firm commitment.

  The Germans themselves also received overtures from various Arab factions. Syrian Arabs in particular were sensitive to possible French incursions into the area and sought support from the Germans. For their part, the Germans were anxious to negotiate a favorable settlement with the British over the Baghdad railroad and more pressing concerns in Europe and so avoided any direct support to the Arabs. In April, Kitchener sent Ronald Storrs to visit Abdullah in an effort to maintain contact and reassure Hussein that British diplomatic efforts were pressuring the Young Turks against consolidating their control over the holy places and deposing him as guardian. Despite all the maneuvering, a diplomatic stalemate had emerged in the Middle East by the time the guns sounded the opening round of World War I.

  WHEN THE WAR broke out in August, Lawrence was back at Oxford working in the Ashmolean Museum, assisting David Hogarth’s archaeological efforts. He immediately tried to enlist and during the initial glut of recruitment was turned down. Perhaps at the suggestion of Hogarth himself, Lawrence went to see Colonel Coote Hedley, who ran the Geographical Section of the General Staff for intelligence in London. He immediately offered Lawrence a commission as second lieutenant of intelligence, where he worked until December completing the Sinai maps he and Woolley had compiled during their strategic reconnaissance of Jordan and southern Palestine. Hedley realized that competent and experienced intelligence officers would be required in the Middle East and recommended Lawrence’s appointment to Cairo.

  Meanwhile, by September Kitchener was now secretary of state for war. On September 24, he sent the fateful signal to Storrs in Cairo requesting him to determine whether or not Hussein’s faction would stand with the British in the event of a war with Turkey. On November 5 the British declared war on Turkey, and on the same day Kitchener received a favorable reply from Hussein. Kitchener immediately replied the next day, stating the British declaration of war was meant in part to preserve Arab sovereignty in a common effort against a common enemy. Hussein, however, tried to maintain the illusion of loyalty to the Turkish regime. The central government in Constantinople was pressing Hussein to join the jihad declared in November against the Christian infidels. Hussein demurred, arguing the rationale for the jihad was absurd given the fact that Turkey was allied to a Christian Germany. Turkish offensive failures against the Suez Canal in the first part of January 1915 placed renewed pressure on Hussein to commit to the fight, as the Turks were now seeking Arab “volunteers” to enlist in the struggle. On March 26, Hussein sent his youngest son, Feisal, to Damascus to assess the tenor of the anti-Turkish Arab factions in the heart of the empire. And again fear of European intervention, especially on the part of the French in Syria, made the question of a united Arab consensus impossible to gauge. When Feisal returned, however, on June 20, 1915, he had confirmed reports of Turkish atrocities in Syria. Despite the urgency in Syria, Feisal advised caution, while Abdullah urged action. Hussein continued to weigh the arguments until the middle of July, when he sent a letter to the high commissioner in Egypt, Henry McMahon, suggesting “joint action” against the Turks in return for British recognition of an independent “Arab nation.” The correspondence between the two would continue for several months, almost in parallel with the negotiations that would lead to the famous Sykes-Picot Agreement.

  As the various political and strategic machinations unfolded, Lawrence began to settle into his role as intelligence officer in Cairo. Much of his time was devoted to writing detailed “intelligence summaries” for the Intelligence Office. These were wide-ranging assessments of the political and military state of affairs in the war against Turkey collected from numerous, mostly unclassified, sources. Initially he began working for Leonard Woolley, George Lloyd, and Aubrey Herbert, all of whom worked for Lieutenant-Colonel S. F. Newcombe. Lawrence continued his work and soon gained special expertise and knowledge about the Turkish army that culminated in the publication of a detailed Turkish army handbook. Of the period, Ronald Storrs recalls: “As a colleague [Lawrence’s] quickness and instantaneous grasp of essentials was astonishing. ‘What does he want?’ he would ask as we examined an Arab, or an Arabic document. For what he wanted usually proved to be something very different from the demand expressed.” In May 1915, Lawrence was dealt a severe personal shock when he received news that his brother Frank was killed in action in France. And a mere four months later, he suffered the cruelest blow of all. In September his youngest brother, Will, was shot down over the western front. Of all his brothers, Lawrence was closest to Will, whom he virtually helped raise. During Lawrence’s many road trips, there was often a lengthy letter for Will offering brotherly advice on the passage from boyhood into manhood. The depth of grief from the two losses can be gauged by how seldom Law
rence mentioned their deaths. Writing to his mother just after Frank was killed, he reminded her of the importance of Victorian stoicism in the face of tragedy: “In a time of such fearful stress in our country it is one’s duty to watch very carefully lest one of the weaker ones be offended; and you know we were always stronger, and if they see you broken down they will all grow fearful about their ones at the front.” The deaths of his two brothers was a devastating blow he would carry all his life.

  The sudden loss of Frank and Will induced a kind of “survivor’s guilt” in Lawrence that made him increasingly restless with his relative inactivity in a gilded headquarters and dissatisfied with the general policy toward the Arabs and their role in the war. He wrote home: “We do nothing here except sit and think out harassing schemes of Arabian policy. My hair is getting very thin and gray.… I’m going to be in Cairo till I die.” He began to desire a more direct and influential role with the operations in the field when he received a mission from an unexpected quarter.

  DURING THE SAME month Will was shot down, British forces under General Charles Townsend moved up from Basra toward Baghdad. Townsend’s troops defeated the Turks at Kut-el-Amara. As the forces slogged toward their ultimate objective, they received a serious check at Ctesiphon late in November 1915 and were forced all the way back to Kut. There the Turks began to lay siege to the exhausted British and Indian troops. By March 1916, Townsend’s position had become desperate as the bloated and rotting bodies filled the marshes at Kut like a diseased cesspool. It became imperative for the British to negotiate Townsend’s surrender to prevent further loss of life. At this point, the long arm of English military bureaucracy reached down and tugged Lawrence by his shoulder straps, sending him to Mesopotamia to help with the surrender. He was sent with a strong endorsement from Henry McMahon as being “one of the best of our very able intelligence staff here and has a thorough knowledge of the Arab question in all its bearings.”

  In the end, however, the negotiations failed. While the negotiations were under way, the British attempted to “detach” the Arab troops from the Turkish army. This bumbling move proved ineffectual owing to poor planning and failure to develop Arab contacts to the fullest. Furthermore, Arab dislike in the region was less violent than among the nationalists in the Hejaz and in Syria. These futile efforts simply infuriated the Turkish garrison commander so that by April 28, a ransom sum in excess of six million dollars was rejected. The starving British surrendered the following day.

  Lawrence termed the disaster “a British disgrace from end to end.” When he returned to Cairo the following month, he wrote a searing report condemning every facet of the failed campaign. The scathing document was subsequently lost in the bureaucracy to prevent criticism from falling on the head of General Archibald Murray and others. For Lawrence, the mission provided several crucial lessons in his development as an unconventional leader. In the first place, he learned the importance of unity of command. In the failure there was a political and military fissure between the governments in Egypt and India that produced divided command and action. Second, he discovered the reality that in modern war the civilian population will always suffer when a European power pursues its national interests without regard to the culture and political aspirations of the native populace. In the end, Lawrence saw firsthand the consequences of an arrogance of power wedded to an ignorance of culture. These lessons would help him formulate a truly effective people’s war against the Turks.

  By the time Lawrence returned to Cairo, much had changed. His boss, Gilbert Clayton, had gone off in February 1916 to start the Arab Bureau in an attempt to develop a strategic intelligence capability working directly for the Foreign Office. The political intrigue continued between the British and Hussein as they tried to craft an understanding that would finally lead to an Arab revolt. On June 10, the revolt began at Mecca when Hussein’s ill-armed guerrillas seized the small Turkish garrison after three days of fierce combat. Now the die was cast and only the British knew it was loaded; and Lawrence would soon discover the true nature of the game.

  LAWRENCE WAS MORE or less aware that from the very beginning of negotiations with Hussein, the British were pursuing a two-track diplomatic strategy vis-à-vis the Arabs. As mentioned earlier, in 1915 Henry McMahon opened up a correspondence with Hussein almost simultaneously with the broader Sykes-Picot understandings—a series of arrangements between the British and French regarding the political fate of the Middle East following the Great War. The two sets of agreements were congruent on some issues, but on key principles of national interests they were mutually incompatible. McMahon’s negotiating position was from a military perspective that viewed Arab support for the war as a more short-term opportunity that might benefit British strategic interests that were also congruent with Arab national aspirations. We can thus speak of a “military” position and a “Foreign Office” stance. The view of Sykes and Picot arose through a lens of realpolitik, where national and colonial interest held sway above all else. These talks were carried out at the highest levels in the European capitals of London, Paris, and St. Petersburg.

  Both positions affirmed Arab independence but diverged on matters of implementation. A key difference was the active role France would play in securing its own sphere of influence under the Sykes-Picot accords. McMahon was unclear about the future status of Palestine, whereas Sykes-Picot promised an international mandate and access to ports at Gaza and Haifa. The British would still control the area of Iraq around Basra—and its oil. Although there was much jockeying going on for strategic advantage, in the end the Allies did deliver the Arabs from their Ottoman oppressors, though not in the manner the Arabs had anticipated. Naturally, a sense of betrayal of “what’s right” lingers to this day. For Lawrence, the betrayal was real because he had to lie on behalf of British imperial interests; the political betrayal that he was of necessity a party to meant for him also a personal betrayal of his own character, something that would seethe within him until the very end of his life and have profound psychological implications as leader.

  Hussein, meanwhile, was in negotiations with the Turks all the time he was bartering with the British. In the end, simple horse sense demanded that he back the Allied cause as the most likely to deliver Arab freedom. Hussein’s broad ambition as Hashemite hegemon of a grand coalition of Arabia and Syria drove those around him to high hopes and aspirations. Though he dealt directly with McMahon, Hussein had no input or knowledge of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which was signed in May 1916 even before the Arab Revolt began. McMahon himself was unaware of the agreement until a year later. Clearly, each side was betting on the other to fulfill the better part of the promises secured. By 1916, after British defeats at Gallipoli and Kut and the Arab failure to revolt up to that point, mere promises were all the negotiating sides could manage to wager. Only the dice of war could determine whether the bet had been a calculated risk or a dangerous gamble. In the end, both partners won—sort of.

  BY THE TIME the revolt began, Lawrence was back from Mesopotamia to the mundane matters of intelligence work in Cairo. He suggested that the weekly intelligence summaries should be published with actual documents in a classified version that became known as The Arab Bulletin. Lawrence himself contributed several pieces to the journal, which was edited by David Hogarth until the end of the war. The Bulletin also provided a fairly accurate account of the war in the Hejaz desert.

  After its initial blush of success, the revolt began to stagnate into a stalemate through the summer and into the fall of 1916. Lawrence looked on with a mixture of anxiety and frustration. At the same time, his position in Cairo intelligence became more and more untenable as Lawrence’s strategic views and interests clashed with the more myopic outlook of tacticians such as G. W. V. Holdich, new head of military intelligence. Holdich’s views toward the Arabs were a reflection of those of his military chief in Egypt, Sir Archibald Murray, who saw little military advantage in supporting the seemingly unreliable Arabs. What Holdich c
onfronted was in fact a kind of pro-Arab cabal of officers—based mainly in Cairo intelligence—who began “to see that a new factor was needed in the [Middle] East, some power or race which would outweigh the Turks in numbers, in output, and in mental activity.” Lawrence was one of the key leaders among this group of intelligence officers. He wrote, “Some of us judged that there was latent power enough and to spare in the Arabic peoples …, a prolific Semitic agglomeration, great in religious thought, reasonably industrious, mercantile, politic, yet solvent rather than dominant in character.” After five hundred years under the Turkish yoke, they burned for freedom and independence. The war with Turkey now offered the Arabs the chance to seize liberty with their own hands.

  Of all his contemporaries, Eric Kennington, the sculptor and artist, captured best the visage of T. E. Lawrence during this period in its timeless essence, immutable to place and circumstance: “He moved little, using bodily presence just sufficiently to make brain contact. I had never seen so little employment or wastage of physical energy. The wide mouth smiled often, with humor and pleasure, sometimes extending to an unusual upward curve at the corners, a curious menacing curve, warning of danger.… The face was almost lineless, and removed from me as a picture or a sculpture. However gracious its attitude, it remained distant.” Almost Buddha-like, someone once said: serene, placid yet keenly aware. “The eyes roamed around, above, and might rest on mine or rather travel through mine, but never shared my thoughts, though noting them all. He stayed higher on another plane of life. It was easy to become his slave.” The Arab insurgents would soon be under the thrall of his “crystal eyes” gazing with a kind of primitive, almost animal presence, “yet with a complete understanding. And at moments of thought, when he would ignore the presence of others, retiring into himself, they would diverge slightly. Then, he was alone, and as inscrutable as a lion or a snake. He would return, and graciously attend to one with limitless patience, dealing with our slower brains and limited understanding, our hesitations and fears, apparently never exasperated by our insufficiency.”