With Lawrence in Arabia quotes

… in goatskin coats reminiscent of the days of Abraham, Turks in balloon-like trousers, Arab merchants lending a brilliant note with their gay turbans and gowns—all rub elbows in that narrow lane of bazaars, shops, and coffee-houses that leads to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

Jerusalem is not a melting-pot. It is an uncompromising meeting-place of East and West.

Here are accentuated, as if sharply outlined in black and white by the desert sun, the racial peculiarities of Christian, Jewish, and Mohammedan peoples. A stranger must, indeed, have something extraordinary about him to attract attention in the streets of the Holy City.

Jerusalem is not a melting-pot. It is an uncompromising meeting-place of East and West. Here are accentuated, as if sharply outlined in black and white by the desert sun, the racial peculiarities of Christian, Jewish, and Mohammedan peoples.

A stranger must, indeed, have something extraordinary about him to attract attention in the streets of the Holy City.

But as this young Bedouin passed by in his magnificent royal robes, the crowds in front of the bazaars turned to look at him.

So I had come to the conclusion that Lawrence was the product of Western imagination over-heated by exuberant contact with the East.

But the myth turned out to be very much of a reality.

The five-foot-three Englishman standing before me wore a kuffieh of white silk and gold embroidery held in place over his hair by an agal, two black woolen cords wrapped with silver and gold thread.

Even concerning his connection with the Arabian army he would say nothing, except to give the credit for everything that happened in the desert campaign to the Arab leaders, or to Newcombe, Joyce, Cornwallis, Dawney, Marshall, Stirling, Hornby, and his other British associates.

Surely Destiny never played a stranger prank than when it selected, as the man to play the major rôle in the liberation of Arabia, this Oxford graduate whose life-ambition was to dig in the ruins of antiquity, and to uncover and study long-forgotten cities.

When we first met in Jerusalem, and later on in the solitude of the desert, I was unable to draw Lawrence out about his early life.

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.

Is it so strange, after all, that the desert should be the old homestead of three of the world’s greatest religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism?

The Arabs call the desert the Garden of Allah; they say there is no one in the desert but God.

Out in the deserts of Arabia, even more than in many other parts of the world, “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth His handy-work. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.”

and the firmament sheweth His handy-work. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.” There is no striving in the desert to amass wealth for wealth’s sake; there is no mad rush to get ahead of one’s fellow-men.

One of the curses of our modern civilization is that we do not have time to think or meditate.

The desert is a fitting place for one to ponder over man’s destiny and to meditate upon the things that moth and rust do not corrupt and that thieves do not break through and steal.

Life is a serious and sober affair from the moment the Arab baby opens his eyes on the woman’s side of the black tent. As soon as he is able to crawl, he comes into the tribal council.

His only school is the coffee hearth; his only education consists in the handling of men and camels.

Emir Feisal began life as a dirty little shepherd boy. His mother was an Arab girl of Mecca and a cousin of his father.

They did not even dare to trust their close associates, because in Turkish territory plots were usually discovered before they matured, and no man knew whom he could trust.

Not only were there spies but innumerable spies on spies.

Early in 1916, when Lieutenant Lawrence was making a reputation for himself with the Secret Corps in Cairo, Grand Shereef Hussein sent word to all the tribes of Holy Arabia to be ready at a moment’s notice. Then, on June 9, he gave the signal.

And before we continue to the point in the Arab Revolt where Lawrence made his entrance, let us stop and see these centers of life in the Hedjaz whence came so many of Lawrence’s associates.

When you land at Jeddah you blink your eyes and pinch yourself to see if you are awake.

The Koran forbids the use of intoxicating liquors, but either the architects who designed this city were not faithful Mussulmans or most of the buildings were constructed before Mohammed introduced prohibition into Arabia.

… of the houses are of five and six stories and are used only for the accommodation of pilgrims who pass through on their way to Mecca during Ramadan, a time when the population of the city increases from twenty thousand to perhaps one hundred thousand.

The most fitting way I can think of describing this weird Arabian seaport is to say that it looks like any ordinary Oriental city might look to a man suffering from delirium tremens.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa would be in an appropriate setting if it were transferred to Jeddah. Symmetry seems to be an unknown quantity in this part of the Near East.

The most fitting way I can think of describing this weird Arabian seaport is to say that it looks like any ordinary Oriental city might look to a man suffering from delirium tremens.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa would be in an appropriate setting if it were transferred to Jeddah.

Symmetry seems to be an unknown quantity in this part of the Near East. It is said that an Arab carpenter cannot draw a right angle, and an Arab waiter never puts a table-cloth on square.

The two forces then combined and made a second attempt to storm the fort. Their ammunition was nearly exhausted.

Night, which comes in Arabia with a suddenness suggestive of an electrician switching off the sun’s light, dropped down like a black curtain just in time to save them from annihilation.

On the morrow, Feisal and Ali called all the tribal chieftains to a conference at their pavilion, and it was agreed that for the present it was futile to continue the attack;

Furthermore, the Turkish garrisons at Medina and along the Hedjaz Railway could not move easily from their base without the consent of the Arabs, for they were surrounded by that mysterious element to which they were not accustomed, the unknown and unfathomable desert.

An army corps of Turkish infantry would be as helpless in the desert as they would be at sea.

On the other hand, the Arabs were at home among the shifting dunes. When a Bedouin tribe starts off on a raid, each man and his camel are a separate unit, each desert warrior as independent as a war-ship at sea;

He is not an Ethiopian but is a descendant of the Arabian tribe of Koreish to which Mohammed belonged.

Being a holy man in the Sudan is a lucrative profession.

Shereef Yusef el Hindi spends most of his time naming babies. When a child is born the father comes running to him, prostrates himself at the shereef’s feet, and says, “O noble one, what name shall I bestow upon my child?”

“To wake in the desert dawn is like waking in the heart of an opal. To my mind the saying about the Bay of Naples should run differently.

See the desert on a fine morning and die—if you can.

” Surely a fascinating book of adventure and romance could be written about the war-time experience of Miss Bell in the Mesopotamian Desert. As a staff officer she did everything required of any man but wear a spine-pad and shorts.

Miss Gertrude Bell, the famous Syrian traveler, who, although a woman, served on the Intelligence Staff in the Near East during the war, has written a vivid description of the glorious intoxication of a desert morning: “

To wake in the desert dawn is like waking in the heart of an opal.

To my mind the saying about the Bay of Naples should run differently. See the desert on a fine morning and die—if you can.”

“Allahu Akbar,” cried the weary men as they fell upon their knees with their faces toward Mecca, giving praise to Allah for their victory. Lawrence had put to flight a whole Turkish regiment. Among the slain lay Hamid Fahkri.

Fate never played a stranger prank than when she transformed this shy young Oxford graduate from a studious archæologist into the leader of a hundred thrilling raids, creator of kings, commander of an army, and world’s champion train-wrecker.

One day Lawrence’s column was trekking along the Wadi Ithm. Behind him rode a thousand Bedouins mounted on the fleetest racing-camels ever brought down the Negb.

The boxcars were full of valuable baggage, and the Arabs went wild with joy. In all, seventy Turks were killed, ninety taken prisoner, and an Austrian lieutenant and thirteen Austrian and German sergeants blown up.

Every fourth or fifth man of the famous fighting Howeitat tribe is a sheik. Naturally the head sheik has but little power.

Frequently these men would accompany Lawrence on a raid.

In fact he is noted throughout Arabia for his reckless polygamy. Every Mohammedan is permitted to have four wives at one time—if he can support them.

Old Auda has been married twenty-eight times and is ambitious to raise that record to fifty before he dies.

But in spite of his numerous marriages he has only one son living. All the others have been killed in raids and feuds.

In his dealings with Auda and other Arab chiefs, Lawrence found their rich sense of humor an important asset.

Make an Arab laugh, and you can persuade him to do most things.

Arabic is a solemn language, full of ceremony and stateliness; and Lawrence, who had an unusual knowledge of the various dialects spoken in Arabia, made the discovery that the direct translation into Arabic of ordinary colloquial English, spiced with wit, delighted his hearers.

The men of Beni-Sakr remained half bewildered until the pair had ridden about a hundred yards. Then they recovered their senses and began shooting; but the blond Prince of Mecca galloped over the nearest ridge and escaped.

Bullets, by the way, have but little immediate effect on a camel that is traveling at twenty miles an hour.

Both Lawrence and his Haurani nearly killed their camels during the journey. They rode on an average of twenty-two hours a day. From dawn to setting sun they crossed the burning sands, only stopping then for a moment’s rest for their camels.

Although camels can go for long periods without water, when they do drink they more than make up for lost time. It takes a half-hour to water them, but each camel can accommodate a nice little swallow of twenty gallons.

It is very irritating when suffering from thirst in the desert to hear your camel drawing on the copious reserve of water inside its body.

At such times the Arabs, when in dire straits, will kill a camel and drink the water in its stomach. The water is of a greenish color and has a greenish taste, but one can’t be too fastidious when perishing from thirst.

It is very irritating when suffering from thirst in the desert to hear your camel drawing on the copious reserve of water inside its body. At such times the Arabs, when in dire straits, will kill a camel and drink the water in its stomach.

The water is of a greenish color and has a greenish taste, but one can’t be too fastidious when perishing from thirst.

In judging a camel, some of the many things to be considered are the length of the inside of the belly, the way the beast lifts its feet, the way it carries its head, the depth of the neck, the length of the front leg, …

Whenever their Lord left them for a visit to Cairo or to Allenby’s headquarters, most of his body-guard managed to get themselves imprisoned by the Emir Feisal as a result of their wild humor and general unruliness.

Nobody but Lawrence could handle his devils, as they were called.

Once, having just returned to Akaba from Egypt, he wanted to set out on a secret mission without delay. As usual, he found the majority of his personal followers in the lockup. Among the prisoners were two specially daring men named Ferraj and Daoud.

In this case the guards collected among themselves a sum of £100, which they sent to the relatives, and all was well.

The rate of exchange on an ordinary life varies from £100 to £500.

This particular fellow was rather a bad lot, and so his companions of the bodyguard thought £100 was ample. Shereefs (members of the Prophet’s family) have a far higher blood value than other Arabs.

This particular fellow was rather a bad lot, and so his companions of the bodyguard thought £100 was ample. Shereefs (members of the Prophet’s family) have a far higher blood value than other Arabs.

Having killed one of them, a slayer must forfeit not less than £1000, unless he has arranged a bargain price with his victim’s family before committing the deed.

Lawrence never met a case of treachery against himself among the tribes with whom he established friendly relations, and even among unfriendly tribes he encountered only one serious violation of the laws of hospitality.

Their primitiveness is due to the necessity of leading a nomadic life, as they are obliged to follow their herds from place to place in search of grass and water.

They are wanderers on the face of the earth; creatures who trek behind their camels across the sand-dunes, who sleep under starry skies, and who live as their forefathers lived when the human race was young.

Both the regulars and the irregulars in the Arabian army were paid wages just the same as other Allied troops in other parts of the world. They received their pay in gold coin, all of which was supplied by the British Government.

All the organization had to be improvised on original lines. There was no commissariat department. When the Bedouin irregulars started off on an expedition, each man carried a small bag of flour and some coffee. Every meal was the same.

The entire army lived and fought on unleavened bread baked in ashes.

The Arabs could eat a pound or two at a time, but Lawrence usually carried a chunk in the folds of his gown and nibbled at it as he rode at the head of a column.

When the hoax was discovered he had vanished into the blue.

Distances in Arabia are not gaged by miles but by water-holes.

The night after our unfortunate bacon incident, just as we had finished putting up our pup-tent at “third water,” otherwise known as Busta, twenty Arab regulars came along mounted on Peruvian mules.

Tiers and tiers of seats face the mountain avenues of tombs. The diameter of the stage is 120 feet, and the theater is the one symbol of life and mirth in all this mysterious deserted city.

The laughter and cheers of thousands once rang here across this hollow cemetery of ancient hopes and ambitions.

Here thousands of years ago the Irvings and Carusos of that bygone age performed and received the plaudits of their admiring thousands. Where now are all the gay throngs who occupied these tiers on feast-days and watched the games?

Here thousands of years ago the Irvings and Carusos of that bygone age performed and received the plaudits of their admiring thousands. Where now are all the gay throngs who occupied these tiers on feast-days and watched the games?

The lizards are crawling over the exquisitely colored seats to-night, and the only sounds that have been heard in the theater for centuries have been the desolate howls of jackals.

Little did the ancient Edomites or Nabatæans imagine that a people called Americans from an unknown continent would one day wander among the ruins of their proud city.

Demetrius tried to force his way into it by the same narrow defile through which we entered. But the inhabitants shut themselves up in their mountain fastness and successfully defied both siege and assault.

Although the city refused itself to the visitor who came with the sword, it welcomed him who came with the olive-branch.

As the capital of the Nabatæans, it rose to its zenith in the second century before Christ. Greek geographers of those days called the land of Edom by the name “Arabia Petræa.”

You are like an English actor appearing for the first time in a German theater. Even that is not a parallel, because you are playing a part day and night, and for an anxious stake.

Complete success comes when the Arab forgets your strangeness and speaks naturally before you.

” So far as I know, Colonel Lawrence is the only European who was ever accepted by the Arabs as one of themselves.

But there was nothing unusual in this, for if a Prussian officer of the Death’s Head Hussars had passed Whitehall in London during the war, he, no doubt, would have received the salute of the Horse Guards.

Lawrence’s theory was that it was a much simpler matter to go boldly and openly in uniform in rural Turkey than to dodge about in a suspicious manner.

After hurriedly glancing over the fortifications around Baalbek, Lawrence attempted to visit the Turkish military school, where thousands of young officers were being trained.

However, he found the Metawileh so keen for a raid or a lark of some kind that he was prevailed upon to join them in what he always referred to as “a cinema show.”

In his contact with the peoples of the desert he made the discovery that noise is one of the best forms of propaganda.

So that night, followed by every able-bodied man, woman, and child in the tribe, Lawrence went down to the main line of the Turkish railway, which runs from Constantinople and Aleppo through Baalbek to Beirut.

In addition he had his resplendent private body-guard of one hundred picked Bedouins. His total force amounted to one thousand men mounted on camels.

Lawrence’s motto on this expedition, as on all others, was, “No margin!”

He faced a march of five hundred miles across unmapped desert under stupendous transport difficulties. During one stage they marched four days from one water-hole to another, carrying their entire water-supply with them and suffering from thirst.

So he ordered his followers to dismount. With a rush they clambered on board like Barbary corsairs, scuppered the crews, scuttled the boats, remounted their snorting thoroughbreds, and vanished into the desert haze before the dazed Turks had time to realize what had happened.

This is perhaps the only occasion in history in which a naval engagement has been won by cavalry.

Lawrence’s original plan was to gather under his standard the enormous Rualla tribe, which fills a large part of the North Arabian Desert, and then descend in force upon the Hauran hill country to make a direct assault on Deraa.

Now the end of the war was in sight in the Land of the Arabian Nights. But sleep was difficult because all night long the Turks and Germans were blowing up their ammunition-dumps eight miles north in Damascus.

With each explosion the earth shook, the sky went white, and splashes of red tore great gaps in the night as shells went off in the air.

“They are burning Damascus,” Lawrence remarked to Stirling. Then he rolled over in the sand and fell asleep.

However, after another three days Allenby wired that no flag at all should fly over Beyrouth, and that a French officer should rule the city in the name of all the Allies.

From that date the Arabs had to fight an all-uphill battle on the field of diplomacy to keep from losing what they had fought for on the field of war.

And once again their champion was young Lawrence.

Then on his trips into the desert he would fill his stretchers with high explosives and after a raid would throw out all the remaining dynamite and substitute the wounded.

After inflicting casualties among the Turks he would proceed to bandage them up.

So successful was he as a combined medical officer and soldier that after the war he was appointed adviser to the king of the Hedjaz and for several years remained at Jeddah as the British resident.

Saluting was taboo, and in addressing each other titles were dispensed with. Even when Lawrence had the opportunity to become a general he declined the honor and gave as his reason that he preferred not to be elevated in rank beyond his associates.

Each man had his own task and went his own way. Each was a free-lance and conducted himself with much the same freedom as did the knights of old.

In a letter written home from Arabia during the latter part of the desert war by Colonel R. V. Buxton, who was in command of the Camel Corps sent over from Palestine to coöperate with the Shereefian force, this army officer said of Lawrence:

“I am not going to return for some years—perhaps never,” he said. “It would not be for the good of the Arabs for me to be there. As a matter of fact, I haven’t the remotest idea of what I will do.

The war has so completely upset my life that it may take me several years to find myself.

In the meantime I hope to discover a secluded corner somewhere in England, far from war, politics, and diplomacy, where I can read a bit of Greek without being interrupted.”

As a matter of fact, I haven’t the remotest idea of what I will do. The war has so completely upset my life that it may take me several years to find myself.

In the meantime I hope to discover a secluded corner somewhere in England, far from war, politics, and diplomacy, where I can read a bit of Greek without being interrupted.

”

“In order to give you an idea what Lord Curzon is like I must explain to you his outlook on life. Lord Curzon divides all the inhabitants of this earth into two groups, the masses and the classes.

The classes are Lord Curzon and the king. Everybody else belongs to the masses.

”

“Whether they are fit for independence or not remains to be tried.

Merit is no qualification for freedom.

Bulgars, Afghans, and Tahitians have it. Freedom is enjoyed when you are so well armed, or so turbulent, or inhabit a country so thorny that the expense of your neighbour’s occupying you is greater than the profit.”

“The desert seems to produce only one idea, the universality of God. We who have gone out to discover the meaning of the desert have found only emptiness; nothing but sand, wind, soil, and empty space.

The Bedouins leave behind them every extraneous comfort and go to live in the desert, in the very arms of starvation, that they may be free.

The desert exacts a price for its secret. It makes the Bedouins entirely useless to their fellow-men. There has never been a Bedouin prophet.

nothing but sand, wind, soil, and empty space. The Bedouins leave behind them every extraneous comfort and go to live in the desert, in the very arms of starvation, that they may be free.

The desert exacts a price for its secret.

It makes the Bedouins entirely useless to their fellow-men. There has never been a Bedouin prophet.

He remembered the time when the Arab Empire controlled most of the Mediterranean world, when its philosophers, poets, and scientists enriched the culture of Europe. “

There are some people who have dreams at night and wake to find them all rot.

There are others who have dreams in the daytime, and occasionally they come true,” he said to me one day in London.

Any one familiar with the methods of newspaper photographers will appreciate the simplicity of this where you are working out of doors in good light.

If you’ve got a graphlex and don’t get stricken with buck-fever at the critical moment, you can get photographs of St. Vitus himself.

I realized that Lawrence was one of the most romantic figures of the war. I knew that we had a great scoop. And I had made up my mind that we would not leave Arabia until we had the photographs we wanted.

It was late at night, or while trekking across the desert swaying in the camel-saddle, that he would plan his far-reaching policies of diplomacy and strategy.

Small and wiry, he seemed made of steel.

But the desert war left its indelible mark on him in more ways than one, for one of his brothers confided to me that ever since his return from Arabia he has suffered from severe heart-strain.

Bury yourself in Arab circles; have no ideas and no interests except the work in hand, so that you master your part thoroughly enough to avoid any of the little slips that would counteract the painful work of weeks.

Your success will be in proportion to your mental effort.

”

… a tribe and actually gain their confidence, you can do pretty much as you please with them and at the same time do many things yourself that would have caused them to regard you as an outcast had you been too forward at the start.

The beginning and end of the secret of handling Arabs is an unremitting study of them.

Always keep on your guard; never speak an unnecessary word; watch yourself and your companions constantly; hear all that passes; search out what is going on beneath the surface; read the characters of Arabs;

Perhaps train-wrecking was Lawrence’s most spectacular pastime, but nothing he did was more significant or remarkable than this consolidation of the Arab tribes.

With them, raiding hostile neighbors was both their amusement and their business.

To invite two enemy chieftans into Emir Feisal’s tent to swear friendship and loyalty over the ghosts of stolen horses and camels was like asking a Wall Street Magnate to turn over his fortune to Communists.

Until he became an undisputed leader, Lawrence kept in constant touch with the king of the Hedjaz and his four sons, principally Emir Feisal. He lived with the leaders that he might be with them when they were dining or holding audiences in their tents.

It was his theory that giving direct and formal advice was not nearly so effective as the constant dropping of ideas in casual talk.

At his meals the Arab is off guard and at his ease, engaging in small talk and general conversation.

As Lawrence once remarked to me under his breath when we were attending a consultation of Arab leaders: “

Everybody is a general in the Arab army. In British circles a general is allowed to make a mess of things by himself, whereas here in Arabia every man wants a hand in making the mess complete.

”

At the same time it was Lawrence’s policy always to have his name associated with those of the shereefs. Everywhere he went he was regarded as Feisal’s mouthpiece. “

Wave a shereef in front of you like a banner and hide your own mind and person

,” was the maxim of this student of Bedouin tactics.

He even declined knighthood. When I asked him why he didn’t want to be knighted, he replied: “

Well, if I become a knight my tailor will hear about it and double my bills. I have trouble enough paying them as it is.

”

I saw him a few days later, and in telling me about the theft of the bag he referred to it jokingly and merely said: “I’ve been saved a lot of trouble, and after all it’s a good thing the bag was stolen.

The world is simply spared another war book.

” The bag and its contents were never seen or heard of again. Lawrence’s theory was that they were probably thrown into the Thames by the disappointed thief, who had hoped for a better haul.

“We call the book ‘Doughty’ pure and simple,” adds Lawrence, “for it is a classic, and the personality of Mr. Doughty hardly comes into question. Indeed, it is rather shocking to learn that he is a real and living person.

The book has no date and can never grow old.

It is the first and indispensable work upon the Arabs of the desert; and if it has not always been referred to, or enough read, that has been because it was excessively rare.”