Helping Lawrence
The Independent Arab. By Major Sir Hubert Young, C.M.G., 1).S.O. (John Murray. Its. 6d.) IT was in 1908 that Sir Hubert Young first entered those Middle Eastern countries in which he was to do such valuable and strenuous work during the succeeding years, and which he left- only a few months ago to take over the Governorship of 'Nyasaland. In those days the long interregnum between the Flying Carpet and the air-lines of civil aviation was still in force ; even the German-built Baghdad Railway " was still little more than a project." From Diarkebir, nine days' upstream of Mosul, the author floated all the way down the Tigris to Baghdad on a raft of inflated goatskins. Before he embarked he met, in the diggings at Carchemish, "a quiet little man of the name of Lawrence." "Lawrence was then twenty-five. . . . By his mere personality he had converted : the excavation into a miniature British Consulate." Sir
Hubert stayed.with him for a week. . .
- His .respect for this unaccountable young man appearete have been.reciprocated. -In 1918. he was summoned -by the -High Commissioner to Cairo from sick leave in India, where -he had been recuperating from the effect of hard and varied service in Mesopotamia -(his account of which loses more than half its interest for the lack of any relevant maps). In Cairo
he found Lawrence : .
• " They asked me to suggest someone who would take my place in ease anything happened to me' ' Said Lawrence, with his mischievous smile, 'and I told them I thought no one could. As they pressed me, I said I could only think of Gertrude Bell and yourself, and they -seemed to think you would be better for this particular job than she would.'"
So for the rest of the War, until the ematbre of Damascus, Sir Hubert was attached to the semi-regular Arab units operating in conjunction with the British forces in a guerilla campaign which, while its- inspiration was due to Lawrence, owed a great part Of its effectiveness to his assistants.
The author's activities are vividly but modestly described. He takes us behind the scenes of adventure, and we are given some idea of the labour, resource, and diplomacy required to stage-manage a revolt in- the desert. Camels, fodder, supplies, equipment, communications—all the factors on which- the success of some spectacular raid depended could only be pre- pared through co-operation with a people to whom time meant nothing and truth (in most cases) rather less. The absence of maps will make it impossible for all save the initiated to follow very closely the operations described ; but The inde-i pendent Arab -presents an exciting and authoritative cross-. section of the work which those operations entailed.
To. Lawrence himself the author pays warm -tributes. He arrived too late on the scene to see much of "the real Eliza- bethan Lawrence." . But he saw enough to make- him endorse popular opinion of the man, and to convince him of the value of those almost legendary exploits : " I have often been asked whether Lawrence could have done what he did if it had not been for his almost inexhaustible supply of golden 'guineas,' and I have always made the same answer.. 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."
Sir Hubert's concluding chapters throw valuable light on the conflict 'of interests and personalities in the months fol.' lowing the War, from which finally emerged a policy recently: so triumphantly justified by the admission of -an autonomous Iraq to the League of Nations. Particularly illuminating,- though obviously controversial, is his comment on the earliest. stages of that policy's development : "(Sir Arnold) Wilson failed to realize the imeeesity of keeping faith with the Arabs ns much as Lawrence underestimated the necesssity for keeping../aitb with the French. ... . If only they had been working together, instead of against each other, the result might well have been that Syria and Iraq would have, developed side by side along exactly the same lines, and entered: the League of Natierus hand-hi-hand."
R. T. F.
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