the story which follows was first written out in paris during the peace conference, from notes jotted daily on the march, strengthened by some reports sent to my chiefs in cairo. afterwards, in the autumn of 1919, this first draft and some of the notes were lost. it seemed to me historically needful to reproduce the tale, as perhaps no one but myself in feisal’s army had thought of writing down at the time what we felt, what we hoped, what we tried. so it was built again with heavy repugnance in london in the winter of 1919-20 from memory and my surviving notes. the record of events was not dulled in me and perhaps few actual mistakes crept in — except in details of dates or numbers — but the outlines and significance of things had lost edge in the haze of new interests.
dates and places are correct, so far as my notes preserved them: but the personal names are not. since the adventure some of those who worked with me have buried themselves in the shallow grave of public duty. free use has been made of their names. others still possess themselves, and here keep their secrecy. sometimes one man carried various names. this may hide individuality and make the book a scatter of featureless puppets, rather than a group of living people: but once good is told of a man, and again evil, and some would not thank me for either blame or praise.
this isolated picture throwing the main light upon myself is unfair to my british colleagues. especially i am most sorry that i have not told what the non-commissioned of us did. they were but wonderful, especially when it is taken into account that they had not the motive, the imaginative vision of the end, which sustained officers. unfortunately my concern was limited to this end, and the book is just a designed procession of arab freedom from mecca to damascus. it is intended to rationalize the campaign, that everyone may see how natural the success was and how inevitable, how little dependent on direction or brain, how much less on the outside assistance of the few british. it was an arab war waged and led by arabs for an arab aim in arabia.
my proper share was a minor one, but because of a fluent pen, a free speech, and a certain adroitness of brain, i took upon myself, as i describe it, a mock primacy. in reality i never had any office among the arabs: was never in charge of the british mission with them. wilson, joyce, newcombe, dawnay and davenport were all over my head. i flattered myself that i was too young, not that they had more heart or mind in the work, i did my best. wilson, newcombe, dawnay, davenport, buxton, marshall, stirling, young, maynard, ross, scott, winterton, lloyd, wordie, siddons, goslett, stent henderson, spence, gilman, garland, brodie, makins, nunan, leeson, hornby, peake, scott-higgins, ramsay, wood, hinde, bright, macindoe, greenhill, grisenthwaite, dowsett, bennett, wade, gray, pascoe and the others also did their best.
it would be impertinent in me to praise them. when i wish to say ill of one outside our number, i do it: though there is less of this than was in my diary, since the passage of time seems to have bleached out men’s stains. when i wish to praise outsiders, i do it: bur our family affairs are our own. we did what we set out to do, and have the satisfaction of that knowledge. the others have liberty some day to put on record their story, one parallel to mine but not mentioning more of me than i of them, for each of us did his job by himself and as he pleased, hardly seeing his friends.
in these pages the history is not of the arab movement, but of me in it. it is a narrative of daily life, mean happenings, little people. here are no lessons for the world, no disclosures to shock peoples. it is filled with trivial things, partly that no one mistake for history the bones from which some day a man may make history, and partly for the pleasure it gave me to recall the fellowship of the revolt. we were fond together, because of the sweep of the open places, the taste of wide winds, the sunlight, and the hopes in which we worked. the moral freshness of the world-to-be intoxicated us. we were wrought up in ideas inexpressible and vaporous, but to be fought for. we lived many lives in those whirling campaigns, never sparing ourselves: yet when we achieved and the new world dawned, the old men came out again and took our victory to re-make in the likeness of the former world they knew. youth could win, but had not learned to keep: and was pitiably weak against age. we stammered that we had worked for a new heaven and a new earth, and they thanked us kindly and made their peace.
all men dream: but not equally, those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible. this i did. i meant to make a new nation, to restore! a lost influence, to give twenty millions of semites the foundations on which to build an inspired dream-palace of their national thoughts. so high an aim called out the inherent nobility of their minds, and made them play a generous part in events: but when we won, it was charged against me that the british petrol royalties in mesopotamia were become dubious, and french colonial policy ruined in the levant.
i am afraid that i hope so. we pay for these things too much in honour and in innocent lives. i went up the tigris with one hundred devon territorials, young, clean, delightful fellows, full of the power of happiness and of making women and children glad. by them one saw vividly how great it was to be their kin, and english. and we were casting them by thousands into the fire to the worst of deaths, not to win the war but that the corn and rice and oil of mesopotamia might be ours. the only need was to defeat our enemies (turkey among them), and this was at last done in the wisdom of allenby with less than four hundred killed, by turning to our uses the hands of the oppressed in turkey. i am proudest of my thirty fights in that i did not have any of our own blood shed. all our subject provinces to me were not worth one dead englishman.
we were three years over this effort and i have had to hold back many things which may not yet be said. even so, parts of this book will be new to nearly all who see it, and many will look for familiar things and not find them. once i reported fully to my chiefs, but learnt that they were rewarding me on my own evidence. this was not as it should be. honours may be necessary in a professional army, as so many emphatic mentions in despatches, and by enlisting we had put ourselves, willingly or not, in the position of regular soldiers.
for my work on the arab front i had determined to accept nothing. the cabinet raised the arabs to fight for us by definite promises of self-government afterwards. arabs believe in persons, not in institutions. they saw in me a free agent of the british government, and demanded from me an endorsement of its written promises. so i had to join the conspiracy, and, for what my word was worth, assured the men of their reward. in our two years’ partnership under fire they grew accustomed to believing me and to think my government, like myself, sincere. in this hope they performed some fine things, but, of course, instead of being proud of what we did together, i was bitterly ashamed.
it was evident from the beginning that if we won the war these promises would be dead paper, and had i been an honest adviser of the arabs i would have advised them to go home and not risk their lives fighting for such stuff: but i salved myself with the hope that, by leading these arabs madly in the final victory i would establish them, with arms in their hands, in a position so assured (if not dominant) that expediency would counsel to the great powers a fair settlement of their claims. in other words, i presumed (seeing no other leader with the will and power) that i would survive the campaigns, and be able to defeat not merely the turks on the battlefield, but my own country and its allies in the council-chamber. it was an immodest presumption: it is not yet: clear if i succeeded: but it is clear that i had no shadow of leave to engage the arabs, unknowing, in such hazard. i risked the fraud, on my conviction that arab help was necessary to our cheap and speedy victory in the east, and that better we win and break our word than lose.
the dismissal of sir henry mcmahon confirmed my belief in our essential insincerity: but i could not so explain myself to general wingate while the war lasted, since i was nominally under his orders, and he did not seem sensible of how false his own standing was. the only thing remaining was to refuse rewards for being a successful trickster and, to prevent this unpleasantness arising, i began in my reports to conceal the true stories of things, and to persuade the few arabs who knew to an equal reticence. in this book also, for the last time, i mean to be my own judge of what to say.
