Gertrude Bell

by Georgina Howell

  Delays and setbacks on the part of the British and Arabs were offset by the success of guerrilla action against the Turks garrisoned along the railway, and against their trains carrying munitions and money. Faisal’s Syrian supporter Jafar Pasha el Askeri was later to describe hundreds of thousands of Turkish banknotes fluttering out of a burning train, and not one tribesman bothering to scoop them up in their passion to reach Damascus.

  While Allenby pressed on towards Jerusalem—to be taken in a supreme victory in December 1917—Faisal was in camp at Aqaba, preparing the army to march north to Damascus. At that moment a bombshell fell into the camp in the form of a copy of the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement. It was delivered to the camp by courtesy of the Bolsheviks via Faisal’s old enemy Jemal Pasha, with the aim of showing the Arabs what was in store for them should the Allies win the war. Faisal knew there had been an agreement, but until now had known little more.

  The agreement made between Sir Mark Sykes and M. Georges-Picot divided “Arabia,” in the event of victory, into protectorates and administrations for distribution among the British, the French, and the Russians. It seemed to ignore a promise previously made by Sir Henry McMahon to give Arab independence in the area that took in the four sacred Muslim cities. The Sykes-Picot agreement—or disagreement, as it was already being called in London—would form the basis of the San Remo Pact, which would settle Arabia under British and French mandates.

  Faisal’s lack of this vital information had in fact proceeded from his over-controlling father. Hussain had never shown him the years of correspondence between himself and Henry McMahon that he hoarded at Mecca, or thought it necessary to explain his paternal orders. In fact, Sykes and Picot had visited Hussain at Jidda in May, three months earlier, for the express purpose of explaining the changed conditions forced on the British by French demands, and the terms of the agreement: that France should exert influence over Syria and Lebanon, and Britain over Iraq, Transjordan, and northern Palestine. Set in his mind by age and force of personality, Hussain had barely listened to them.

  There was nothing to mitigate Faisal’s disappointment, and it was what Lawrence had dreaded. For a few days it looked as though the Revolt was finished, and Lawrence was torn by conflicting emotions. Faisal immediately telegraphed his father at Mecca, saying that he and his army refused to continue the war against the Turks because their ideal was the independence and unity of the Arab nation. They would not tolerate the replacement of the Turks by yet more foreigners. In response, Hussain telegraphed London, only to receive the glib assurance that the news was based on mere intrigue, and that the British government had no aim other than that of the liberation of the Arabs. That was good enough for the Sharif, who thereupon ordered his son to carry on with the war—“or I shall consider you a traitor.” Already calling himself “King of the Arabs,” Hussain was finding Faisal’s success intoxicating.

  Lawrence, in some torment of mind, nonetheless reassured Faisal that the British would keep to their promises, in spirit as well as in the letter. From then on, he writes, unable any longer to feel proud of what they had achieved together, he was “continually and bitterly ashamed.” So the Arab army marched on, tribes taking over from tribes as they advanced, their numbers increasing as they homed in on Damascus. They took Der’a, then came to the village of Tafas, whose ruler Tallal was amongst Faisal’s most trusted warriors. Here the Turks, on their retreat from Der’a, had taken their monstrous revenge on the villagers: women and children had been grossly tortured and mangled, houses fired. The provocation was unbearable. Tallal, driven mad with the horror of it, pulled his keffiyeh over his face and galloped head on into the retreating army’s fire. The scenes of carnage that followed were indescribable. Lawrence was disgusted with himself for the rest of his life.

  Damascus, the “pearl set in emeralds,” was besieged by the Arab army. Not long afterwards, the Turks abandoned it, the British divisions taking seventy thousand prisoners. Faisal’s Hejaz irregulars marched through the city on 30 September 1918, and flew the Sharifian flag from the Serai, the Turkish administrative offices. Women flung their veils aside and scattered scent and flowers in their path, men threw their fezzes in the air, and the celebrations continued night and day. When, on 3 October, Amir Faisal neared the city centre, there was a breathless hush. The crowds parted, the drumming of hooves was heard and then on he came, alone, galloping at full pelt, his arm raised in salute. The thousands of cheers that greeted him became one universal roar of triumph that echoed throughout Arabia.

  Faisal, the probable future ruler of the country, unfurled the flag of the Hejaz and for the first time met General Allenby. The admiration was mutual. In 1933 Allenby was to say of Faisal: “He combined the qualities of soldier and statesman; quick of vision, swift in action, outspoken and straightforward . . . Picturesque, literally, as well as figuratively! Tall, graceful; handsome—to the point of beauty—with expressive eyes lighting up a face of calm dignity; he looked the very type of royalty.” Faisal’s first address to the people stressed Arab unity and independence, the rule of law, and the reason for the Arabs’ alliance with Great Britain, France, Italy, and America: to put an end to the atrocities of the Turks.

  The new administration under Faisal, from Aqaba to Damascus, at first functioned quietly and well. But scarcely had the cheers died away than Syria was once again riven by political differences, exacerbated by the Franco-British Declaration of 7 November 1918, announced almost simultaneously with the Armistice, the end of the war with Germany. Directed at the people of Syria and Iraq, the Declaration seemed to promise the setting up of national governments and administrations that “shall derive their authority from the free exercise of the initiative and choice of the indigenous population”; but it also established that while eastern Syria would be administered by Lord Allenby, the so-called Occupied Enemy Territory West, the Syrian littoral and the Lebanon would be under French control. The extremists rose up in a body, but the self-determination paragraph seemed to encapsulate a solemn Allied promise, and Faisal was told the partition was a purely temporary expedient. He headed for the Paris Peace Conference with quiet confidence that the promise would be kept.

  Among the hundreds of delegates and thousands of advisers, clerks, and typists converging on Paris between January and July 1919 were Gertrude, Lawrence, and Faisal. Prime ministers, foreign ministers, presidents, princes, and kings arrived by every boat and train, together with supplicant peoples wanting to become nations, nations wanting to know their boundaries, suites of administrators and military representatives, the world’s press, and lobbyists for a thousand and one causes. As Margaret MacMillan wrote in her book Peacemakers, “For six months . . . Paris was at once the world’s government, its court of appeal and parliament, the focus of its fears and hopes.” Under the leadership of Woodrow Wilson, Lloyd George, and Clemenceau, there were also bankrupt empires to wind up and more crucial questions to answer: in particular, should Germany and its allies be punished and made to pay, or reconstituted? Gertrude commented:

  In our own country [Great Britain] was the increasing indifference of a great democracy to problems too remote to be easily understood, coupled with a generous democratic impulse to give all races equal opportunity and an uneasy consciousness that the West could not stand guiltless of the charge of exploiting the East. The war . . . called forth the splendid cooperation of India, the gallant effort of the Arabs side by side with Lord Allenby’s armies, till the principles of peace pronounced by President Wilson seemed but a recognition of services in a common cause.

  In our extremity the forces of Asia had been enlisted in what was primarily the defence of European liberties, the East had been called into councils of war and an Arab kingdom had been counted among the Allies.

  The world had exhausted its energies, and was poised at the outbreak of the pandemic of septic influenza that, beginning in Europe, would kill twenty-seven million weakened and debilitated people—twice as many as the war itself.
One of the first victims was Sir Mark Sykes, who died at the Conference. It is interesting to speculate whether, as the homeward-bound parties scattered, they took the virus with them.

  Gertrude, a third of the way through her last miserable year with A.T., checked into the Hotel Majestic, the largest of the five hotels taken over by the British Empire delegation near the Arc de Triomphe, and the residential and social centre of the Conference. A gilded pre-war favourite of rich South American women buying the new season’s couture, the Majestic’s normally excellent food and service had been supplanted by the bad coffee and overcooked fare of a British railway hotel: the staff had been replaced by British employees from Midlands hotels, supposedly so as to protect against spies. So much for Gertrude’s longing for a delicious leg of lamb. And not only the food reminded the delegates of school: as visitors arrived, each was issued with a book of house rules. Meals were at set hours, drinks had to be paid for, there was to be no cooking in the rooms, and the furniture was not to be damaged.

  From the moment she arrived, of course, Gertrude was in her element. Her original plans to leave as soon as A.T. arrived were shelved. The projected motor tour with her father would be delayed, but he came to Paris to see her. Gertrude wrote on 7 March:

  I’ve dropped into a world so amazing that up to now I’ve done nothing but gape at it without being able to put a word on to paper. Our Eastern affairs are complex beyond all words, and until I came here there was no one to get the Mesopotamian side of the question at first hand. The magnates have been extremely kind . . . They have all urged me to stay and I think for the moment that’s my business.

  Her friend and correspondent Chirol came at once to find her. They fell immediately into a conversation that would go on for weeks.

  Lawrence and Faisal suffered a much worse introduction to the Conference. When they arrived at Marseilles, Faisal was informed by the French authorities that he had no official standing at the Conference and that he had been badly advised in making the journey. It took the intervention of the British to have his name included in the list of official delegates—but as a mere representative from the Hejaz. He rented an imposing Louis XVI mansion in Paris—A. T. Wilson described it as “florid”—where he fumed when French intelligence delivered his letters already opened and delayed his telegrams to the Middle East.

  Lawrence, arriving in Marseilles in full Arab dress, was met with incredulous and insulting stares, and informed that he would be welcome only as a British officer. He left France in a fury: subsequently it was rumoured that he took the Croix de Guerre that the French had awarded him and pinned it to a dog’s collar. When he turned up in Paris for the start of the Conference, he was wearing a keffiyeh with his khaki uniform. Instead of being allowed to take his place among his acquaintances and friends at the Majestic, he was shunted off to the less illustrious Continental.

  Given the inevitable clash of their personalities, it was hardly surprising that A.T. would be enraged no less by Lawrence’s Arab headdress than by his strong pro-Arab views: “Colonel T. E. Lawrence . . . seems to have done immense harm and our difficulties with the French in Syria seem to me to be mainly due to his actions and advice.” Of Faisal he was scarcely less dismissive, calling him “the self constituted champion of Syria.”

  When Hussain had instructed Faisal to represent him at the Conference, Faisal had asked to see the documents that his father had, relating to the promises made by the British. Hussain had refused. Lloyd George now produced the Sykes-Picot Agreement for Faisal’s inspection, revealing for the first time the extent of the promises that Britain had also made to France. Faisal was to say later:

  The first deception occurred when Field-Marshal Lord Allenby announced that Syria had been divided into 3 zones under pretext that this arrangement was purely temporary and administrative. The second blow levelled against the Arabs’ happiness was the confirmation of the secret Sykes-Picot treaty which had been denied in 1917 . . . In this way we had to face the bitter truth.

  If Faisal was betrayed by all, he was least betrayed by the British. The secret minutes of the Paris Conference’s Supreme Council, published later, showed that efforts were made to fulfil the promises made to the Arabs, inconsistent as these might be with the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Lloyd George vehemently maintained that the agreement between Hussain and Britain should be respected. M. Picot, for France, declared that British pre-arrangements with the Arabs were nothing to do with France—adding, without shame, that if France were entrusted with the mandate for Syria, they would be ignored. Lloyd George retorted that he would consider the occupation of Damascus by French troops a violation of Britain’s agreement with Hussain. The French chose to read the bond between the British and the Hashemites as a conspiracy, by which Britain intended to reserve a monopoly of influence in the Middle East. The recalcitrance of the French and the confused position of the British, who did not propose to keep Syria but had made overlapping promises both to France and to the Arabs, boded ill for Hashemite interests.

  On 6 February Faisal had his chance to address the Supreme Council. He spoke in the fluid and ringing periods of his native Arabic, while Lawrence, standing beside him, translated. Faisal said that the Arab world should have its independence. He wanted all Arabic-speaking regions to enjoy individual independence under an Arab suzerain, the whole to be placed under one mandate until they could stand alone. Arab unity, he went on, would not be realized under the proposed “spheres of influence.” He reminded Britain of the pledges of Arab independence made in the Hussain–McMahon correspondence, and the French of the spirit of self-determination promoted by President Wilson and set out in the “free choice” clauses of the Franco-British Declaration. Then he invited questions, taking and answering them in fluent French.

  The French Foreign Minister, Stéphen Pichon, intending to trick Faisal into an indiscretion, asked what France had done to help him. Faisal adroitly steered clear of the trap, paying due credit to the French for aid while at the same time leaving the audience in no doubt as to its very limited extent. No one missed the point.

  Lloyd George asked carefully constructed questions designed to demonstrate the large contribution the Arabs had made to the Allied victory, but President Wilson asked only if the Arabs would prefer to be part of one mandate or several. Faisal exhibited great restraint and diplomacy. Lloyd George had advised him earlier, in London, that should he be asked whose mandate he would prefer, he should “hitch his chariot to the star of President Wilson”—America being the only nation capable of preventing Syria from coming under a French mandate. Faisal followed this advice to the letter, but was again to be disappointed when he and Lawrence visited Wilson afterwards. The American President was noncommittal, and would shortly pull America out of the negotiations altogether. When the American public lost interest in the Middle East—as it soon would—the Arab cause was lost.

  If Gertrude was an increasingly intense figure, not suffering fools gladly, so was Lawrence. Both could be charming to those who interested them, whether desert tribesmen or Western statesmen, but could equally be brutally rude. Gertrude had recently frozen a lunch party in Baghdad by remarking in front of a colleague and his young English bride: “Why will promising young Englishmen marry such fools of women?” When a neighbour of Lawrence’s at a dinner during the Peace Conference said nervously, “I’m afraid my conversation doesn’t interest you much,” Lawrence replied that she was much mistaken: “It doesn’t interest me at all.”

  The leisurely pace of the Conference irked both Gertrude and Lawrence, and they decided to push on with their own agenda. With Chirol’s help, they organized a dinner at the Paris house of the editor of The Times, Wickham Steed. The guests were a number of influential French journalists. All spoke French, Lawrence having spent much of his youth in Brittany. Gertrude wrote in a letter of 26 March 1919:

  After dinner T.E.L. explained exactly the existing situations as between Faisal and his Syrians on the one hand and France on the
other, and outlined the programme of a possible agreement without the delay which is the chief defect of the proposal for sending in a Commission. He did it quite admirably. His charm, simplicity and sincerity made a deep personal impression and convinced his listeners. The question now is whether it is not too late to convince the Quai d’Orsay and Clemenceau and that is what we are now discussing.

  To her old Arab Bureau colleague Aubrey Herbert she wrote from Paris:

  O my dear they are making such a horrible muddle of the Near East, I confidently anticipate that it will be much worse than it was before the war—except Mesopotamia which we may manage to hold up out of the general chaos. It’s like a nightmare in which you foresee all the horrible things which are going to happen and can’t stretch out your hand to prevent them.

  She was, of course, enormously interested to meet Faisal, as the hero of the Revolt and the man who would be, one way or another, a future player in the Middle East. She had arrived too late to hear his speech, but she was introduced to him by Lawrence, and her sympathy deepened. Dressed in his habitual gold-embroidered white, carrying his ceremonial dagger, and with the air of command and the mystique she had expected, he was of the type of desert Arab to whom she had always been attracted. But he was far more: his warmth and humour, in contrast with the pensive expression of his slanted hazel eyes, took her by surprise. “Excuse me,” he had said with a smile, when a passing allusion had been made to the fight for the Holy Land, “but which one of us won the Crusading wars?” A veteran warrior of thirty-three years, experience and betrayal had accentuated his air of melancholy; never quite well, he was lined and drawn from driving himself, many times over, to the limits of his strength. Though his eyebrows and moustache were heavy and dark, his close-cropped beard was already touched with grey. Lawrence told her of Faisal’s passion for Arabic poetry, and how he would listen to recitations of the odes for hours and hours. He spoke of his brilliance at chess, and of the mysterious frailty that sometimes caused him, after taking the lead in battle, to fall unconscious and have to be carried from the field.