At the weekend I went to a great new exhibition at the Imperial War Museum about Lawrence of Arabia.
Lawrence was a great Arabist, and I must admit that one of the books I’ve not read, but really wish I had, is Seven Pillars of Wisdom – don’t worry, I intend to put this right.
The exhibition is quite tightly packed in, and features many of Lawrence’s belongings, including some of his famous clothes. And it also has the motorbike on which he was riding when he caught a child’s bike, crashed, went into a coma, and then died.
You’re given an enormously informative audio guide when you enter the exhibition, and it makes for fascinating listening. I know that I’m not remotely the first person to note the incredible aptness of a letter Lawrence wrote to The Sunday Times in 1920, but it’s worth repeating it, and the excerpt is included on the audio guide where Sam West reads it sensationally:
The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our imperial record, and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are to-day not far from a disaster.
…
We said we went to Mesopotamia to defeat Turkey. We said we stayed to deliver the Arabs from the oppression of the Turkish Government, and to make available for the world its resources of corn and oil. We spent nearly a million men and nearly a thousand million of money to these ends. This year we are spending ninety-two thousand men and fifty millions of money on the same objects.
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We say we are in Mesopotamia to develop it for the benefit of the world. all experts say that the labour supply is the ruling factor in its development. How far will the killing of ten thousand villagers and townspeople this summer hinder the production of wheat, cotton, and oil? How long will we permit millions of pounds, thousands of Imperial troops, and tens of thousands of Arabs to be sacrificed on behalf of colonial administration which can benefit nobody but its administrators?
The full article can be found here.