April 29, 1919

Ten days ago the Syrian kettle came to a boil again. The commission shows more and more reluctance to “shove off.” House told Clemenceau that the delay was scandalous and that he must intervene. “It is a scandal, I agree,” answered Clemenceau; “Lloyd George on all fours has crawled away from the position he took up so valiantly three months ago; but what have I to do with this mediaeval matter? What has the Tiger to do with a politique des Curés [church polity]?”

Hoping for a settlement or at least light on the problem, House brought about a meeting between Clemenceau and Faisal, escorted by Lawrence, in the Presidence (the Tiger’s lair—really the Ministry of the Interior).

“We must have the French flag over Damascus,” shouted the Tiger before his visitors were seated. “No,” answered Faisal, for once in a loud voice.

“I insist—we must have the French flag over Damascus,” roared the Tiger. “Never,” answered Faisal with eyes flashing, and the interview came to an end without the usual formalities.

A few days after his disappointing interview with the Tiger, Faisal left for Rome where he is reported to be coquetting with the Pope in regard to the French Protectorate over the Catholics in the Near East. Curiously enough it is the radical and godless Boulevard sheets which are most indignant over this reported course of action—or lack of it.

Charming Lawrence came in to thank us for our good offices which, it must be confessed, have achieved anything but substantial results. He admitted that personally he was in a quandary. With relief and satisfaction, he was more than ready to abandon the political world and return to his first love, archaeology. “But,” he lamented, “here is the rub. Syria is the most promising land to dig in; but there I’m compromised by the stand I have taken, and if I go there now there will be a row. So I shall return to Oxford and vegetate—worse luck! ”

Before he left me, Lawrence dropped a bit of information which is more enlightening as to the Arab problem than many volumes of Blue Books or White Papers. “The main trouble is,” he said, “there have been too many cooks out there and between them they have certainly spoiled the broth. From the beginning of the war and down to the present time, the Intelligence section of the Indian government has been paying the Wahabite Emir (Ibn Saud) one thousand pounds a month to make war on King Hussein of Mecca, our ally; and at the same time our War Office has been paying Hussein about the same sum to harass the Wahabites [that is, the Saudi Arabs, now top dogs in the Arab world]. I wonder if the French are prepared to continue these subsidies? It really doesn’t make much difference; in any case there will be hell to pay, and that will continue until we get together and honor our war-time pledges. Mind you, I don’t say we have deceived them intentionally, but we have reached the same result by not letting our right hand know what the left hand was doing.”

[Three years later I saw Lawrence for the last time. “I have fought a dog fight in Downing Street for three years,” he explained, “and justice has been done as far as it is possible at this late day.” I thought he had done wonders. He had at least brought two Arab kingdoms into being and he had made many Englishmen and a few Frenchmen blush for shame. “What the outcome will be of course I do not know,” were the last words I heard from the lips of this paladin, “but I am determined it shall never be said that I drew profit from the part I played in the war or the transactions that followed upon it. I have declined to enter the colonial or any other service. I would rather starve—and probably shall.”]