January 23, 1919

Lawrence gave me the pleasure of a long visit on Tuesday and filed with me a précis of the Arab demands. He then asked of me what he called a favor which I was only too glad to grant. It seems that his hand-written account of his campaign in Arabia, the triumphal march from Medinah to Damascus that he gave me several days ago, was the first he had written; that Hankey, Secretary of the British Empire delegation, wanted a copy for his files. I let him have it and got it back in twenty-four hours, a very precious possession.

Lawrence asked me to read the memorandum he had brought with him, to make suggestions, and then to accompany him to Faisal for further questioning. It was not a bad statement, shorter and clearer than many with which we are deluged, but in my talk with the Emir this afternoon I think he put his case in a better light.

“To begin with,” said Faisal, “I hope you will try to disabuse the minds of many of our Allies that we Arabs are an uncivilized people. I venture to point out that much of our culture has been incorporated into the civilization of the Western World. Not a few of the achievements of our learned men are indeed regarded by some as its principal ornaments. It is true that a few of our tribes were submerged in the days of the great migrations, but the people of Hejaz, my father’s kingdom, successfully maintained their independence when, in the fifteenth century, many Christian nations were compelled to bow down before the invaders from Central Asia.

“Coming to the present day, it should not be forgotten that we, together with the Macedonian Turks and the Albanians, had a large share in the overthrow of Abdul Hamid, the Red Sultan. [See Chapter 12.] On that happy day, throughout the Arab lands, committees were formed with the purpose of obtaining the right of self-government which the new constitution guaranteed. But the men of union and progress did not fulfill their promises. Syria and all the Arab lands were deprived of the modicum of freedom they had enjoyed even under the Old Turks, and the promised charter of self-government—that became a scrap of paper. Despite the most cruel persecution we persisted in our agitation, and with the Great War came our opportunity. When the Allies declared that they were fighting for justice against force, for liberty against tyranny, we made common cause with them because our ideals and our objectives were the same. We went into the struggle under the banner of the King, my father, and I had the honor to command his gallant troops who contributed substantially to the victory.

“And here is a point I wish to emphasize. It seems to be generally forgotten. We of the Hejaz were not a submerged people. We had been independent for centuries. Ours was a unique position in the Arab world, but we entered the war to liberate our less fortunate race brothers and it should not be overlooked we entered the war, like America, when the prospect of victory was far from promising. We had the very poorest equipment to wage modern warfare, and the first campaign resulted in the devastation of many of our lands and in the destruction of not a few of our cities. The Turks committed unspeakable atrocities upon our civilian populations, notably at Aouali and in the valley of Yambou. The Turks respected neither the laws of man nor of God and they never will when they have the upper hand. Incredible as it seems they did not even hesitate to despoil and desecrate the Tomb of the Prophet. The horrors of Belgium pale before what happened in Syria. Dr. Bliss of the American college in Beyrouth is here to tell you all about it. It is a conservative estimate, which he will confirm, that counting those who were hanged, those who died before a firing squad, and those who did not survive the deportations to Anatolia, more than three hundred and fifty thousand Syrians perished. In Irak and in Mesopotamia, in the battles of Hilla and at Karbala, at least thirty thousand more fell.

“We swept the Turks out of Hejaz; everywhere they were routed except at Medina. There, despite their artillery, of which we had none, we held them and then with our mobile columns swept north to redeem Syria. With aid and succor now in sight, the Syrians rushed to our camp at Akaba and, aided by Allenby and his gallant men, English and French, we liberated Syria.

“This, in brief, is a statement of the military aid we brought to the Allied cause. But there is another contribution which should not be overlooked. The wily and unscrupulous Turks had declared a Holy War against Christendom, and that was a dangerous weapon. It might have exerted a disturbing influence upon the course of the campaign; indeed, it might have proved disastrous to our cause. Misled, the Moslems of India and in other lands might have joined up with the Turks but for the fact that we, the most ancient of the Moslem peoples and the Guardians of the Tomb, remained steadfast. Our allegiance to the West demonstrated that this was not a war against our religion but a war to safeguard it, and so the Holy War cry of the Turks came to nothing.

“It is upon these real achievements and the justice of our cause that we base our moderate demands today. The mere recognition of the independence of the Hejaz would be a mockery of such outstanding services. Hejaz is and always has been independent. We entered the war, I repeat, not to improve our own position but to liberate our brothers in blood and in religion who have been throughout the centuries less fortunate. Above all else we did not enter the war to have our brothers and their lands apportioned among the Allies, although, of course, we recognize that this new servitude would be quite different from the yoke of the Turks.

“We are not asking for a favored position but merely for justice and the fulfillment of solemn promises. Those who say that we should be discriminated against because we, the Arabs, are a wild, unruly people incapable of self-government and not entitled to benefit by the Wilson doctrine of self-determination, should not be listened to. I am confident that even the least fortunate of our race are as able to assume this task as were the Greeks and the Serbs and the Bulgars but a few decades ago. When liberated, they too had been deprived of the rights of free men for centuries. They knew no more about self-government, in the Western meaning of the word, than we today, and yet they have maintained their independence, and at least two of these little nations have contributed materially to our common victory.

“We demand our rights and a recognition of these facts. Our lands should not be regarded as war booty by the conquerors. Our provinces should not be allocated to this or to that power. We have paid a heavy price for our liberty but we are not exhausted. We are ready to fight on, and I cannot believe that the great rulers here assembled will treat us as did our former oppressors. I think they will act from higher, nobler motives, but—if not—they should remember how badly it has turned out for our former oppressors.”

It was a good fighting talk and I liked it. Through it all Nouri Pasha hovered in the background, now and again coming forward to check up on some of Lawrence’s interpretations of the Emir’s words. He accompanied me to the door and said quite sadly, “When are we going to have our talk about the Barbs and the noble steeds of the Arab strain?” I admitted, sadly too, that the outlook was not promising. “At the Conference only two-footed animals are being trotted out.” Then he said, “I abhor mechanized warfare,” and so we horse lovers parted in sadness. The day of the centaurs is over, although cavalrymen will not admit it.

* * * * *

On January 24 Emir Faisal sent me the following memorandum setting forth the aspirations of his people and the purpose of his presence in Paris. Lawrence brought it, and several days later, together with Gertrude Bell who had now arrived, coming directly from Bagdad, we went over it very carefully. Some changes were made as a result of our consultation and in appreciation of the “local” political situation that was developing. This was a wise course to pursue, I think, but personally I prefer the Arab platform in its original form, which follows:

The country from a line Alexandretta-Persia southward to the Indian Ocean is inhabited by “Arabs,” by which we mean people of closely related Semitic stocks, all speaking the one language, Arabic. The non-Arabic-speaking elements in this area do not, I believe, exceed 1% of the whole.

The aim of the Arab nationalist movements (of which my father became the leader in war after combined appeals from the Syrian and Mesopotamian branches reached him) is to unite the Arabs eventually into one nation. As an old member of the Syrian Committee, I commanded the Syrian revolt and had under me Syrians, Mesopotamians, and Arabians.

We believe that Syria, an agricultural and industrial area thickly peopled with sedentary classes, is sufficiently advanced politically to manage her own internal affairs. We feel also that foreign technical advice and help will be a most valuable factor in our national growth. We are willing to pay for this help in cash, but we cannot sacrifice for it any part of the freedom we have just won for ourselves by force of arms.

Jezireh and Irak are two large provinces with only three civilized towns separated by large wastes thinly peopled by seminomadic “tribes. The world wishes to exploit Mesopotamia rapidly, and we therefore believe that the system of government there will have to be buttressed by the men and material resources of a great foreign power. We ask, however, that the government be Arab in principle and spirit, the selective rather than the elective principle being necessarily followed in the backward and long-neglected districts until time makes the broader basis possible. The main duty of the Arab government there would be to oversee the educational processes, which are to advance the nomad tribes to the moral level of the people of the towns.

The Hejaz is mainly a tribal area, and the government will remain as in the past suited to patriarchal conditions. We appreciate these better than Europe and propose therefore to retain our complete independence there.

The Yemen and Nejd are not likely to submit their cases to the Peace Conference. They look after themselves and adjust their own relations with the Hejaz and elsewhere.

In Palestine the enormous majority of the people are Arabs. The Jews are very close to the Arabs in blood, and there is no conflict of character between the two races. In principles we are absolutely at one. Nevertheless, the Arabs cannot risk assuming the responsibility of holding level the scales in the clash of races and religions that have in this one province so often involved the world in difficulties and wars. They would wish for the effective superposition of a great trustee, so long as a representative local administration commended itself by actively promoting the material prosperity of the country.

In discussing our provinces in detail, I do not lay claim to superior competence. The Powers will I hope find better means to give fuller effect to the aims of our national movement. In our opinion, if our independence be conceded and our local competence established, the natural influences of race, language, and interest will soon draw us together into one people; but for this the Great Powers will have to ensure us open internal frontiers, common railways and telegraphs, and uniform systems of education. To achieve this, they must lay aside all thought of individual profits and their old jealousies. In a word, we ask you not to force your whole civilization upon us but to help us to pick out what serves us from your experience. In return we can offer you little but gratitude and peace.