| Brood Brother |
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Joined: Sun Feb 16, 2003 4:43 pm
Posts: 7258
Location: Sacramento, California, USA
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L-4 and Primarch,
A lady friend of mine published this review on Amazon of Lawrence's "Seven Pillars of Wisdom."
Here's a link to her page:
Alyssa Lappen's Amazon Page
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Oxford University published eight copies of Seven Pillars of Wisdom in 1922 (six still exist). Another 211 copies were published privately in 1926. A third limited run appeared in 1935. But the same year, Seven Pillars was reprinted at least four more times. Now, there have probably been dozens, if not hundreds of printings.
This particular volume reproduces the first book in the two-volume 1935 edition. It includes the most romanticized section of Lawrence's work, on the so-called Arab Revolt.
This work assured T. E. Lawrence a place in history as 'Lawrence of Arabia.' It is a military history, colorful epic and lyrical exploration of Lawrence's mind.
Nevertheless, it is largely fiction. As historian David From reports in A Peace to End All Peace, when poet and scholar Robert Graves proposed to describe the liberation of Damascus in a biography of Lawrence, the subject warned Graves, 'I was on thin ice when I wrote the Damascus chapter...'
Actually, the book's fame grew not from Lawrence?s own actions but from the work's indirect promotion by a less-than-honest reporter who sought fame and fortune for himself. Like modern reporters who sometimes play fast and loose with the facts to entertain readers or elevate themselves, Lowell Thomas in 1917 was a 25-year-old part-time Princeton instructor, a 'fledgling showman from Ohio who had knocked about North America in search of fame, fortune and adventure,' according to Fromkin. He then raised enough money to travel to Britain and the Middle East front as a World War I cameraman. The Lawrence of Arabia myth sprang from Thomas' coverage of the war, and his own fanciful creation, With Lawrence in Arabia.
A onetime junior officer in the Cairo Arab Bureau, Lawrence admitted that Seven Pillars of Wisdom included a false tale of Arab bravery to aggrandize followers of Sharif Hussein of Mecca and his son Feisal. Indeed, as early as 1918, reputable newsmen reported that the Australian Light Horse division liberated Damascus from Ottoman control, not Feisal's Arab troops, who marched in afterwards, for show.
By 1921, Fromkin writes, Winston Churchill was in charge of Britain's Arab policy in Mesopotamia and tapped John Evelyn Shuckburgh to head a new Middle East department and Foreign Office man Hubert Winthrop Young to assist him. They arranged transport and supplies for Feisal's Arab army, earning hearty endorsement from Churchill's Masterson Smith committee, which simultaneously took grave exception to T.E. Lawrence as a proposed Arab affairs adviser. The committee considered Lawrence 'not the kind of man fit to easily fit into any official machine.'
Fromkin reports that Lawrence was frequently insubordinate, went over his superiors and in 1920 publicly disparaged Britain's Arab policy in the London Sunday Times as being 'worse than the Turkish system.' He also accused Britain of killing 'a yearly average of 100 Arabs to maintain peace.' This was of course untrue.
Efraim and Inari Karsh write in Empires of the Sand that Lawrence's Damascus victory was 'less heroic' than he pretended. Feisal was 'engaged in an unabashed exercise in duplicity and none knew this better than Lawrence, who whole heartedly endorsed this illicit adventure and kept most of its contours hidden from his own superiors.' Yet Lawrence basked in Thomas' fabricated London limelight, attending at least five of the showman journalist's lectures.
As an unfortunate result of the Thomas and Lawrence subterfuge, the latter assumed an undeserved role in shaping the modern Middle East.
Bad enough, we suffer to this day the consequences of Lawrence's myth.
Worse, a new generation of readers seems to accept as gospel the Lawrence of Arabia myth that stemmed from Lowell Thomas' hype and Lawrence's own book. While few seem to know it, this was long ago debunked. Those who want to know what really happened should, at minimum, also consult the Karsh's Empires of the Sand and Fromkin's A Peace to End All Peace.
--Alyssa A. Lappen
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?Sorry I spelled Finland with 2 "N" in my previous post. I type faster than I think and spelling was never one of my strengths ! 
?I edited it. Yes, the Finns never procured or were given that much from the Germans. I've seen pictures of Finns using German Assault Guns and even captured Russian armor, but as you said Finland was very much on it's own. And the world was a better place when Stalin died in '53. ?Too bad he died of natural causes, instead of a firey death by incediary bombs ... ?
