T. E. Lawrence and S. A. – The Puzzle Solved Betty McKenzie 2002

Myself

"Myself," regarding his personal future as opposed to military/political achievements.

The specific S.A. reference to himself, I believe, underlies his choice of the name "Shaw." Now, most people assumed Shaw related to Bernard Shaw, or Charlotte Shaw, both influences in his later life. But I believe he used Bernard and Charlotte as a coverup for part of his puzzle. Actually, he was so well known as "Lawrence of Arabia," he made himself instead "Shaw of Arabia," i.e., "S.A.” (The bundled entities within himself & the bundled entities within S.A.) (With some more of his tongue in cheek humor, he must have gotten a kick out of the very similar pronunciation of Shaw and Shah, i.e., ruler or king in some of the nations of Islam.)

This chapter goes into his love for Cloud's Hill, his "place," and for the fellowship of the men in the RAF. Also deal here with the concept of seeing and not seeing (have to look up where that is). And even more especially, with the concept of "leaves in the wind," which was to be the title of his next book. (First ref. to this is on very first page of SPW -- i.e., p. 29.) (Also, "a leaf fallen from your tree in autumn" -- see his letter to Eric Kennington, p. 537 of Selected Letters, or reference preferably, if I can find it, from the original Letters book.) I feel sure he did not commit a kind of semi-voluntary suicide, as some say -- he planned this book and a number of other interesting things on the fire.

Note the essays about him in TEL by his Friends, the incredible number whom he helped with his insights and his "love rarified." My Richard was one of them, TE having visited him, along with many others severely wounded in the war, in the hospitals.

He talks of his mind being sufficient to be happy unto itself. Contrary to many, I do believe he found considerable happiness in his last years, and looked forward to the "procession of Sundays" at Cloud's Hill, writing, printing, publishing. His sense of fellowship with other people, very strong. His place. His music. His photos. His books. His rhododendrons. The slogan in Greek over his door. Some fun, and much peace. Then he died less than five months later.

Much has been studied and surmised and debated, and talked and written to death, about the military hero and about the hurts and tragedies that haunted him. Few of the seekers-of-fame-through-Lawrence's-fame have seemed to care about the other -- and by far the most enduring legacy he left us. That is, a kind of universal insight he had, evolved no doubt out of his own hard life battles, which enabled him to foretell the character of the revolution that is sweeping the world of the late 20th century. Himself working toward its principles from the time he dropped out of public society after the war -- achieving them and living them in the last years of his short life -- he predicted even to the exact decade the call that the youth of the world would send out in the late l960's: the call for a "New Zeitgeist"; for an end to intolerance, personal or societal; for an unpossessive, unjealous love of one's fellowman and for brotherhood among the races of mankind; for the death of materialism in the release of inherent human generosity; for an end to war as the solution to divisiveness between men or nations; for unity and balance among the realms of the body, the intellect, and the soul; finally, for essential freedom of the spirit, owing allegiance not to established system, to privilege, to power, to wealth, or to possessions, but only to its own integrity, with the right of each man to live his life in accordance with his own ideal standard.

Lawrence's prediction above is contained in a letter dated 8 December, l927, to William Rothenstein, written from Karachi. TE is thanking him for the book, Enemy, by Wyndham Lewis, which Rothenstein had sent him. Lawrence writes:

He digresses too much, in it; so that there is almost no main

argument. If he would send his ideas one by one to the weekly

press as they occur to him -- then what a critic he would be.

The background of a general idea, some vague bogey of a

time-spirit, would then give depth and strength to his writing."

(and discussing Lewis's attack on D.H.Lawrence, T.E. writes)

Then he goes for D. H. Lawrence, who's [sic] boots he is not big

enough to wear. He does not seem to have read much

Lawrence, so far as I can see. He criticises only some pages of

his little Mornings in Mexico, which are just the snapshots of a

literary artist, in the slack time while waiting for a subject --

the same way as a barber snips his empty scissors all the time

he is moving the comb, and preparing a new grip on an uncut

lock of hair. Just the maintenance of a vital rhythm. I'd like,

immensely, to see W. Lewis tackling such a thing as D.H.L.'s

Plumed Serpent, an immense and significant book. A

fundamental criticism of that would be wonderful reading.

Only he would have to forget his time-spirit obsession. There

will not be a new time-spirit till the implications of Einstein

have entered the new generation with its mother's milk -- say

about l960 or so. We are Newtonians yet. Letters, p.555-6

This predicts the youth revolution of the l960's. Note: there was all kinds of conversation going on about the new Zeitgeist in the l920's, esp. among the literary gang in Paris -- e.g., Hemingway, in The Sun Also Rises.

"On this birthday in Bair," Lawrence writes in this chapter on Myself that he later termed the key, "to satisfy my sense of sincerity, I began to dissect my beliefs and motives, groping about in my own pitchy darkness." SP p. 563

Many ideas are set forth in its brief five pages, some readily understandable, others partially so, others seemingly quite obscure. Its concluding sentence reads: "Indeed, the truth was I did not like the 'myself' I could see and hear." However, though significant and clear, this does not seem to me to constitute the chapter's most important concept. I came to believe that Lawrence's essential, vital conclusions are to be found at approximately the halfway point in the chapter, concisely enough etched, but with their full implications to be grasped only when related to various statements in Lawrence's other writings. It should be remembered that Lawrence characterized this chapter as "written in cypher," because "on no account is it possible for me to think of giving myself quite away." Letters p. 366

He draws a kind of veil of unknowing across its pages, obscuring the depth of the truth, in a not-always-sequential order of exposition; in thoughts and references not explained, or incomplete; in others both explained and meaningful in the context as written, but beyond that, gaining more significance when viewed in the light of hurts and self-insights relevant (and acknowledged in other writings) but not mentioned here. Further complicating these is what seems to be an alternating current of thought, between the searching effort at self-analysis on the birthday in Bair, and the final deeper understanding and judgments he reached toward the end of his ordeal in writing the Seven Pillars. Both currents are operative in the chapter.

The searcher for the truth, bringing to the task the strength of caring as well as a remembrance of many things Lawrence loved or believed or feared at times in his life, arrives at a clearer understanding of the progression of thought buried in the pages, and sees the veil roll back; sees Lawrence as he was -- real -- break clear, his end conclusion and decision, the cypher of his motivation, resolved.

I write it now, as I believed I had at last found it, and am convinced that it is true

Lawrence begins his analysis:

My self-distrusting shyness held a mask, often a mask of

indifference or flippancy, before my face, and puzzled me. My

thoughts clawed, wondering, at this apparent peace, knowing

that it was only a mask . . . . .

I was very conscious of the bundled powers and entities

within me; it was their character which hid. SP p563

He then cites two essential facets of "their character":

my craving to be liked . . . . .

and

a craving to be famous . . . . . SP p 563

Dissecting the first, he writes:

There was my craving to be liked -- so strong and nervous that

never could I open myself friendly to another. The terror of

failure in an effort so important made me shrink from trying;

besides, there was the standard; for intimacy seemed shameful

unless the other could make the perfect reply, in the same

language, after the same method, for the same reason. SP 563

Clear enough. But the intensity of viewpoint is understandable, and the impact complete, only when one goes beyond Lawrence's natural shyness, to the memory of his father who had not been married to his mother but to someone else; and to the cry of tragedy after Deraa that "the citadel of my integrity had been irrevocably lost." Beneath the veil, the italicized words above seem to me to relate to the tragedy of his love story -- the fact that with S.A., who was married, he had had an idealistic love-companionship-friendship -- an intimacy of intense depth and feeling but one which he regarded as on a very high plane -- and that the Deraa beating had brought him the knowledge that his love for this married woman was bound up inseparably with his young manhood's sexuality.

The one-time beauty of their shared intimacy could never again (so he now thought) be other than shameful, and her love for him was clearly different than his for her. He couldn't write the specifics of the tragedy into the book, not just for his sake but for hers too. So he wrote only, in cypher: " . . . . .there was the standard; for intimacy seemed shameful unless the other could make the perfect reply, in the same language, after the same method, for the same reasons." And only in general, rational terms, woven in and out amid the other material in this chapter, did he speak of the torment he endured in the renunciation of his life's one real love.

But the "self-distrust" now seems to go beyond mere shyness, and more, beyond any single individual relationship to spill over into his associations in general, " . . . . .never could I open myself friendly to another. The terror of failure in an effort so important made me shrink from trying . . . . ." Some of the reasons come clear in this chapter's passages, as Lawrence's rejection of his own sexuality grows, expands, overwhelms, until in the obsessive hatred-fear encompassing all things animal-physical, the physical is equated with the contemptible. Touch and the physical-sexual become integrally associated -- the degrading touch of his tormentors at Deraa soiling, defiling his body, and his vision of himself and his love. To be touched is to lose one's integrity. In this cypher-chapter, he wrote:

The lower creation I avoided, as a reflection upon our failure

to attain real intellectuality.

(A reflection perhaps on his own failure to keep his love on the spiritual plane he had thought to have achieved?) and continuing:

If they (the lower creation) forced themselves on me I hated

them. To put my hand on a living thing was defilement; and it

made me tremble if they touched me or took too quick an

interest in me. This was an atomic repulsion, like the intact

course of a snowflake. The opposite would have been my choice

if my head had not been tyrannous. I had a longing for the

absolutism of women and animals, and lamented myself most

when I saw a soldier with a girl, or a man fondling a dog,

because my wish was to be as superficial, as perfected; and my

jailer held me back. SP 563

"My jailer": his self-condemnation, telling him his love was bad and wrong -- locking him away from women and animals. However, this didn't seem to apply to riding the camel, so related only to where the woman/animal is an object of affection. In the chapter's concluding paragraph, he wrote, speaking of other men who talked of games and pleasures, that himself, he:

felt that to recognize our possession of bodies was degradation

enough . . . . . I would feel shame for myself at seeing (other

men) wallow in the physical which could be only a glorification

of man's cross. Indeed, the truth was I did not like the "myself"

I could see and hear. SP 566

Thus he condemned "myself." His cross: the sexuality to which man, the human race, himself, were inextricably bound, dependent, never wholly escaping, however much man's reason, his conscience -- "my jailer" -- might despise.

Clearly, despite the jailer's holding back, desire remained, together with an understanding however embattled of the happiness that desire, surrendered to, could mean -- an understanding he could not wholly condemn nor banish from his life:

Always, (he wrote) feelings and illusion were at war within

me, reason strong enough to win, but not strong enough to

annihilate the vanquished, or refrain from liking them better . .

. . . (I) could see happiness in the supremacy of the material,

and could not surrender to it: could try to put my mind to

sleep that suggestion might blow through me freely; and

remained bitterly awake. SP p.563/4

But buried between the two quoted segments of the foregoing paragraph, there lies another line: this line, so I believe, unlocking the cypher of the motivation for Lawrence's whole future direction in life. I believe that at the first moment of writing this key line, Lawrence perhaps wrote it almost unthinking, because it evolved naturally and inevitably from the course of his love, his fear, his insight, and his search for truth. Then having written, he must have returned to grasp, perhaps much later, its full significance: a hope, an inspiration, a key to the standard that was to form his life's goal. He had written:

. . . perhaps the truest knowledge of love might be to love

what self despised. SP p. 564

To love what was worthy and pure and beautiful, then, was easy -- no higher nor essentially different than love carnal, because no test of love's quality or strength. But in the power "to love what self despised," to love what the intellect condemned as weak and unworthy, to reconcile oneself to the importance to self of physical love, to love the self in all its animal and noble character alike, in its spiritual reaches and in its carnality -- herein must lie the understanding of love's most perfect nature, the attainment of love rarified, the highest form of love -- in a degree comparable to the divine. As Jesus said, to love not only your friends, for do not even the publicans the same; but I say to thee, love thine enemies, for thus does your father in heaven. Could he learn to accept himself in his total identity with his fellowmen? -- mental, spiritual, physical, sexual, emotional?

Out of this arises a further concept, and though again I think he was not fully aware at the time he wrote these prophetic words of all their implications for his future life, I cite these implications here (because they belong here) as I believe he saw them in the end. That is, that he could forge all parts of this self into a balanced unity, refining out any supremacy of one element over the others, to be hurt no more by that part of self that self despised. That there should no longer be this "war within me" -- that reason might remain strong enough to control, but not to stifle -- that his capacity for love and compassion might be free. That in learning to love self, all, complete, he could then perhaps embrace in such a love all that was self's counterpart: all mankind, all living things -- in the truest knowledge of love, the ideal standard, the gift of the meaning of life. He might hope, in time, to pass on that gift to others. And he saw, in the mere striving for such a reality, even should he fall short of attaining it, the magnitude of the returns for him: rendering himself once more worthy in his own eyes -- filling the emptiness of his soul that mourned his lost love -- making him worthy to be with her, on another level, again.

Thus what he had first determined in Bair -- only the need to attack the torture of his desire, and the hatred of himself because his body and love and emotions harboured such desire -- became now, as his progress toward completion of the book opened vistas far greater, a need to learn to accept the all-rightness of the desire as part of his manhood -- a dawning vision of the future -- a building excitement of purpose.

Turning now to the second of the two facets of character that Lawrence cites, in this chapter on Myself, as hidden beneath the "apparent peace" of the "mask":

There was a craving to be famous; and a horror of being known

to like being known. Contempt for my passion for distinction

made me refuse every offered honour. SP 563

And again:

Self-seeking ambitions visited me, but not to stay, since my

critical self would make me fastidiously reject their fruits. SP 564

In such fashion he viewed critically another quality of character he shared with other men -- the desire for recognition of achievement. As he had damned himself for his craving for love, labeling it lust, so he held himself in contempt for his craving for approval, calling it self-seeking ambition.

Coupled with these was his basic shyness, which in service as a leader of men had to remain his secret, while he himself suffered, acutely conscious of the desire to be "known" and the paradoxical wish to hide:

With men I had a sense always of being out of depth. This led

to elaboration -- the vice of amateurs tentative in their arts. As

my war was overthought, because I was not a soldier, so my

activity was overwrought, because I was not a man of action.

They were intensely conscious efforts, with my detached self

always eyeing the performance from the wings in criticism.

SP 562

In "self-distrusting shyness," then, holding a "mask . . . before my face," he counted himself an actor, a fake, a phony. (Again, I believe, it was all mixed up with his past in the secret of his birth, and with the hidden side of his love revealed at Deraa.)

In the manner of such self-abusing techniques, this concept seeped its way, beyond the power of consciousness to direct, to build the exaggerated view he came to hold of himself as a "fraud" for his role in the Arab war.

My sense of the falsity of the Arab position (he wrote) had

cured me of crude ambition; while it left me my craving for

good repute among men.

This craving made me profoundly suspect my truthfulness to

myself. Only too good an actor could so impress his favourable

opinion. Here were the Arabs believing me, Allenby and

Clayton trusting me, my bodyguard dying for me: and I began

to wonder if all established reputations were founded, like

mine, on fraud. SP 562

So he lashed himself for "fraud" and "falsity." But I could not accept this judgment. Thinking of S.A., and of the man who "loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands and wrote my will across the sky in stars, to earn you freedom" -- and remembering Lawrence's goals and all he did in the crusade to accomplish them -- any verdict of "fraud" and "falsity" had to be a distortion, with the massive and destructive effects of the Deraa beating invading his self-analysis to blot out the reality where, somewhere underneath, the truth lay.

What then was the truth? First with regard to "fraud" in his dealings with the Arabs, Lawrence had early taken care to see that Feisal was cognizant of the terms of the Sykes-Picot treaty, which Lawrence defines in the Seven Pillars as "an old-style division of Turkey” (which included of course the then Turk-occupied Arabian lands) “between England, France, and Russia," qualifying this by the fact that "we and the French had thought to plaster over a split in policy by a formula vague enough for each to interpret in his divergent way." SP 555

As Lawrence explained later in a letter to William Yale, professor of history at the University of New Hampshire:

The S-P treaty was the Arab sheet-anchor . . . Under the S-P

treaty the French only got the coast; and the Arabs (native

administration) were to have Aleppo, Hama, Homs, Damascus,

& Trans-Jordan . . . The S-P treaty was absurd, in its

boundaries, but it did recognize the claims of Syrians to self

government . . . Letters p. 67l

but:

The French saw that [that the S-P treaty was the Arab sheet-

anchor], and worked frantically for the alternative of the

mandate. By a disgraceful bargain [after the end of the war]

the British supported them, to gain Mesopotamia. Letters ,p.67l

and, Lawrence laments:

. . . it (the S-P treaty) was ten thousand times better than the

eventual agreement. (In a footnote he adds) this should be

qualified. There was a secret Paris settlement, a working

arrangement between Clemenceau & Feisal, which had germs of

hope: Millerand tore it up, and [in a new move some time after

the end of the war] launched Gouraud on Damascus with his

army . . . Letters p. 67l

thus bringing Syria under the control of France and shutting the door to any hope for Lawrence's dreams of freedom for Aleppo and the site at Carchemish.

Returning now to Lawrence's sense of "fraud" with respect to his relations with the Arabs, he did, as mentioned briefly above, acquaint Feisal well in advance with the potential problems inherent in the "formula vague enough for each to interpret in his divergent way." As Lawrence himself states it in the Seven Pillars in a chapter preceding by a few pages the chapter on Myself:

Fortunately I had early betrayed the treaty's existence to Feisal,

and had convinced him that his escape was to help the British

so much that after peace they would not be able, for shame, to

shoot him down in its fulfillment . . . I begged him to trust not

in our promises, like his father, but in his own strong

performance. SP 555

This of course relates back again to the opening paragraphs of the Seven Pillars:

Some of the evil of my tale may have been inherent in our

circumstances . . . We were a self-centred army . . . devoted to

freedom . . . a purpose so ravenous that it devoured all our

strength, a hope so transcendent that our earlier ambitions

faded in its glare. SP p. 29

As I see it, whatever degree of deception Lawrence may have engaged in his relations with Feisal has to be countered by the plain fact that he had pushed down below the level of conscious contemplation any thought that he might not achieve this thing of freedom for the Arabs. Blinded by his personal dreams, and by that other dream of "hustling into form, while I lived, the new Asia which time was inexorably bringing upon us." (SPW - Epilogue) he permitted himself to live what would have been a lie -- except that he wanted to believe in the dream so completely. It is my belief that he had not been able to accept even the possibility that his will could not attain its ends, hence he had not allowed any margin for that possibility. There were of course times of discouragement and foreboding, betrayals and failures along the way. (One such instance was the disillusionment over the failures of Zeid that prompted Lawrence's plea to Allenby to be out of the whole thing.) But through it all the dream persisted, almost to the very end (as when Allenby had asked him to go back -- had spoken of the drive on to Aleppo -- and the dream re-formed and Lawrence believed again.)

Who can call such a man a fraud? Only himself, in the agony of failure, condemning himself for having worked to inspire others to believe as faithfully as he.

Moreover, while Feisal might have hoped to see the Arab lands emerging free following the war's conclusion, Feisal had had, in the years under the dominion of the Turks, considerable experience in the ephemeral quality of political promises. It seems reasonable to believe that his hope remained hope only, never taking on the total but unrealistic conviction that for so long characterized Lawrence's crusade. Hence it does not seem likely that Feisal ever shared Lawrence's conception of Lawrence as an "established reputation" founded only "on fraud."

Curiously, though Lawrence was aware of the fact that Feisal himself was carrying on his own negotiations concerning a possible separate peace with the Turks, Lawrence did not see this as an indication of fraud in Feisal's dealings with him. With Lawrence, as always, condemnation turned inward -- its main target his own motives, as he saw them, within. When his dream smashed, the whole structure went down, including his trust in himself. (Even later, after his involvement in the post-war settlements brought him to the point of assurance that he had honorably acquitted, to the extent possible, his wartime commitments to the Arabs, there was still the tragic irony that the one land in whose destiny he was denied the right to play a part was Syria -- the land of Carchemish and Aleppo.)

"On this birthday in Bair," then, dissecting his motives and beliefs, he faced what had been the truth all along -- that the dreaming of the dream, and even the acting out of the dream might not be enough to make it come true -- that it had never really been within his grasp to make it come true -- hence, not only in his country's talk of freedom for the Arabs, but in his own too, some element of deception lay. And looking back later, as he wrote of his self-examination in the chapter on Myself, the condemnation syndrome grew until his tormenting sense of guilt emerged as fraud incarnate.

So much for Lawrence's view of himself as a fraud vis-a-vis Feisal and the Arabs.

Concerning his guilt over his bodyguard dying for him, they were mercenary soldiers, warriors in heart as in profession, a marvel of a guerrilla fighting machine whose high financial reward was commensurate with their talents. Even had they not been part of "the taste of wide winds, the sunlight, and the hopes in which we worked," (?SPW? or Letters intro?) they would have accepted death as the gambler accepts the risk -- a necessary element of the gamble in their part in the war. Beyond that still, in the words of General Allenby, writing in the Journal of the Central Asian Society:

Lawrence, by will power rather than by physical strength,

could compete with the Arabs themselves . . . and those children

of the desert were drawn to him in almost fanatical devotion.

(Jnl.Cntr.Asian Soc.,7.35)

And in a broadcast statement shortly after Lawrence's death, Allenby said of him:

He was the mainspring of the Arab movement. He knew their

language, their manners, their mentality; he understood and

shared their merry, sly humour; in daring he led them . . .

sharing to the full with them hardship and danger . . . His own

bodyguard . . . followed him in all his daring raids; and among

those reckless desert rangers there was none who would not

willingly have died for their chief. (London Times, 20/5/35,

report of a broadcast)

(Note: both of the above quotes and their sources obtained from the book Allenby of Arabia,

by Brian Gardner, p. 2l0}

Again the question can be asked: This man, whose fellow warriors willingly died for him, but who himself ran an equal risk, in a cause that was equally his and theirs -- can such a man be only a fraud?

Saddest of all, because so totally unwarranted, is his sense of falsity with respect to ". . . Allenby and Clayton trusting me" -- as if some kind of betrayal of their trust was implicit in his own freedom-for-Arabia cause:

Some of the evil of my tale . . . freedom . . . a hope so

transcendent that our earlier ambitions (Britain's imperialist

ambitions in the Middle East) faded in its glare. SP p.29

Again, what was the truth?

The answer, as I see it, lies in the fact that Lawrence's assignment for Allenby and Clayton was to gather and relay intelligence, to disseminate false military information where it would be picked up by the Turks, and, in his role as leader of the Arab guerrilla war, to form the right flank for the British army's Middle Eastern campaign. At all times in his crusade Lawrence was doing precisely what Allenby and Clayton needed from him. Whatever failures occurred along the way were failures of inadequate military strength, or of human error -- never in any sense a betrayal of trust. Though "our earlier (British) ambitions" faded in the glare of the transcendent hope of freedom for Arabia, the campaign objectives for either goal were the same: defeat of the Turks and conclusion of "the Eastern war." Lawrence's assignment from Allenby did not go beyond that end.

Allenby's own statements about Lawrence leave no doubt of that great general's conviction that his trust was well-placed. Despite Lawrence's inevitable failure in some of his many tasks, Allenby regarded Lawrence as a man he could totally rely upon in the overall execution of the results expected of him, and with a unique combination of qualities for his assigned role in the war: the background knowledge -- the photographic memory -- the superb intellect -- an ability to grasp a situation at hand, imagination and sound judgment combining for quickness of decision in action -- an uncanny insight into the minds of other men -- a dedication to ideal -- above all, the courage, the personal magnetism, the generosity of spirit that made him a natural leader of men, inspiring their devotion to a degree rarely equaled in history. In Allenby's own words:

The shy and retiring scholar, archaeologist-philosopher was

swept by the tide of war into a position undreamt of . . . and

there shone forth a brilliant tactician, with a genius for

leadership. (p. 210/11, Allenby of Arabia, by Brian

Gardner, quoting London Times 20.5.35 report of a

broadcast)

and:

Lawrence was under my command, but, after acquainting him

with my strategical plan, I gave him a free hand. (Ibid,2l0)

Again, speaking of Lawrence as a man with "a brain of unusual power, a mind dominant over the body," Allenby wrote:

His exceptional intellectual gifts were developed by mental

discipline; and the trained mind was quick to decide and to

inspire instant action in any emergency. Hence his brilliance as

a leader in war. Allenby of Arabia,2l0,quoting article by

Allenby in Journal of the Central Asian Society,7.35

Allenby, himself a wise judge of men, must have understood Lawrence well enough not to jeopardize the effectiveness of their relationship during the war years by admixing familiarity with praise. It seems reasonable to think that he sensed Lawrence's search for someone he could look up to as a higher-than-equal -- what Lawrence calls, in the chapter on Myself, "my longings for a master . . . a chief to use me." Further, that he sensed too Lawrence's fear lest Allenby, the idol, "show feet of clay with that friendly word which must shatter my allegiance."

So during the war years, he did not speak the "friendly word." Hence at the end, when Lawrence gratefully turned over to him the lonely, maddening ordeal of the first days in liberated Damascus, Allenby remained still the valued chief, and Lawrence could write:

In ten words he gave his approval to my having impertinently

imposed Arab Governments, here and at Deraa, upon the chaos

of victory . . . He agreed to take over my hospital and the

working of the railway. In ten minutes all the maddening

difficulties had slipped away. Mistily I realized that the harsh

days of my solitary battling had passed. The lone hand had

won against the world's odds, and I might let my limbs relax in

this dreamlike confidence and decision and kindness which

were Allenby. SP p. 659

Years later, after Lawrence died, Allenby paid his full tribute to his young hero:

His cooperation was marked by the utmost loyalty, and I never

had anything but praise for his work, which, indeed, was

invaluable throughout the campaign . . . He has left, to us who

knew and admired him, a beloved memory. (Allenby of

Arabia, p. 2l0-ll, quoting London Times 20.5.35 report

of a broadcast)

Thus falls the concept of himself as a "fraud" that Lawrence so fully believed in the first post-war years -- and which he himself so effectively proclaimed via his self-analysis in the Seven Pillars that this illusion has persisted in the minds of a large segment of the public, and doubtless will persist forever among the many who are only too willing to believe the vicious attacks that seem perforce to accrue to the memory of a great man. Lawrence would not care. The strengths he won by the end of his life made it no longer matter what the recurrent critics thought. Allenby said of him:

Such men win friends -- such also find critics and detractors.

But the highest reward for success is the inward knowledge that

it has been rightly won. Praise or blame was regarded with

indifference by Lawrence. (Ibid p. 2ll)

Throughout all of Allenby's statements on him there runs the recurrent theme of Lawrence as the independent thinker, who based his actions on his own private reasons provided only that those reasons were valid to him, and who remained loyal always to the pursuit of his own ideals. Because of its source, Lawrence would not have been "indifferent" to this praise -- however much he may at times have castigated himself for falling short of achievement of those ideals, or even of total grasp of their clarity -- and in the end would have accepted it as valid.

However, at the time of writing of the chapter on Myself, because of Lawrence's own self-distrust, what others thought had a desperate importance to him. Despite his basic self-reliance in action, there emerges in this "key" chapter a contradictory obsession to invite others to study and react to him. Even as he speaks of hiding behind the "mask" there seems to me to be an underlying current of hope that they will see beyond it -- perhaps the hope that any certainty at all, even if learning meant confirmation of his fears about himself, would be better than his eternal doubt.

I cherished my independence almost as did a Beduin,

but my impotence of vision showed me my shape best in

painted pictures, and the oblique overheard remarks of others

best taught me my created impression. The eagerness to

overhear and oversee myself was my assault upon my own

inviolate citadel. SP 563

He counted in particular on his efforts to assess the reactions to him of men just met:

The invisible self appeared to be reflected clearest in the still

water of another man's yet incurious mind. Considered

judgments, which had in them of the past and future, were

worthless compared with the revealing first sight, the

instinctive opening or closing of a man as he met the stranger.

SP 566

In his torn-up state of mind, he even castigated himself for caring to know what others thought -- lest:

this egoistic curiosity . . . treating fellow-men as so many

targets for intellectual ingenuity . . . drive me suddenly to

to collect them as trophies of marksmanship. SP 566

During those years the chains that bound him in doubt were too strong to break, no matter how favorable were the opinions he might oversee or overhear. Small things continually undermined his willingness to accept praise expressed by others as a basis for increased trust in himself. If perhaps, for example, a valid military move he might devise had come about partly by virtue of a bit of fortunate circumstance, the knowledge that he had made the right move could not be accepted as enough worth in itself:

The hearing other people praised made me despair jealously of

myself, for I took it at its face value; whereas, had they spoken

ten times as well of me, I would have discounted it to nothing.

I was a standing court martial on myself, inevitably, because to

me the inner springs of action were bare with the knowledge of

exploited chance. The creditable must have been thought out

beforehand, foreseen, prepared, worked for. The self, knowing

the detriment, was forced into depreciation by others' uncritical

praise. It was a revenge of my trained historical faculty upon

the evidence of public judgment, the lowest common

denominator to those who knew, but from which there was no

appeal because the world was wide. SP p.565-6

So vast then, was the undermining and destruction of his youth's faith in himself and his goals. And though in this "cypher" chapter he correlates his profound suspicions of his truthfulness to himself merely with his "craving for good repute among men," the truth, as I see it, was that this destruction of self-faith had begun to form in the secrets of his childhood. The complex of his past, and the dead motives for his crusade -- after the blow at Deraa had laid bare and brought him to condemn the human truth behind his idealistic love -- thus had continued, with accelerating force and in ever-widening circles, to encompass the whole structure of his life relationships with other men.

Had so continued, that is, until the time of his writing of the key cypher chapter on "Myself," (always remembering that it was actually written some years after the end of the war, when further insights had come to him).

Here I think, in the writing of this chapter, there might be said to end the tragedy of T.E. Lawrence of Arabia, the fabled warrior, the public hero, the legend.

Here begins the story of another man -- of T.E. Lawrence, anti-hero, and early adherent of the revolutionary new Zeitgeist he predicted the l960's would bring.

For in deciphering the cypher chapter, always in the context of his other writings as well, there emerges a portrait of Lawrence moving out beyond the "court martial" of self that had culminated in his lament, "Indeed, the truth was I did not like the 'myself' I could see and hear" (SP p. 566) -- moving outward to assess the impact of this self on man's destiny, via his role among other men. Finally, condemning that role as he sees it thus far in time, he weaves into the chapter, in the final puzzle pieces of the cypher, an understanding of the steps he must first take to change himself, if he is to change whatever legacy he might leave in his impact on the destiny of man. Looking back on his past he writes:

Many things I had picked up, dallied with, regarded, and laid

down; for the conviction of doing was not in me. SP 564

and:

Always I grew to dominate the things into which I had drifted.

(Ibid)

Thus this young man who a few years earlier in Carchemish had seen his qualities of leadership bring about cooperation and devotion in worthwhile cultural effort and had thought to turn these same qualities to the greater cause of freedom, could now see in his endeavors only lack of conviction, and finally, threat. For he concludes this paragraph:

Indeed, I saw myself a danger to ordinary men, with such

capacity (to dominate) yawing rudderless at their disposal.

SP 564

Herein lay the kind of danger he had spoken of earlier to Hogarth: his fears of the elemental forces within himself, and his guilt over what he saw as misuse of his power over men in the battle at Tafileh-Hesa. Although he told Hogarth only that "Chargeable against my conceit were the causeless, ineffectual deaths of Hesa," it seems to me probable that he was already conscious of the element of vengeance for his Deraa tragedy as a factor in his decision to engage in direct combat at Tafileh-Hesa with the Turks. The sense of "fraud" must have crept in as he struggled against the truth concealed beneath the apparent motive; and his first fears of his magnetic power of leadership as a danger to men, by virtue of the very love they bore him, must have begun to build that night in Tafileh after the battle ended, as he wrote of his thoughts at nightfall:

By my decision to fight, I had killed twenty or thirty of our six

hundred men, and the wounded would be perhaps three times

as many. It was one-sixth of our force gone on a verbal

triumph, for the destruction of this thousand poor Turks could

not affect the issue of the war. SP p.482

And to Hogarth, he had cried out that

My will had gone and I feared to be alone, lest the winds of

circumstance, or power, or lust, blow my empty soul away.

SP p.502

Now, in retrospect, writing the chapter on Myself and the final pages of his book, he must have contemplated with horror the last phase of the Arabian campaign. There was the fury of the pursuit of a 2000-man segment of the Turkish army retreating from the Deraa-Mezerib sector, after having discovered that these Turks had butchered the women and children of the Syrian village of Tafas. There was Lawrence's refusal to accept the Turks' attempt to surrender -- then, the slaughter:

In a madness born of the horror of Tafas we killed and killed,

even blowing in the heads of the fallen and of the animals; as

though their death and running blood could slake our agony.

SP p.633

And although in writing of the slaughter he makes no direct mention of his own internal motivations, it is my conviction that Lawrence must have sensed even at the time, and surely later as he wrote, that it was not just for the women and children of Tafas that the Turkish butchers were being killed to pay. It was not just what he termed "the price" of Tafas's fine young warrior Tallal, riddled with bullets as he rocketed forward on his mount, crying his war-cry, straight into the fire of the Turks who had killed his kinsmen. It was not just the exacting of this price that raised Lawrence's voice in the command to his men "for the only time in our war" to take "no prisoners." SP 632 More than all these, I believe it was the "price" of Lawrence that was paid in the universal death of this 2000-man force of the Deraa-Mezerib armies -- the "price" of the destruction, at Deraa, of the vision of the purity of his crusade.

In the cypher chapter on Myself, Lawrence wrote:

. . . despite my trying never to dwell on what was interesting,

there were moments too strong for control when my appetite

burst out and frightened me. SP 563

And though again, there is no direct indication of it in the Seven Pillars, in a sense, too, as he punished these retreating Turks, perhaps in the damage to his mind's self-portrait he punished himself for what Deraa had revealed. At any rate, his judgment on himself for this loss of control, though not openly chronicled in the paragraphs on Tafas, can be discerned in the "cypher" of the Seven Pillars, which Lawrence -- who wrote not one word of his book without purpose -- implores the searching reader to understand. In this case, his guilt over his own self-control lost, at Tafas, to the craving for massive revenge for his personal tragedy, surely provides the hidden motivation behind his exalting of the self-control of the German detachments in the face of imminent death, as they fought their last battles, later that same night, beside their demoralized Turkish allies. The apparent contrast in self-control, as set forth in the Seven Pillars, is between the Germans on the one hand -- and the last 4000 of the Turkish Deraa army, and indeed even Lawrence's own Arabs, on the other. The reality, surely -- disguised though it might have been at the time even in Lawrence's mind -- was the contrast between the self-discipline of the Germans, and the behavior of the lone, tortured Englishman, who short hours before had betrayed his sacred code of ethics in the loss of his own self-control -- and could not forgive himself the betrayal.

The enemy . . . had lost order and coherence, and

were drifting . . . ready to shoot and run at every contact with

us or with each other . . .

Exceptions were the German detachments; and here, for the

first time, I grew proud of the enemy who had killed my

brothers. * They were two thousand miles from home, without

hope and without guides, in conditions mad enough to break the

bravest nerves. Yet their sections held together, in firm rank,

sheering through the wrack of Turk and Arab like armoured

ships, high-faced and silent. When attacked they halted, took

position, fired to order. There was no haste, no crying, no

hesitation. They were glorious. SP p.634

______________________________________________________

* Lawrence's brothers Will and Frank had been killed in

Europe, fighting against Germany.

______________________________________________________

Although at the time of the writing of the Seven Pillars Lawrence could not bring himself to acknowledge openly the meaning behind these paragraphs, there is some evidence that he sensed a smoldering layer underneath. For shortly after completion of the manuscript, he wrote to his friend and valued literary critic, Edward Garnett:

It's particularly interesting that the last fifty pages (of the

Seven Pillars) seem to you alive: I've never been able to see

them at all: always by the time I have got so far my eyes have

carried forward to the end, and I've gone through the last

fighting like a dream. Those pages have been worked at very

hard, but I've never got them in perspective . . . It was

impossible for me to last out so long a writing with my wits

about me. Letters p. 368

It finally did all come clear. Many years later, Basil Liddell-Hart in a draft of a biography of Lawrence, wrote of Lawrence's state of mind in the final moments of the Arab war as affected "by his recent witness at Tafas of the bestial license to which severely disciplined troops (the Turkish) were prone when their curbed instincts were allowed an outlet." And Lawrence -- mended in health now and no longer needing to hide the truth -- wrote back to his biographer, adding to the elements affecting his state of mind the words: "and a reaction against our own reprisal." L-H p. l52

And in the chapter on Myself -- assessing his worths and weaknesses, searching out how both might be made to serve a valid future course -- he charted on the liability side the undirected or misdirected use of power:

I saw myself a danger to ordinary men, with such capacity (to

dominate) yawing rudderless at their disposal. SP p.564

There remained the necessity -- if he was to achieve some sense of worth and conviction in his role among men, and if his legacy to the future was to be changed by changing the nature of his impact on man's destiny -- there remained the necessity to identify the driving force that had wrought for him the power to dominate. Did the danger lie more in the power itself? or in power without direction? or in the nature of the motive behind the application of the power, and the manner in which the power was applied?

His motives for the Arabian campaign had been clear enough. But after Deraa, was the death of the personal motive now warping and twisting the idealistic goal -- "drifting" into something abhorrent -- something of vengeance, without rudder to steer it back on its course? Was this, too, "some of the evil of my tale"? And if the power to dominate had been, before Deraa, an asset almost beyond evaluation, had it become a potential death sentence on those he might gather around him, and on his own judgment of himself? If so, what must now be his path? To turn the twisted motives back to valid goals again? Or beyond that, to kill the power to dominate itself?

I believe, as he searched his soul for the answers, he saw that no answer could come until the source of the power for domination within him could be identified and understood. Given such an understanding, the answers would perhaps evolve out of its nature.

This search for the source of his power, as I see it, thus forms the final objective of the self-analysis at Bair -- the dissecting of "my beliefs and motives" -- as recorded in the chapter on Myself. Pulling together the jigsaw puzzle pieces scattered in that key "cypher" chapter, and from elsewhere in the Seven Pillars and others of his writings, I believe I came upon the answers as they had come to him.

Again, part of the modus operandi of the cypher seems to me to be a deliberately disarranged sequence of thought, and it is approximately halfway through the chapter that he turns in ruthless attack against what I believe he came to regard as the element within him that must be mastered and purged: the Will itself. He writes:

. . there lurked always that Will uneasily waiting to burst out.

My brain was sudden and silent as a wild cat, my senses like

mud clogging its feet, and my self (conscious always of itself

and its shyness) telling the beast it was bad form to spring and

vulgar to feed upon the kill. So meshed in nerves and

hesitation, it could not be a thing to be afraid of; yet it was a

real beast, and this book its mangy skin, dried, stuffed and set

up squarely for men to stare at. SP p. 564

This book, that had begun as the story of a crusade and an ideal and had become so much more than he had ever planned -- this book that he was coming to recognize as "a summary of what I have thought and done and made of myself in these first thirty years" Letters p. 37l -- this book had taken himself, and placed his life in all its faults and weaknesses "for men" but most of all for himself, "to stare at" and see. Here was the chronicle of this colossal will that had made possible the Arab campaign:

". . . and wrote my will across the sky in stars . . ." SP Dedication.

but that had done other, and terrible -- because unworthy -- things besides. He looked at the chronicle, and back beyond that at all the years of his will-driven life, using this motive force to achieve at times, by his own admission, merely for the sake of Will itself. In the chapter on Myself he wrote:

I had found . . . Will a sure guide to some one of the many

roads leading from purpose to achievement. SP p. 564 (but)

When a thing was in my reach, I no longer wanted it; my

delight lay in the desire. Everything which my mind could

consistently wish for was attainable, as with all the ambitions

of all sane men, and when a desire gained head, I used to

strive until I had just to open my hand and take it. Then I

would turn away, content that it had been within my strength.

I sought only to assure myself, and cared not a jot to make the

others know it. SP p. 566

There are other outcries too -- the fear of the Will-run-wild -- building through the course of the Seven Pillars. In the anguished confession, quoted earlier, he told Hogarth:

"I was tired to death of free-will . . ." SP p.502

Again, with this driving force forming part of the fear that made the capture of Damascus "a sheath for my sword," there were the words in his Epilogue:

"We took Damascus, and I feared. More than three arbitrary

days would have quickened in me a root of authority." SP 66l

This Will, then, that had been his strength, and the governing factor in all his achievements -- was it his tragic core of weakness too? Was Will all he had, cloaking a danger and a nothingness -- and when the "personal motive" died and "my will had gone," was there real basis for his fear "to be alone, lest the winds of circumstance, or power, or lust, blow my empty soul away"? SP 502

Or could the strength turn in upon itself to conquer weakness? Could he, in recognizing and accepting its dangers, learn to use this strength now for its greatest challenge: to break, and thus to master, the hardest thing of all -- that Will itself?

This strange vision, I believe, he began to see at Bair -- and later understood with deeper insight as, nearing completion of the book, he finished the chapter on Myself. And as he carried out the steps in the "course" he saw "implicit" in this chapter, the impact of the decision was clear: that in renouncing forever the will to direct and dominate the lives of men, the will to power, he might in the end influence to a far greater -- perhaps an infinite -- degree, by its very forfeit.

The compassionate reader is driven again and again, in reading the chapter on Myself, into a momentary temptation to cry out "Poor man. Poor sick man." Momentary only -- held back by the knowledge that Lawrence would not have wanted that. "Sick man," yes -- that he would have accepted, for he had diagnosed himself as "nearly dotty" at the time he enlisted in the R.A.F. (L-H p. 73) But "Poor man," no. There is no evidence anywhere in his writings -- and those who knew him well testify to the total absence in his make-up -- of that sin reserved to the weak: self-pity. David Garnett, comparing Lawrence to Dostoevsky in his "abnormal capacity for suffering," drives home however the assurance that "no two temperaments could be more unlike. For (Lawrence) was . . . without a trace of Russian self-pity." (T.E.L. by Friends, p. 340) So while compassion remains, the reader's pity gives way to admiration in the realization that, plunged though he was in the depths of breakdown illness even as he finished his monumental writing task, Lawrence had yet the clarity of judgment and the courage to understand how he was broken and what had broken him -- and the strength to undertake the drastic remedy which must now become his field of battle, to fight as hard as any he had fought in his two-year campaign.

Perhaps he had hoped through the writing of the book to resolve as well as to immortalize the tragedy of the course of his love -- and with it the hatreds and violence that had built within him. Certainly the chapter on Myself is startling in the depth of its revelation of the mind of a brilliant, tormented, and devastatingly self-analytical man.

Certainly, too, the development of many and varied concepts that came to bear on his future -- philosophical, spiritual, human-psychological -- so weight the 660 pages of the Seven Pillars of Wisdom that repeated re-readings continue to reward the reader who would fathom its fullest meaning: the concept of failure as "God's freedom to mankind" (SP p.4l2); the brief essay on religion that culminates in his song to "the tang of humanity and real love that made the distinction of Christ's music" (SP p.356); the insight into the "arranging of men's minds" for enlistment in the struggle for freedom (SP p.l95); the touch of the infinite-universal soul of man and cosmos as one, in passages such as those that recreate the majesty of Ruum (SP p.35l & 375).

Yet all the philosophy and insight and wisdom that he poured into his monument could not resolve the fires that burned within him. Particularly revealing in this regard is a phrase Lawrence used in a letter written, shortly after completion of the manuscript, to Edward Garnett. Remembering the allegorical meaning of the "pearl" in the Middle Ages as the symbol of purity -- in the tropologic sense, of the soul purifying itself -- the impact of the phrase is inescapable. Lawrence writes of

"the disappointment of The Seven Pillars,"

and, cloaked in his cypher, mourns:

"(if you knew how rounded a pearl my conception of it was) . . ."

Letters p. 366 & 7

Finally, to E. M. Forster he wrote of the Seven Pillars that, after four years of struggle in which

I gave it all my nights and days till I was nearly blind and mad

. . . The failure of it . . . was mainly what broke my nerve, and

sent me into the R.A.F. Letters p. 456

The phrase, the "failure of it," which seemingly in this letter refers to failure of the book, makes no sense in that context, for he had called the book A Triumph. I see the phrase rather as relating to the failure of the writing of the book, in itself, to resolve out fully the war within himself, which must have been destined to be part of the monument to S.A. But although the writing had not completed this task, it had brought him to the point of understanding of the "real beast" -- the "Will" -- "this book its mangy skin, dried, stuffed and set up squarely for men to stare at." In this understanding, and the resultant knowledge of what more had to be done, side by side with the failure there lay here too the triumph. With the writing of the book the "mangy skin" had been shed, to make way for a new beginning. And as Lawrence himself now saw "my late course . . . implicit" in those few chapters leading up to, and in the chapter on Myself, it was this that "sent me into the R.A.F." in what Lawrence defined as "the nearest modern equivalent of going into a monastery in the Middle Ages" (Letters p. 853) -- while the world saw only a withdrawal into oblivion.

Why the R.A.F.? The reasons are there, in these chapters -- part of the "cypher" -- just as he says they are, reinforced in letters he wrote to friends who questioned his decision. There is first, in the chapter on Myself, the recollection of a brief, past time of sensed peace and sureness:

I liked the things underneath me and took my pleasures and

adventures downward. There seemed a certainty in

degradation, a final safety. Man could rise to any height, but

there was an animal level beneath which he could not fall. It

was a satisfaction on which to rest. The force of things, years

and an artificial dignity, denied it me more and more; but there

endured the after-taste of liberty from one youthful submerged

fortnight in Port Said, coaling steamers by day with other

outcasts of three continents and curling up by night to sleep on

the breakwater by De Lesseps, where the sea surged past.

SP p. 564

There accrue then other like thoughts -- not all in the order given, but piling reinforcement upon reinforcement for his path into the Royal Air Force -- crying out for the discipline, for the passion-surceasing, hard, bare cleanliness of a monastic life

Subjection to order achieved economy of thought, the painful,

and was a cold-storage for character and Will, leading painlessly

to the oblivion of activity.

. . . voluntary slavery was the deep pride of a morbid spirit.

Every orchard fit to rob must have a guardian, dogs, a high wall,

barbed wire. Out upon joyless impunity! SP p. 565

In various letters to his friend Lionel Curtis, there is a recurring condemnation of dominance over men -- of the Will -- as factors in his choice of the monastic life:

Perhaps in determinism complete there lies the perfect peace I

have so longed for. Free-will I've tried and rejected: . . .

obedience . . . is my present effort . . . Letters p. 4l9

Again, in a later letter, he speaks of "the burning out of freewill." Ibid

At some point in the process of decision it seems evident that he had contemplated the idea of suicide as the way out, but equally evident that this concept was rejected as unworthy. On one occasion, in a letter to the same Lionel Curtis, Lawrence writes of a desire to be like the fish,

always perfectly suspended, without ache or activity of nerves,

in their sheltering element, Letters p. 42l

and continues:

We can get it, of course, when we earth-in our bodies, but it

seems to me that we can only do that when they are worn out.

It's a failure to kill them out of misery. Ibid

In the chapters of The Seven Pillars that just precede the chapter on Myself, he documents his rejection of the route of suicide as the proper form for the punishment-destruction of "the beast":

Instinct said 'Die,' but reason said that was only to cut the

mind's tether, and loose it into freedom: better to seek some

mental death, some slow wasting of the brain to sink it below

these puzzlements. SP p. 545

And in the chapter on Myself, his self-analysis probes further this concept of the smashing not of the whole person, but of the force that had impelled him -- the whirling, Will-driven mind:

It was only weakness which delayed me from mind-suicide, some

slow task to choke at length this furnace in my brain. SP 564-5

Finally, leaving no room for doubt concerning the direct connection between the "course implicit" in these chapters and the action taken to implement that course, there is Lawrence's statement to Colonel Alan Dawney on his reasons for choosing life in the ranks. "Mind-suicide," he said. Letters p. 4l0-ll

The death at Deraa, in the end, then, took on in all its meaning the quality imputed to death in the medieval age of faith -- the quality that Lawrence the medievalist himself had chosen to mark the death in those terrible hours after Deraa, the "supreme moment" -- the "supreme moment of the war," and, so I believe, of his life -- the moment when the soul emerges from bondage into self-purification and refinement, in a realm earlier only envisioned in its brightest dreams.

For here, in the R.A.F., he might find life with the security of the "animal level beneath which (man) could not fall" -- the sense of peace he had known when "coaling steamers" in Port Said, curled up by night "on the breakwater by De Lesseps, where the sea surged past." SP p. 564

Here, in a life lived essentially at the physical level, he might learn to accept as necessary and worthwhile the animal-physical part of himself -- and of mankind -- that he had so despised. And, at once mastering the torment of the love he could not fulfill and accepting the totality of his own humanity, he might turn his love for S.A. toward a goal worthy of a lifetime dedication: "the truest knowledge of love . . . to love what self despised" -- to love the self, all, complete -- to embrace in such a love all that was self's counterpart: all mankind, all living things, in a love approaching the divine.

Here, in a monastic setting, in the subjection to determinism and obedience, he might hope to sound the death-knell of the driving Will -- the "danger to men" -- the Will that had sought achievement in the name of Will alone. To Lionel Curtis he wrote:

Seven years of this will make me impossible for anyone to

suggest for a responsible position, and that self-degradation is

my aim. Letters p. 4ll

I see this not as total degradation of the man, but as degradation of the self, the ego, the beast that was his Will.

Here finally, if he could achieve these ends, there shone too, implicit in such commitment, that other vision -- the goal to whose attainment he might turn the charismatic qualities of leadership that had drawn "these tides of men into my hands." In the close touch with men that life in the ranks would bring, perhaps there would come the time when he could pass on to others these gifts he hoped to earn, in a new and worthier legacy to mankind.

Though he never stated these hopes directly, I found my own conviction that he held them confirmed in two lines buried in his many letters to Lionel Curtis:

In time I'll join, concerning (the other men in the ranks), in

Blake's astonishing cry 'Everything that is, is holy! Ltrs.p.4ll

and then, wondering, surmising:

. . . perhaps caenobite man influences as much as man social,

for example is eternal, and the rings of its extending influence

infinite. Letters p. 4l8

Only a giant sets such goals. T. E. Lawrence was a giant. Broken and ravaged, physically and emotionally, he was a giant still. The giant set himself to pick up the shattered fragments and weld them into a new whole, of a strength and unity not attainable, intact, before the fall.