Out of My Mind

Speech from Lawrence of Arabia (1925)
Does this ring a bell?

The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a
trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and
honor. They have been tricked into it by a steady with-
holding 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.

The sins of commission are those of the British civil
authorities in Mesopotamia (especially of three 'colonels')
who were given a free hand by London. They are controlled
from no Department of State, but from the empty space which
divides the Foreign Office from te India Office. They
availed themselves of the necessary discretion of war-time
to carry over their dangerous independence into times of
peace. They contest every suggestion of real self-government
sent them from home. A recent proclamation about autonomy
circulated with unction from Baghdad was drafted and
published out there in a hurry, to forestall a more liberal
statement in preparation in London, 'Self-determination
papers' favourable to England were extorted in Mesopotamia
in 1919 by official pressure, by aeroplane demonstrations,
by deportations to India.

The Cabinet cannot disclaim all responsibility. They receive
little more news than the public: they should have insisted
on more, and better. They have sent draft after draft of
reinforcements, without enquiry. When conditions became too
bad to endure longer, they decided to send out as High
commissioner the original author of the present system,
with a conciliatory message to the Arabs that his heart and
policy have completely changed.*

Yet our published policy has not changed, and does not need
changing. It is that there has been a deplorable contrast
between our profession and our practice. 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.

Our government is worse than the old Turkish system. They
kept fourteen thousand local conscripts embodied, and
killed a yearly average of two hundred Arabs in maintaining
peace.

We keep ninety thousand men, with aeroplanes, armoured cars,
gunboats, and armoured trains. We have killed about ten
thousand Arabs in this rising this summer. We cannot hope to
maintain such an average: it is a poor country, sparsely
peopled; but Abd el Hamid would applaud his masters, if he
saw us working. We are told the object of the rising was
political, we are not told what the local people want. It
may be what the Cabinet has promised them. A Minister in
the House of Lords said that we must have so many troops
because the local people will not enlist. On Friday the
Government announce the death of some local levies defending
their British officers, and say that the services of these
men have not yet been sufficiently recognized because they
are too few (adding the characteristic Baghdad touch that
they are men of bad character). There are seven thousand
of them, just half the old Turkish force of occupation.
Properly officered and distributed, they would relieve
half our army there. Cromer controlled Egypt's six million
people with five thousand British troops; Colonel Wilson
fails to control Mesopotamia's three million people with
ninety thousand troops.

We have not reached the limit of our military commitments.
Four weeks ago the staff in Mesopotamia drew up a
memorandum asking for four more divisions. I believe it
was forwarded to the War Office, which has now sent three
brigades from India.

If the North-West Frontier cannot be further denuded, where
is the balance to come from? Meanwhile, our unfortunate
troops, Indian and British, under hard conditions of climate
and supply, are policing an immense area, paying dearly
every day in lives for the wilfully wrong policy of the
civil administration in Baghdad. General Dyer was relieved
of his command in India for a much smaller error, but the
responsibility in this case is not on the Army, which has
acted only at the request of the civil authorities. The War
Office has made every effort to reduce our forces, but the
decisions of the Cabinet have been against them.

The Government in Baghdad have been hanging Arabs in that
town for political offences, which they call rebellion. The
Arabs are not at war with us. Are these illegal executions
to provoke the Arabs to reprisals on the three hundred
British prisoners they hold? And, if so, is it that their
punishment may be more severe, or is it to persuade our
other troops to fight to the last?

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?

*Sir Percy Cox was to return as High Commissioner in
October, 1920 to form a provisional Government.

# posted by The Seditionist @ 3/29/2006 03:59:00 AM