|
The people of England
have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard
to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it
by a steady withholding 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?
[Editor's Note:
The famed Lieut.-Col. T.E. Lawrence, a.k.a Lawrence of Arabia, who
was a leading force in the Arab Revolt (Hedjaz) against the Turks
during the years of the First World War, wrote this article in August
of 1920for England's Sunday Times. The editor recommends
David Lean's movie, "Lawrence of Arabia," and Lawrence's
staggering book, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.]
<<< Page X
Page
X>>>
|
