by B.H. Liddell Hart

Lawrence in Damascus, 1918. McBey's portrait.

I can be on terms with scholars, or writing people, or painters or politicians; but equally I am happy with bus conductors, fitters or plain workmen: anybody with a trade or calling. Only the leisured make me uncomfortable, as I cannot play or pass time.

I was not an instinctive soldier, automatic with intuitions and happy ideas. When I took a decision, or adopted an alternative it was after doing my best to study every relevant – and many an irrelevant – factor. Geography, tribal structure, religion, social customs, language, appetites, standards were at my finger-ends. The enemy I knew almost like my own side. I risked myself among them many times, to learn.

Do make it clear that generalship, at least in my case, came not by instinct, unsought, but by understanding, hard study and brain concentration. Had it come easy to me I should not have done it as well. -- T.E. Lawrence

Not long ago the young men were talking, the young poets writing, of him in a Messianic strain – as the man who could, if he would, be a light to lead stumbling humanity out of its troubles. It is possible that the spirit might have moved him – but not probable. And it is difficult to see any way, compatible with his philosophy, in which he could have played such a role: his indifference to “politics” was as marked as his distaste for the arts of the platform. But at least I can say that, so far as I knew him, he seemed to come nearer than any man to fitness for such power – in a state that I would care to live in.

For to his extraordinary powers of intellect and practical capacity he added an attitude, developed in self-discipline and reflection, that fulfils the one condition in which any evolution could be more than a swing of the pendulum. He had learnt the folly of the reforming energy that merely rebounds from wall to wall. Free from pettiness, freed from ambition, immeasurable in understanding, his profound respect for others’ freedom embodies the wisdom of the ages – the wisdom which reveals that life can endure, and manhood develop, only in an atmosphere of freedom.

The opportunity has gone – with the man. But nothing that he might have done is equal to what he may do – as a legendary figure. Legends are more potent than emperors or dictators. Others who worked with him were outstanding men: he would have been the first to wish their merits due recognition.

Legend has made his fame as 100 to 1. Such magnification, which happens to a few men in each generation, is not true to reality. But it is true of this case that legend has a solid basis, of far greater content than usual. There will be nothing but good in it, if his real message is remembered, and not merely the romance.

For he was a message to mankind in freedom from possessiveness. In freedom from competitiveness. In freeing oneself from ambition, especially from the lust of power. His power sprang from knowledge and understanding, not from position. His influence is a living growth – because it is a spiritual message transmitting a spiritual force. The man was great: the message is greater.

Excerpted from Lawrence of Arabia.

Book: Lawrence of Arabia
By B.H. Liddell Hart
ISBN: 0-306-80354-2