Part Four: How Lawrence of Arabia Invented Modern War

Robert concludes the story of T.E. Lawrence by getting into the real bastardry of his life, including a pretty heinous war crime!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media, what's murdering seventy five men in hand to
hand combat? My margaret? Have you killed seventy five men
in hand to hand combat?

Speaker 2 (00:14):
I have been told to not comment on this until
I'm more certain about a few sevs. The other fucking
follow you into war? So bad?

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Yeah? Yes, yes, boss, where we going to me to
meet me? Grab my axe, let's go. That's going to
be conditional for me on what kinds of men you
count when you're killing? Right? You know, like Outa didn't
count turks? You know, do you count turks if you
kill them in hand to hand combat? These are the
questions that I need to know.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
You know, chuds are the ones that are not certain count.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
You don't count no chuds? Yeah, yeah, no, yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
And people think I refer to it as a truck
because it looks like a truck of chud would drive,
But actually it's just very good at.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Anyway. Oh, Audo would have been a truck guy. I
think we can all agree on that. Yeah, long enough
to see the highlux, I know, it's it's tragic he
was born for the highlux. Oh my god, can you
imagine how much Lawrence would have loved the Highlux.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
I got my oil at this guy who was like
trying to tell me about why it's worth it to
import a highlux.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
Absolutely, you don't me, brother, the.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
Cost of importing the He went over all of the
prices of all of the importing the Highlux, and I
was like, this no longer seems worth it. I thought
the point of it was that it was cheaper than
the other Toyota trucks.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
Yeah, the point of it is that it's a high Lux,
you know, that's just that's just got some flair you
can't replace.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
It has high classiness, it's in the name.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
Yeah, I do feel some some I can understand Lawrence
better now that I've gone into battle in the back
of a Highlux in the fucking Arab world, driven across Syria. Yeah,
in an up armored Hilux. Yeah that that that is
a good life experience to have for really getting t
E Lawrence. Yeah, it would have been a lot of fun,

(02:12):
probably if we gotten to blow up a bridge or two,
but that wouldn't have been helpful in the situation we
were in.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
Now, this a strategic scientifically scientific and I have no
idea how to really do that.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
I would just blow up the bridge. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:26):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
Now when we discuss T. E. Lawrence, particularly when we
try to answer the question was he a bastard? You know,
sitting at our computers in the fall of twenty two?
Have we been forgetting to do cold opens? Haven't we? Sophie?

Speaker 3 (02:38):
We just do them and then Daniel cuts them in later.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
Daniel cuts them in later. Well, heiro And I don't
know does Dan? Sorry, I just it's fine. Yeah, I
wonder what Daniel counts. Yeah, it depends. I still don't know.
I don't know what kind of men Daniel counts when
he when he when he's killing men.

Speaker 2 (02:59):
So she doesn't count men. It's pretty impressive.

Speaker 1 (03:01):
Wow. Wow, only only the women you kill? Okay, Yeah,
that's good to know.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
Would Yeah, that's what Sophie. Just never kills anyone by
Sophie standards.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
Woke swashbuckler who only counts the nbs he kills men
and women don't count to me, just the they thems.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
Each one counts more than one because of the plural. Anyway,
Is this like.

Speaker 3 (03:28):
A political ad that plays during baseball games?

Speaker 1 (03:32):
Oh my god, yeah, Jesus Christ.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
Okay, far enough left of your jokes.

Speaker 1 (03:37):
Yeah, you wind up doing a trump at So when
we discussed Lawrence while sitting in our computers in the
fall of twenty twenty four, one thing probably stands what
that wasn't even a joke, I know, but so funny.

(03:57):
It's good. Yeah, one thing stands above every other matter,
which is his support for the Balfour Declaration, particularly his
support I mean, because that was not made, he did
not help make that, but he is. He is a
supporter of Zionism in this particularly post war period, right
when all of these European powers give their official support

(04:18):
for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Lawrence is not initially
on that side, but he's going to wind up on
that side, right and given what's going on in Gaza
right now, it's probably impossible to avoid having this dominate
your thoughts on the man's legacy. And that's not entirely wrong.
We are going to talk about his role here because
it's significant, but it's important to note that at the

(04:38):
time his feelings on Zionism are not what any of
his critics, including in the Arab world, saw as the
most problematic thing about the man. If you are a
Westerner or a Turk the top argument in your Lawrence's
evil ledger probably would have been the war crimes, and
so we're going to talk about those first. The gist
of this story is that after Lawrence escape the Turks,

(05:00):
the forces under his command exhibited increasingly brutal behavior on
the battlefield. He started ordering his soldiers not to take prisoners,
which is against the law, and in several cases began
executing wounded men himself as they lay bleeding on the battlefield.
He would just walk around battlefields afterwards, shooting guys in
the head, doing qu de grass, cooing degraz. Yeah, okay,

(05:23):
which is you know, bad, You're not supposed to do that.
I mean, arguably in a lot of these cases that
may have been the kindest thing to do, but it's
not legal to do that. Yeah, so he's cooing some degraz,
he's killing people. Scott Anderson, writing for Smithsonian Magazine, describes
how his judgment seems to have degraded as well, and
the general way this often gets credited to, like the

(05:45):
fact that he has just been gang raped, right that
like this kind of his mind breaks After that quote,
he attacked the Turkish troop train, despite being so short
of weapons that some of his men could only throw
rocks at the enemy. If this was rooted in the
trauma at Derah's it seems he was at least as
much driven by the desperate belief that if the Arabs
could reach Damascus first, then the lies and guilty secrets

(06:07):
he had harbored since coming to Arabia might somehow be
set right. So that's kind of the debate here, is like,
is he traumatized because he's just been raped and as
a result, he's making all of these very rash moves,
He's becoming increasingly brutal in battle. Is it more that
he's desperate to try and he's traumatized because he knows
that he's kind of betraying his friends, and he's trying

(06:28):
to make things right by getting them to Damascus before
the war ends, you know, in order to kind of
cut off Sykes Pico at the knees. Right.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
I think that's a strong argument to me, because he
wants to be a moral man and he knows he's not,
so he can find a loophole to loophole himself into
morality by killing everyone.

Speaker 1 (06:47):
Yeah, yeah, maybe that's the only thing he can do.
There's also this argument that, like Lawrence describes himself as
a virgin, and he is someone who his friends in
sist he has no discernible sexual leanings, and maybe they're
this the fact that it's forced upon him, like he
has an extra strong reaction to it. We just will
never know, you know, thexual he did go to it,

(07:11):
he did. He went to less rapeye schools than a
lot of other British boys of his of his era.
But like, I think that is kind of built into
a lot of that school system though, But we don't.
I have no evidence as to whether or not any
anything like that happened to Lawrence. He certainly doesn't write
about it. Yeah, so even if you hold the argument
that Lawrence light about the rape, and maybe he would

(07:31):
have led about that in order to explain why he
was like obsessively trying to get the Arabs to Damascus,
because that was kind of some like light treason against
his own side. Whatever's going on here, it makes total
sense that his mental state would be degraded. By this point.
He has spent more than half of his time in Arabia,
deathly ill, sick with plague and heat stroke and catastrophic dehydration.

(07:54):
He's experienced harrowing combat at close quarters he had, he
has blown his camel's brains out and been flung into
the hot desert sands during a battle. So yeah, I mean,
just not weird that he's kind of losing it at
this point. And as Anderson notes, he's also weighed down
with guilt over the fact that all these guys are
fighting and dying with him, maybe for nothing, because his

(08:15):
government might betray them. This all culminates in late September
in an attack on a town called Derah, where Lawrence
had been if he was raped. This is where that happened, right,
So this is part of a general offensive that he
is carrying out with Allenby that's meant to coordinate with
an attack by Allenby on Palestine in the north. Right,

(08:35):
Lawrence and his Bedouin allies are supposed to cut off
the Turkish avenues of retreat by taking the railroad junction
at Derah. So one of the arguments here is that
like this is, you know, where he claims to have
been tortured, So maybe what he's about to do is
like him taking vengeance, you know, for that attack. And
I'm going to quote from Anderson again. After coming upon
the village of Tafas, where the fleeing Turks had massacred

(08:57):
many residents. Lawrence ordered his men to give no quarter.
Throughout that day. The rebels picked apart a retreating column
of four thousand, slaughtering all they found. But as Lawrence
doubled back that afternoon, he discovered one unit had missed
the command and taken two hundred and fifty Turks and
Germans captive. We turned our Hotchkiss machine gun on the prisoners,

(09:17):
he noted in his battlefield report, and made an end
of them. Lawrence was even more explicit about his actions
that day, and seven pillars. In a madness born of
the horror of Taphus, 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. Whoops. Yeah,

(09:39):
he's going full like corn berserker here. You know, he's
just massacring people, and it's you know, the people he's
massacring had also just massacred a bunch of civilians. It's
a very ugly war like war. Plenty of war crimes
to go around here, right, but this, this slaughter of
hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of prisoners and wounded men

(10:01):
would have been a massive war crime in any theater
of world wars. To put him in like yeah, belongs
and behind the bastards, now yeah, that's that's that's an
international criminal court crime. Right yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:13):
Now again, any of the bastards who had on have
killed like three people.

Speaker 1 (10:17):
Right right? That said, do I kind of sympathize with him? Still? Yeah,
Like this is just no, I don't know, I just
don't know how likely it is that most commanders in
a similar situation, having gone through what he's gone through,
would have been much better, right, especially since this is
not entirely Lawrence, by his own admission, is partaking in

(10:41):
the bloodshed. But a lot of this is just that
his own troops are so angry at all of these
war crimes that including on some of their families, right,
and they're just bent for slaughter now, right, like everyone
has just lost their minds. The war has gotten that ugly.
So anyway, you know, you can you can parse that
out morally however you want to. You could judge him

(11:03):
however you want to. Sitting at your computer. We all
do to some extent. But yeah, from here, from Dera.
Lawrence himself moved directly to Damascus, right like, he and
his forces rushed there and they they beat the Turks
out of Damascus, and they beat European forces to the city.

Speaker 2 (11:22):
Now I have a question, Yeah, how did he get
out of conscription rape channel?

Speaker 1 (11:29):
He kind of just escapes? Okay, I mean they're not
they're not great at at at at doing guardings. They
don't know that he's Lawrence of Arabia. Right, he just
sort of bounces, you know, after a while. So this
was an explicit and a direct attempt to destroy Sykes Picau.
As soon as the city was in their hands, Lawrence
helped organize a provisional Arab government headed by Feisal. Right now, again,

(11:54):
the Arabs don't really want the Arabs of Syria don't
really want Faisal in charge of them. They certain don't
want his dad in charge. But like they have their
own leaders, and they see they don't really like guys
from Mecca. They write about like these these Arabs in
Syria who are pissed about this. Some of them are
like making overtures to the Ottomans because of how unhappy
they are about Faisal. They kind of see Feisal and

(12:17):
his dad, this whole family of like guys, the Sharif
of Mecca, the way like rural Americans talk about like
people from like San Francisco or you know, DC. You
know that they have the kind of like Richmond north
of Richmond talk about them of like these fucking city
assholes from Mecca coming into Syria and telling us how
to live our goddamn lives. I don't like that any
better than the Turks, you know. Yeah, And there's actually

(12:40):
there's this this kind of Zionism is going to play
a weird role in this here because it becomes kind
of crucial to this conflict in between these different factions
on the Arab revolt. Right. So, within a few days
of the Arabs taking Damascus, General Allenby arrives and he's
like provisional government, my ass The French are in charge now,
and Lawrence like there's really nothing he can do, right

(13:04):
allenb is his superior officer. The British are there with
like you know, a significant amount of assets, and this
is you know, kind of shatters him, right, Like he
is so distraught over the fact that all of their work,
you know, even though they took the city it's just
been handed over to French control. He said, distraught by this,

(13:24):
that he begs to be relieved of command by Allen.
Allenb he leaves for London, hell bent on using his
celebrity to win Western support for an independent Arab nation
after this. Now, as a note, Lawrence was definitely a
very famous over in Europe by this point. An American
journalist based in Palestine, Lowell Thomas, had like spotted his

(13:46):
story and been like, this is one of the most
interesting things happening in the war. It's much more interesting
than just like recording slaughter at the various trench fronts.
I'm gonna follow this guy around. I'm gonna take some
video and photographs and whatnot. And he put together like
a lecture show, basically like a slide show with a
lecture attached to it that runs in movie theaters. It's

(14:08):
like a matinee hit in England. It's a huge blockbuster
at the time, like prior to the nineteen sixty Lawrence
of Arabia. This is kind of like the first movie
version of Lawrence, and it's it's portrayed as journalism, but la,
you know, Lowell is a he's like a tabloid guy, right,
Like he is exaggerating, he's kind of outright lying about stuff.

(14:29):
There's some evidence that Lawrence is deeply, deeply unhappy as
a result of like the kind of attention that Lowell
draws on him and how much he makes Lawrence the
center of the story. But he's also able to use
this fame in order to secure meetings with like politicians
to try and talk up feisal side of things, right

(14:49):
as during these negotiations over what's going to happen to
Ottoman territories in the wake of Ottoman collapse. So he's
he's so he's such a a vocal part of this
and such like so vocally against Syke's Picot that he
starts to be seen as a threat from within the
military and like within the government of the British Empire.

(15:11):
A lot of them see him as a fame hound
because like this is happening while his movie's a big deal.
They see him as like he's just some like up
to junior officer who's gotten way too big for his
breeches and he's trying to ruin this good thing we've
got with France. This horrible war is finally done and
We're finally going to get fucking some money a place
we can plunder right to, to help make up for

(15:32):
all of the money we spent on this stupid war
we got our country into, right, and this guy is
going to fuck it all up right now. The Balfour
Declaration had been leaked out to the public right around
the same time Sykes Picot had been made public so
right at the end of nineteen seventeen, and some in
the British administration during these negotiations in late nineteen eighteen

(15:54):
nineteen nineteen, saw the Balfour Declaration, which has a complicated reaction,
especially over in the Arab world, saw it as potentially
good news for their support of the Husseins, because again,
Feisal and his dad are wildly unpopular in Syria. Right
They're seen as these assholes from Mecca trying to lord
over a place they don't belong, and Lawrence's boss and

(16:16):
the Intelligence Services Service. One of the masterminds behind the
whole Arab revolt was a brigadier general named Gilbert Clayton,
and Gilbert saw the Balfour declaration as problematic. He's going
to be the guy who writes most accurately about why
this is a bad idea, But he also is like
this could help us with faisal, right, and he writes
up to date, the Syrian Arab has shown the utmost

(16:39):
distaste for any idea of a government in which Meccan
patriarchism has any influence, hence a lack of real sympathy
with the Sharif. Fear of the jew may cause a
reproach ma. Right, if we make it clear that we're
going to give the Jews a homeland, the Arabs may
get so angry that they decide they line up behind
our guy, who they're not really happy about right now,

(16:59):
but maybe they're racism against Jewish people will like convince them,
you know which obviously that's an incredibly racist move from Clayton, right,
Like we'll just use anti Semitism to solve our imperial
problems and get our puppet in charge.

Speaker 2 (17:14):
He's pretty classic.

Speaker 1 (17:15):
It's pretty classic, right, yeah. Now, Psykes himself tried to
convince Clayton that the declaration was a positive for Arab independence,
which Clayton, for all of you know the racism you
see in his writing, really does care about Arab independence.
He is one of these guys like Lawrence, who is like,
we made promises to these people and we should keep them.
Clayton more than Lawrence recognizes, because Lawrence kind of gets

(17:36):
behind the idea of Zionism. Eventually, Clayton is always like,
this is a bad idea and we shouldn't have done it.
But he does get into that. He comes to that
conclusion also through a very racist way by saying that
Arabs would be dismayed by knowledge that the Jews quote
whose superior intelligence and commercial abilities are feared, would take
over in Palestine. In a different level letter to Gertrude Bell,

(17:59):
the Arab Bureau's Bagdad correspondent, Clayton wrote this, the Arab
of Syria and Palestine sees the Jew with a free
hand and the backing of Her Majesty's government, and interprets
it as meaning the eventual loss of his heritage. Jacob
and Esau wants more. The Arab is right, and no
amount of species oratory will humbug them in a matter
which affects him so vitally. Experience such as I have

(18:22):
gained in this war impels me to deprecate strongly. In
cautious declarations and visionary agreements, we are like men walking
through an unknown country in a fog, and it behooves
to feel our way and take care with each step
we take.

Speaker 2 (18:36):
And he is not wrong.

Speaker 1 (18:39):
Yeah, we are men. We shouldn't be doing this in
part because, like obviously this is going to lead to
Arabs being displaced from their homes in Palestine, right, Arabs
recognize this, their right to recognize this, and even by
sticking our hands into this mess, we are We are
men walking through an unknown country in a we don't

(19:00):
know what we're doing, and so we shouldn't be doing it, right, Yeah,
which is.

Speaker 2 (19:06):
Yeah, No, that's that's what the British Empire should have
been doing.

Speaker 1 (19:09):
Yes, yeah, empire. He is he again, everyone here is racist,
but some of the racists are correct about what's going
to happen. Yeah, right, Bell, who also deserves much more
coverage than we're giving her, good true Bill as a
fascinating character. This woman who had just like traveled alone
throughout this huge stretch of the Middle East become a

(19:29):
legitimate expert on the area, a really interesting person, someone
who knew Lawrence too kind of in his early travels.
Replied that she also hated quote mister Balfour's Zionist pronouncement.
But Lawrence, whose instincts for this region and its people
were generally much better than this, got caught up in
the Zionist cause, and he did so in an interesting
way as part of his backing of the Arab cause.

(19:51):
Right So, during Lawrence's struggle against Syke's Picot in London
after the war, he came to see European Zionists as
potential alley the fight for Arab independence. He met with
Heim Weizmann, head of the English Zionist Federation, who was
willing to back Lawrence's fight for an Arab state so
long as Lawrence supported the establishment of a Jewish state. Lawrence,

(20:13):
by one account, convinced Faisal. By another, Faisal is kind
of the one who's saying, hey, Lawrence, I want you
to make overtures to this guy. But either way, Lawrence
and Faisal get on board with Wiseman and the Zionists
and they make an agreement. They actually sign an agreement,
right which if the Zionists support a Faisal led Arab
state based in Syria, Faisal will support European Jews immigrating

(20:36):
to Palestine. Now, Faisal does not explicitly embrace a Jewish state,
but that was understood to be the result of this.
The treaty between the two of them reads mindful, and
this is just fascinating reading just in light of where
we are today, mindful of the racial kinship and ancient
bonds existing between the Arabs and the Jewish people, and

(20:56):
realizing that the surest means of working out the consummation
of their national aspirations is through the closest possible collaboration
in the development of the Arab state in Palestine. It
continues that the Arab State and Palestine should, in all
their relations be controlled by the most cordial goodwill. A
commission would be established to lay out boundaries of the

(21:16):
Arab state and Palestine. Right, and there's a lot there
about like obviously no, it will be displaced by this. Right,
it's presenting a two state solution for Palestine, not entirely. Right,
There's an Arab state and then there's Palestine. But Palestine
is also understood to be an encouraging Jewish immigration and
seen as a Jewish state. Now it's not clear does

(21:39):
that mean Arabs and Palestine like Arabs and like European
Jews who immigrate and like you know, like the people
and who live there at now are will they be
kind of equal partners in a state? That's kind of
how I read it is the idea, but it's not
a two state solution. They are always referring to Palestine, right,

(22:00):
like they don't call to Israel.

Speaker 2 (22:02):
But yeah, to the one state solution, the like one
seculary you can be Jewish.

Speaker 1 (22:05):
Or yeah, yeah, that is the closest thing, right, Like
the arrangement that they are talking to. When I say
that like he supported Zionism, the actual text of the
kind of thing he was trying to set up is
very different than what exists today. Right, I'm going to
quote again from that agreement. All necessary measures shall be

(22:26):
taken to encourage and stimulate immigration of Jews into Palestine
on a large scale and as quickly as possible, to
settle Jewish immigrants upon the land through closer settlement and
intensive cultivation of the soil. And taking such measures, the
Arab peasant and tenant farmers shall be protected in their
rights and shall be assisted in forwarding their economic development.

(22:47):
It goes on to state that no interference and free
exercise of religion would be permitted, and the Mohammedan holy
places in Jerusalem and elsewhere shall be under Mohammedan control.

Speaker 2 (22:58):
Okay, yeah, I mean it's presented a fairly reasonable idea.
I mean, like obviously, like that's clearly not what large.

Speaker 1 (23:07):
Is, not what's going to happen. But when we say
that he's a Zionist, he's not supporting what exists currently, right,
Like that is the result, and he's it's worthy of criticism.
It's Faisal is worthy of criticism too. And it's important
to note that like Faisal, this guy seeking to be
the king of this Arabic state is supportive of this measure, right,

(23:28):
but there's some economic reasons for it.

Speaker 2 (23:30):
Yeah, at the very beginning where he's like you know
the long standing between Arab and Jewish folks, I mean,
that's that is real, and like yeah, there is like
you know, when you study Ottoman Empire before it started
falling apart, it's like, well that's where European Jews went
because they were like second class citizens in the Ottoman Empire.

Speaker 1 (23:51):
But like they were, Yeah, we all know what happened
in Russia, right, Well happened elsewhere, right, Yeah, when the.

Speaker 2 (24:01):
Other thing that happened in fourteen ninety two as relates
to Spain, is that all the Jews were kicked out
and forced to convert. You know, there's just massive immigration
into the Ottoman Empire.

Speaker 1 (24:11):
Yep. Yeah, So this is MESSI And obviously none of
this works out the way that Faisal and Lawrence had hoped.
While researching this, I've come across several extremely pro Israel publications,
including the Israel Forever Foundation, who published articles trying to
remake Lawrence into a hardcore supporter of the modern state
of Israel. I found this line in an article they

(24:33):
republished from The Jerusalem Post. You won't find this truth
and the lengthy biography of Thomas Edward Lawrence, the Legendary
Lawrence of Arabia, in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Don't expect to
hear about this on the BBC. The world remembers Lawrence
as a guide, friend and champion of Arabs, but hardly
knows that he believed in Zionism as it was forced
to restore Palestine to which ancient glory brought about by

(24:54):
active British Jewish Arab cooperation. And that's not really like
that is making him into that he is not nothing
that he has described sounds like the modern state of Israel. Right. Yeah,
he was not in favor of Palestinians being forced out
of their land. Now we can say that was a
foolish thing for him to hope, and he should have

(25:14):
known that there was very likely this was going to
get ugly, right, But you know, he he winds up
doing what he does, right, And a big part of
like what he and Feisler was hoping for, is that
if we allow Jewish immigration to Palestine, that will bring
in a lot of money to this economically depressed area,
and it will be good for these like Palestinian farmers

(25:36):
and peasants. Right that it will like a rising tide,
will kind of lift all boats. That is what they
are writing about. Right. There were ways it could have
worked out differently than it did, right, But you know,
it's also worth noting that whatever their plans and whatever
their hopes for how this works out, Lawrence winds up
on the side of what becomes a major calamity for

(25:58):
the Middle East. Right, is how bloody and brutal everything
that results from this eventually is, right, And I.

Speaker 2 (26:06):
Actually think it's the same problem he has in general,
which is that even though he doesn't want England to
control these things, he's still on some level he's more
okay with fucking around with England controlling things.

Speaker 1 (26:17):
Yeah, you know.

Speaker 2 (26:18):
And so it's like, and that is the same problem
that happened with British mandate Palestine? Now is that is
that the British.

Speaker 1 (26:27):
We're again it's like Clayton writes, right, we don't know
what we're doing, Like we're going to fuck a bunch
of things up because we don't really understand what we're
messing around with here. Yeah, and yeah, like it probably
just shouldn't have been fucking around with any of this.
Maybe a bunch of British guys should not have been
making all of these calls. Yeah, and maybe and to

(26:49):
be fair, a bunch of guys like Faisal Rich, guys
from Mecca shouldn't have been making all of these calls.
Oh yeah, Like none of it works very well. Yeah, Now,
I will say for a much, you know, because of
what's happening right now, this gets a lot of focus.
We're going to inherently think a lot about Lawrence's support
of this, of the Balfour Declaration, of all this stuff.

(27:10):
This probably was not a big part thing on his
mind when he thought about like his failures, you know
here in the wake of kind of the peace agreements
and stuff, because like nothing happens during his lifetime, right,
he dies in thirty five, Right, So none of this
like leads to anything while he is around, you know, And.

Speaker 2 (27:29):
There's like a couple of riots and stuff, but it's not.

Speaker 1 (27:31):
Yeah, there's some riots, you know, there's some stuff that
does result from this, but he's probably not super plugged
into it, right, Yeah, he is. What really is occupying
his mind is he sees the wheeling and dealing in
the immediate wake of the war as a fucking calamity
for this cause that he cares about. Nearly every piece
of the cause that he cared about goes down in
flaming failure. The French get their mandate in Syria, the

(27:55):
British wind up running much of his imagined Arab state,
including Palestine, and and once it becomes clear that Arabs
had fought and won a war of independence only to
wind up ruled by Europeans, the response was bloody. As
this passage from an article in Smithsonian Magazine makes clear,
Lawrence was particularly prescient about Iraq in nineteen nineteen. He

(28:17):
had predicted full scale revolt against British rule there by
March of nineteen twenty if we don't mind our ways.
The result of the result of the uprising in May
nineteen twenty was some ten thousand dead, including one thousand
British soldiers and administrators. And man, that's a good prediction,
right he calls March. It happens in May, not bad.

(28:39):
Task to clean up the debacle was the new British
Colonial Secretary, Winston Churchill, who turned for help to the
man whose warnings had been spurred T. E. Lawrence at
the Cairo Conference in nineteen twenty one. Lawrence helped to
redress some of the wrongs. In the near future, Faisal,
deposed by the French in Syria, would be placed on
a new throne in British controlled Iraq, out of the

(28:59):
British buffer state of trans Jordan. The nation of Jordan
would be created, with Faisal's brother Abdullah at its head right.
And obviously Faisal and his family don't wind up in
charge of a rock for all that long, you know,
thanks to our friend of the Pod, Saddam Hussein and
the Bath Party. And then Faisal's brother Abdullah, that is
still the ruling family in Jordan. Right, that's where that's

(29:21):
where that all gets started. Now, the fact that this
is the result, right, you know, it's not a total failure.
You do have Arab states that are independent, you know,
that get come out as a result of this. But largely,
you know, during his lifetime, it's France and Britain kind
of calling the shots in a large a lot of
this region. This shatters Lawrence, right, he never really recovers

(29:44):
from his failure here. And you know who else has
never recovered from their failures?

Speaker 2 (29:50):
Is it the casinos?

Speaker 1 (29:52):
Yeah? The casinos there their failure to give you too
much money, right, yeah, you know, they just can't wait
to give you money.

Speaker 3 (30:00):
Now.

Speaker 2 (30:00):
They lose money more often than they win. That's why gambling,
if you gamble enough, you always win. The house always loses.
That's why they say.

Speaker 1 (30:08):
That, Yeah, exactly, the house always loses. It's always safe,
always safe to gamble. Keep your money in a casino, right,
it's an investment.

Speaker 2 (30:18):
I mean if it's controlled by the casino. Yeah, yeah,
they do it. They will succeed, and we're bad. Robert,
I have terrible news. I followed our advice, and now
I have no money left.

Speaker 1 (30:33):
Oh no, well maybe you should just put all of
your remaining money on black and uh and and just
do it. Do a shadow roulette. I think that'll fix
your problems, Margaret.

Speaker 2 (30:45):
Yeah, the forty eight point five percent chance of success,
that's more than fifty so it'll work.

Speaker 1 (30:50):
Yeah. Absolutely. So Lawrence is shattered. He's very depressed. He
has seen all of his hopes for a better future
go down and flame sames. He's never going to recover
from his failure here or the attendant PTSD as a
result of his wartime experiences. And honestly, this is a
big part of what makes him a sympathetic figure to me, right,

(31:11):
but he is not seen that way by a lot
of the men who fought for him or his descendants.
One of my favorite articles analyzing Lawrence's legacy was That
Peace in Smithsonian Magazine by Scott Anderson in twenty fourteen.
He followed in Lawrence's Shadow during the early years of
the Syrian Civil War and interviewed descendants of the Bedouins
who'd fought by Lawrence's side. One sheikh, a latune of

(31:32):
Muduwara in southern Jordan lamented that after the war, the
badly damaged Hejah's railway was allowed to fall apart, entirely
isolating many communities once connected by the Imperial project. The
partitioning of the Arab world had made the maintenance and
rebuilding of such a railway impossible, and there's no real
way to conceive of such a project working out and

(31:53):
preserving such accomplice peaks of infrastructure through all of the
conflicts that have royaled the area since. Quote. My grandfather
thought that these destructions were a temporary matter because of
the war, but they actually became permanent. And you have
to remember this railway had been backed and funded by
donations from Muslims in places like the Hejahs, because it

(32:13):
was this was their future, right, this would have connected
them to the world. And there's no way to keep
this going in like these carved up conflicting states that
are the ultimate result, right of the actual you know,
post war period. And Lawrence had kind of convinced people
to blow up this railway and the promise that and
then you'll get a state and we can fix things

(32:34):
right like you know, the right, and that never happens
right now, Lawrence tries, right, how much credit does that
get him? You know, maybe not a lot if you're
living in the in the rusting shadow of this dead railway,
watching any hope of a better future, you know, fade away, Right,
So they kind of.

Speaker 2 (32:53):
Like, you know, in the end, it was better under
the Ottomans.

Speaker 1 (32:56):
No, I think it's a little more complicated than that. Ultimately,
when I read kind of analyzes of Laura, you know,
you can find some good pieces of like Muslim scholars
talking about like how Lawrence gets talked about. It's mostly
just like he's not really seen as a major figure
in all of this, right, They're more interested in like
guys like Faisal, They're more interested even in like British
people like alan By, there were some other you know,

(33:19):
British agents who were moving around like Lawrence. Because I
think in part of how much attention he gets has
for a long times been kind of like, well, he
wasn't really as important as everyone thinks he is. Right now,
that is, there's a reappraisal that's going on in the
present day, and you can find some some like Muslim

(33:39):
historians who are essentially like, yeah, I actually he actually
was a very significant part his book is a fairly
accurate accounting of things, and he seems to have really
tried to do what he thought was best, even though
like a lot of it didn't work out. Like there
is a reappraisal going on here, in part because modern
historiography has found that Lawrence was actually telling the truth

(34:02):
about a lot of stuff that he had been kind
of believed to be bullshitting about for a while. Now
that said, attitudes about him are very complicated over there.
Right now, I want to refer back to that article
in the Smithsonian magazine because later in that article, Sheik
a Latune says this, some people think he was really
trying to help the Arabs, but others think it was

(34:23):
all a trick, that Lawrence was actually working for the
British Empire all along. When I press for his opinion,
the shape grows slightly discomfited. May I speak frankly. Maybe
some of the very old ones still believe he was
a friend of the Arabs, but almost everyone else we
know the truth. Even my grandfather, before he died, he
believed he had been tricked. And that's a common attitude

(34:44):
towards Lawrence over there, and it was not universal. His
old friend Emir Feisal, who became King of Iraq, said
in nineteen twenty that Lawrence had been truthful in his promises,
a matter that made the Arabs trust him, But a
lot of people dislike Feisal, right, you know.

Speaker 2 (35:00):
I mean this gets into the like, why I believe
so strongly in honesty is that well to the people
that you're working alongside of, is that you set yourself
up for that when you lie to people, even if
you're trying to. Like his paternalism in the end makes
people realize that he was fucking them over, you know,
because he didn't treat them as equals and make decisions

(35:22):
alongside of them. Yeah, because they might have reached the
same conclusions. They might have been like, well, cynically, I
guess we should side with the British because dynamite and
British gold will accomplish everything, you know.

Speaker 1 (35:33):
And there's a lot of like you could you could
argue prob Maybe part of why Feisal is, you know,
so positive towards Lawrence is that, like, you know, Lawrence
is kind of honest with Feisal in a way that
maybe he isn't to a lot of these other people, right,
These different because a lot of these a lot of

(35:53):
these Arab tribes that he was getting in line behind
the rebellion weren't super pro feisial. What they were like, well,
but we hate the Ottoman and he's saying it'll work
out better. Maybe we'll just like give it a shot.
The rebellion seems to be working pretty well, and then
they wind up being like, oh, well, we just kind
of got fucked on this, right, We sent our sons
to die and this asshole became a king. But like,
what did we get right? Yeah, So, after his brief

(36:18):
stint with Churchill, Lawrence changed his name and asked to
be allowed to re enlist in the British military, this
time as a private. He told a friend that he
never wanted to be responsible for anyone or anything significant
again for the rest of his life. Like this is
how broken he is that he was like, I don't
want any of this fame. I am not going to
I'm going to take a new name and it re

(36:40):
enlists us a private, so I just don't have to
do anything but follow orders for the rest of my life.

Speaker 2 (36:45):
Yeah, I kill and die.

Speaker 1 (36:46):
That's kill and die. Sure, I'm fine with that. Literally,
anything like I've done lots of killing. I'm okay with that.
I just can't like, I have failed so utterly in
what were my goals in this thing that I just
I don't want to make another decision for the rest
of my life.

Speaker 2 (37:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (37:06):
So we spend the next I think fourteen years stationed
on a series of small bases around Britain. He lives
a quiet, almost solitary life, reading voraciously, listening to music,
writing letters to friends, and writing his motorcycle through the countryside.
Through this time, the legend of Lawrence grew and grew,
spurred on by the publication of an edited version of

(37:26):
his book, which is there's a fascinating story here Margaret
about like what happens to Lawrence's manuscript here, And this
is one of the there's a great article by Robert
Knu that's just an author's worst nightmare. So Lawrence, he
writes while he's like, you know, in the start of
the nineteen twenties, after all of this had fallen apart,

(37:47):
he wants to write his great memoir, which he'd planned
for a long time. He'd planned to publish a book
called Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Initially this was going to
be based on his before the war, his travels through
the Muslim world, and he writes that book and then
he destroys it. He gets like anxious about it. He
decides it's no good, and before he goes off to war,

(38:08):
he destroys the entire book, right, And then he takes
the title of that book and he uses it for
the book that he writes about his time fighting in
this desert war. And he puts together, using all of
these notes that he's taken, a two hundred and fifty
thousand word manuscript. And then after finishing the manuscript, he
destroys his notes. I don't know why. I've never heard

(38:30):
a good reason as to like, why does he destroy
all of his original notes once he finishes it? But
he does, And he only has a single copy of
this manuscript. And then when he is at reading station,
he leaves it in a bathroom and loses it.

Speaker 2 (38:51):
Yeah, I see why every author's worst nightmare.

Speaker 1 (38:54):
Yeah, that's a nightmare. Now I want to lost.

Speaker 2 (38:56):
A file of about thirty five thousand words of.

Speaker 1 (38:59):
Then god, oh my god, what a nightmare.

Speaker 2 (39:02):
Oh yeah, oh that hurts here. I never finished that book.

Speaker 1 (39:09):
Yeah. There is debate Margaret about this, Right, some biographers
or some people will argue, he probably didn't lose this.
He probably he was so angry about this guy who is,
you know, this journalist who has made him into like
the center, like a celebrity, right, and he's just so

(39:30):
shamed of what happened that he destroys this manuscript, right,
and then like regrets it immediately, right, But that like
maybe that's what happened, right, And he's destroyed a manuscript before,
it wouldn't be weird, right, whatever the case. Lawrence gets
back to work working on a new version of the book,
and the second draft of this, which he has to
make from memory since he's destroyed most of his notes,

(39:53):
is four hundred thousand words. And he writes this in
three months, just like that's like some Stephen King ass shit.
I do wonder if I know cocaine was available over
the counter back then, what were you doing, Laura? How
do you do four hundred thousand words in three months?
That's nuts?

Speaker 2 (40:11):
Well, like five thousand wars a day or something.

Speaker 1 (40:13):
Yeah, that's an insane rate of something like that.

Speaker 2 (40:16):
I could do that for like three weeks if I
had to.

Speaker 1 (40:19):
And he's unhappy with it, so he throws that out,
and then he writes a third version of the book.

Speaker 2 (40:25):
He's on his fourth, seventh, four seven manuscripts of wisdom.

Speaker 1 (40:32):
He almost does write fucking seven.

Speaker 3 (40:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:34):
The fourth version of this comes in at three hundred
and thirty five thousand words, and this time he has
the Oxford Times Press print eight copies of it. Right,
He's not gonna lose this fucking one. Right, he send
some of these and that this is the text from
which we get the final version, and Lawrence would would
kind of regret for the rest of his life. He
would say that the first draft was more accurate, like

(40:55):
I fucked up less, like I got more of the
basic the nuts and bolts. Right. Some people will say, like, well,
it's actually probably much better because in the process of
writing a million words of this story over and over again,
he got better at writing.

Speaker 2 (41:10):
I'm sure the prose is better, and I'm sure that
accuracy is better in the first one.

Speaker 1 (41:14):
Yeah, that's probably fair to say. And that's like, my god,
what a fucking nightmare. I I know I would not
be able to live with myself.

Speaker 2 (41:25):
But would the first version have helped the Vietnamese defeat?

Speaker 1 (41:29):
Yeah, have helped the Vietnamese war strategy, right, maybe not.
I think it's at this point here, like when we
talk about all these different versions of the truth and
the question of like how accurate is this, that we
get dragged back once again the question of Lawrence's sexuality. Right.
One of the key arguments against the rape and draw

(41:50):
story is that some of Lawrence's comrades in the Tank
Corps would later claim that he asked them to beat
and whip him for sato masochistic pleasure. Now, there is
a lot of reason to doubt these claims, and even
if they are true, we could just as easily interpret
this as Lawrence working through his trauma as a result
of having been gang raped. But one piece of evidence

(42:11):
to the contrary is that in the original version of
Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Lawrence's description of his rape was
then this is wild two hundred pages longer than the
version that wound up in print, which is a lot
And so some people will be like this, this kind
of reads like he was more putting out a fantasy. Right,
That's a lot of time to spend talking about yourself

(42:34):
being tortured in this kind of like very graphic detail.
That is, it is tinged with romance too, Like it's
very it's an odd bit of writing. Oh you know,
that's just the way Lawrence writes. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:47):
And also there's a huge difference between romanticizing the bad
stuff that happens to you and romanticizing bad stuff in general. Right, yeah,
Like if the way that you want to process something
bad is by romanticizing being like, at least my life
is interesting and beautiful, even though it's terrible and tragic, yeah, like,
good on you. Well.

Speaker 1 (43:06):
Yeah, So the journalists that we get these claims that
Lawrence he's basically writing pornography, right, you know, just because
he's so into this stuff that didn't really happen is
a guy named Philip Knightley. And when I say journalists,
you might put some air quotes around this, but he
reports heavily on Lawrence, right, and he's kind of the
origin of a lot of this, And he says, quote

(43:28):
it was so redolent of the sort of sato masochistic
literature that you get in the Charing cross Road. It
sort of cried out that this is Lawrence writing for
his own interest in delectation. Right, This reads like a
lot of the Sato masochistic like smut that was being
published at the time, and so that's why I think
it's fake. Quote. Lawrence continued these sato masochistic practices with

(43:49):
the help of a man called John Bruce. Bruce was
paid to birch Lawrence and then write an account of
Lawrence's beating bearing. Under the birching, the letters were collected
by Lawrence, who read them again and got two kicks
for his book, so to speak, right, this is Knight's
Nightly's claim right now. The unedited version of the book
also points paints a darker and more self serving and

(44:11):
consciously imperialist picture of Lawrence. In the original text. For example,
he describes Fisle as a very weak man, an empty man.
You were able to use faisal to get what you wanted.
And is that a more accurate depiction of Lawrence or
is that just kind of him in a much darker
frame of mind? After three writing three versions of this story, right.

Speaker 2 (44:31):
How do we know what the first one said? Is
it because he's later we.

Speaker 1 (44:34):
Know what earlier drafts say, Right, we have that draft
of the four hundred thousand word one. I think, oh,
we do have that. I think that's what he's talking about.
Not the original draft that's lost forever. We're like the
three hundred and thirty five thousand word one or something
like that. There are earlier There are earlier, longer drafts
than what got published that we have access to. I
don't actually know exactly. There's so many, so many copies

(44:57):
of seven Pillars floating around, right I am.

Speaker 2 (45:00):
But if I were to write that and I spent
two hundred pages describing a thing that happened to me, yeah,
I could imagine being like, it's time for a third draft.

Speaker 1 (45:07):
Time for a third draft. I might need to cut
this down a little bit, kill your darlings, Lawrence. Maybe
maybe the torture scene is a little log.

Speaker 2 (45:16):
There's this classic thing with like writing, where your first
novel you can't get away with spending eight pages describing
stained glass. Yeah, But by the time you like on
your like fifth novel and there's a fucking window. Yeah.
But by the time you're on your fifth novel, you
can spend eight pages talking about stained glass because you
already have the auther buy in. So, Lawrence, your problem
was that it was your first book.

Speaker 1 (45:38):
It was your first book, buddy, you know, well, actually
it was It was like his third through or second
or third through like fifth books or something like that. Yeah, now, Nightly,
I should say this, who is making this case that
like Lawrence was an asshole. He was a real imp realist.

(46:00):
He was a bad person. He was this like masochist
who lied about what happened to him. Knightley's not a
great source himself. The first articles I found about him
that were like, well, there's this guy who says, you know,
all this bad stuff abou Lawrence described him as like
a scholar. That's not really who Nightly was. And to describe,
like who this guy is, I want to read a
quote from The New York Times. Early in nineteen sixty five,

(46:23):
Philip Knightley and Colin Simpson, journalists specializing in feature pieces
for the London Sunday Times, were assigned to follow up
a Sixtyish Scotman story that when he was nineteen and
Lauras thirty three, he was paid by the hero of
Arabia to administer periodic beatings. The lawrence that Lawrence relished
testing his body in other ways was nothing new, but
the revelation was clearly of a kind when stretched into

(46:45):
a front page Sunday series to stimulate both reader and
newspaper circulation, and by early June of the same year,
the sensationally headlined articles began to appear. The Sheik who
made Lawrence Love Arabia and how Lawrence of Arabia cracked
up a full exclusive confession from the man who shared
his tragic secret with the global facilities established press power

(47:07):
and generous pocketbook with the Sunday Times at their disposal,
Nightley and Simpson could locate and interview people from Turkey
to Australia, pay for information, proy open library doors and
foreign office files long locked shut, and do it all
in time to meet their newspaper deadlines. So, you know,
maybe take this with a grain of salt. Some of
these things they're claiming, these these recollections from other people

(47:28):
decades later. You know, these guys who are hungry for
big stories that they can sensationalize about, you know, t e. Lawrence, right, Jerry, just.

Speaker 2 (47:37):
Like don't care if it was like whether it was
a kink or yeah, trauma dealing with because as are
related anyway, and like whatever.

Speaker 1 (47:44):
Yeah, I'm interested in like whether or not it happened, right,
But like, yeah, I've known more of Claire based on it, yeah,
right right now. Jeremy Wilson, Lawrence's officials biographer, interprets the
original text, or at least what we have of the
earlier text of Seven Pillars, very differently from Nightly. The
fact that you have Lawrence being more of a dick,

(48:04):
you know about some of this stuff, as this segment
from an article and the in dependent makes clear. Wilson said.
The text shows that Lawrence felt guilty after he encouraged
the Arabs to rise up and fight. He knew they
would not get an independent state in exchange for their
help because France and Britain had other plans. Wilson told
BBC Radio four. When he realized how duplicitous his role was,
he became upset about it and went off on a

(48:26):
spying mission to Damascus. But the point is he was
hoping to get killed on the way. There's no reference
to that in the final text, but there is an
allusion to it in the original texts. So Wilson, who
is more of a scholar certainly than Knightley, is like, well, no, actually,
like the original text includes him kind of talking about
how he tried to get himself killed because he felt
so bad about what he had done, right, which does

(48:47):
not portray him as like this cold imperialist, right, just
fucking over people, right, and is more a man who
did some very immoral things but was also trapped in
this just fucked up situation. Right now.

Speaker 2 (49:00):
That's the version that I feel like has been that
I've certainly taken away from. Yes, is like the man
who always wants to do right and realizes you can't
and then feels trapped and like.

Speaker 1 (49:11):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's probably the closest reality to
the reality that we're going to get.

Speaker 2 (49:17):
He would to be such a good Catholic, like he
wanted to get it, would have made it. Yeah, he
wants forgiveness.

Speaker 1 (49:23):
He would have been a great monk, right, Like if
he had come about in the medieval era, he would
have been so happy as a monk.

Speaker 2 (49:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (49:30):
Yeah. Now, partly as a result of the War on
Terror and largely pushed by the work of scholars like
bar And shedding doubt on aspects of Lawrence's narrative, Lawrence
saw a reapprisal in the early twenty first century that
was largely late ninety late twentieth kind of early twenty
first century that was largely negative. Right, the Arab revolt
has regularly been described as a side show in World

(49:52):
War One, which I really hate to hear whenever people
are like, well, actually, it wasn't even that big a
deal that any of this went on, because one intent
of the people living in the region died in the fighting. Right, Like,
this is not a side show. This is a major
historical event, no matter how you slice it. And it's
really fucked up when people argue otherwise.

Speaker 2 (50:09):
Sorry, fewer white people were there.

Speaker 1 (50:11):
Sorry, there weren't as many white people there.

Speaker 3 (50:13):
Right.

Speaker 1 (50:14):
Lawrence has been described as a braggart, a liar, a fantasist,
and a historic appraisal of the man has to caution
against taking this interpretation too far. Again. Barr, who's very
properly critical, I would say, responsibly in a historical sense,
critical of Lawrence, also describes seven Pillars as essentially accurate. Right,
and more recent scholars, including the leftist academic Neil Faulkner,

(50:37):
have urged a reappreciation of Lawrence as a titanic figure
in world history and that of the region. Now, Margaret,
you asked a little earlier, are we going to hear
about what happened to do right, and it's time for
us to tell that story, which is I know, it's
a bummer. Yeah. Yeah. So after Lawrence left the Karkamish
dig site in nineteen fourteen, the two never met again

(51:00):
because during the war, partly as a result of the war,
there's a typhus epidemic in Dome's hometown and he dies
in nineteen sixteen. Oh shit, so he's only like sixteen
or something he was, Yeah, I think he might have
been eighteen, yeah, because he was like sixteen when Lawrence left, right,
So he's probably like eighteen. Yeah, but he does not
get a long life. You know, this is partly as

(51:20):
a result of the war, although not Lawrence's pardon it.
Lawrence is not an active participant in the fighting until
Dome's dead. Now, if you don't find the claims made
a Knightley's reporting credible and instead take Lawrence at his
word and the words that he sent along to close friends,
he never had any other kind of intimate relationship, sexual

(51:40):
or otherwise in his life. I want to quote now
from an article in Salon dot com by Anthony Sattin
in nineteen twenty seven. He wrote to his friend the
homosexual novelist, I M Forster, I'm so funnily made up sexually,
and later that same year went further. Having read Forster's
ghost story Doctor Woollacott, in which a man dies after
a game sexual encounter, Lawrence wrote that the Turks, as

(52:03):
you probably know or have guessed through the reticences of
seven Pillars, did it to me by force. I couldn't
ever do it. I believe the impulse strong enough to
make me touch another creature has not yet been born
in me. And that is that kind of sounds like, yeah,
like this is someone who's ace, that men's very ace, right.
Like the following year with Robert Graves, the poet and

(52:26):
at that point his biographer, he had a discussion about
fucking as I wrote, with some courage. I think few
people admit the damaging ignorance. I haven't ever, and I
don't much want to. And that's part of what's so
interesting to me is that, like, this isn't really something
if we're looking at Lawrence, this isn't something we have
to be like wondering about, because he not only as
you write about it, he is aware and open to homosexuality.

(52:48):
He is talking to his gay friends about his sexuality,
which is so interesting to me, so unexpected, Right, I
really didn't think that we would have him directly talking
about like fucking and being like, yeah, I never wanted
to do it, Like, yeah, that's fascinating to me. That's
perhaps there's so many historical figures that I wish I
knew that about, right, because you're like, oh, why did
this woman never have children or get married? Was she guy?

(53:12):
Was she Ace?

Speaker 2 (53:12):
Was it just never work out?

Speaker 3 (53:13):
Like?

Speaker 2 (53:14):
Was she just actually loved Duck? But it was doesn't
want to marry? Like who knows?

Speaker 3 (53:18):
You know?

Speaker 1 (53:18):
Yeah, And it's like with Lawrence, this is as clear
as you can get a figure in this era talking
about a sexuality. And probably I think the best final
source on this is one of Lawrence's homosexual friends, Vivian Richard's.
And it's like spelled vyv y an. It's a man's name,
but I think it's just pronounced Vivian. The two met

(53:40):
at Oxford, and Vivian is no, I haven't, Oh there's
a there's a man named Villa. Anyway, Well, Vivian is
in love with Lawrence, right. Vivian is a homosexual man
who has a massive crush on Lawrence, and he was like,
I could fix him. Yeah, horribly sad that Lawrence was
never reciprocated. He wrote later, he had neither flesh nor

(54:01):
carnality of any kind. He received my affection, my sacrifice,
in fact, eventually my total subservience, as if it was
his due. He neither gave the slightest sign that he
understood my motives or fathomed my desire. In return for
all I offered him with admittedly ulterior motives, he gave
me the purest affection, love, and respect that I have
ever received from anyone, a love and respect that was

(54:24):
spiritual in quality. I realize now that he was sexless,
at least that he was unaware of sex. And yeah,
that's beautiful, that's.

Speaker 2 (54:32):
Kind of sweet. Yeah, it's like what sometimes like when
people who have sexuality who date people who are ace. Yeah,
you know my like, oh well there's something else that's
beautiful about this.

Speaker 1 (54:43):
Yeah. Yeah, And that's very much what Vivian is saying.
I think if Dome had lived, and he might have
written something similar, right, like, this was never a physical thing,
but he was the best and most most dedicated friend
I ever had. Yeah, and this is where we will
conclude the life of Lawrence Margaret after one of the

(55:05):
most action packed first acts in history. The remainder of
his military career in existence was not the stuff great
movies are made of. The simple reason seems to be
that he was just absolutely shattered by war. Lawrence's nerves
never recovered, and in nineteen thirty five, at age forty six,
he opted to retire from the military. As he was
settling into his new home, he wrote one friend of

(55:27):
his discomfort with this situation. I imagine leaves must feel
this way after they have fallen from their tree and
until they die. Let's hope that will not be my
continuing state. Alas it was. A week after writing this,
Lawrence crashed his motorcycle and perished in the accident. And
that yeah, again, it's like, beautiful rider. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:50):
It's like when there's like several really sad musicians who
accidentally drown and you're like, yeah, I'll let you have it.
I'll pretend. I'll let the world pretend that's an accident. Yeah, yeah, sure,
Lawrence accidentally crashed his motorcycle.

Speaker 1 (56:07):
Okay, yeah, yep, wow, whoa see.

Speaker 2 (56:13):
I would watch the movie about the second half of
his life. But it'd be more like watching The Lighthouse
or something.

Speaker 1 (56:17):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that that I would as well. Also,
I'll be watched The Lighthouse. Great movie. I think Lawrence
of Arabia probably would have liked The Lighthouse.

Speaker 2 (56:29):
Yeah, that would have been too. He wouldn't have gotten
all the masturbation. I didn't get all these.

Speaker 1 (56:33):
He would not not have been a fan of all
of the masturbation. Yeah, it's not interested in that. Yeah, yeah,
explaining the Mermussy to Lawrence of Arabia. If I get
my time machine working, I'm gonna go back in time
and be like Lawrence, wait a second before you get
on that motorcycle. Yeah all right. First off, this is

(56:54):
a photo of a man named Willem Dafoe. He's gonna
be born in a couple of decades. Great actor. Now
I need to explained to you with something called a
book series called the Twilight Series, this is not your
time to books. There are vampires which I feel like
you might be into, but not in the way that
you're into them.

Speaker 2 (57:10):
Yeah, yeah, I didn't. I didn't know the first thing
about him. I've read about the Ottoman Empire, I've read
about British man Naye Palestine. I knew that there was
this guy. I never saw Lawrence of Arabia the movie.

Speaker 1 (57:27):
Oh it's great, you should see it.

Speaker 2 (57:28):
Yeah, And I think by the time I would have
watched it, I would have been like, ah, another movie
about a white guy and off to go save the
world or whatever. Yeah, and well, now I want to
watch the movie.

Speaker 1 (57:38):
But yeah, I recommend it.

Speaker 2 (57:42):
No, he's he's interesting. And it's like most of the
really simple narratives that are around available for him don't
seem accurate. Yeah, you know, because like absolutely is Orientalism
part of his story completely for sure? Yes, and like
but it's but you can compare his or antilism to
the guy the like daddy guy who like wants to

(58:04):
go around the Ottoman Empire or whatever. Yeah, and then
also you know, he's still doing bad while trying to
do good. And oh man, he's interesting.

Speaker 1 (58:12):
Yeah, fascinating character. Oh yeah, and that's Laurence of Arabia. Well, Margaret,
you're gonna go blow up the train now, uh legally
legally not well cast over.

Speaker 2 (58:29):
Yeah, go listen to cool people, cool stuff if you
like complicated moral stories about people that are kind of like.

Speaker 1 (58:35):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah, this was kind of that from me,
because that is I guess we should answer the question
I said we were going to be asking this, where
do you land Lawrence of Arabia bastard? Yes or no?

Speaker 2 (58:47):
Bastard in the way that we're all doomed to be.

Speaker 1 (58:51):
Yeah, yeah, that might be it.

Speaker 2 (58:53):
You can't go into it. You talk all the time
on the show about how you can't go into war
and come out with your hands clean, and I'm always like, yeah,
but I probably could.

Speaker 1 (59:00):
I could get make it work.

Speaker 2 (59:02):
Yeah, I would just I would just stay morally clean,
even if it kills me whatever.

Speaker 1 (59:05):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (59:06):
And here's someone who wanted to stay morally clean even
though it would kill him. And then he's like, oh no,
never mind, I'm just gonna gun down everyone.

Speaker 1 (59:13):
Yeah, and timed to machine gun hundreds of people.

Speaker 2 (59:17):
So he is a bastard. And he's a bastard almost
by like accident of birth and like thing he's involved in,
rather than like a character treit. Yeah, you know, like
he's up to some bastardrey.

Speaker 1 (59:30):
Yeah. Yeah, it's tough. It's tough. He did his best, uh,
but he also probably shouldn't have been doing some of
the things he was doing.

Speaker 2 (59:43):
It's a mix, yeah, like, don't stumble around in the fog.

Speaker 1 (59:47):
Around in the fog of a foreign country, and yeah,
and try to institute new states. Uh, maybe you don't
know what you're doing. Maybe that's a bad idea. Maybe
maybe maybe there's more wisdom in the prime direct. Not
that this is a less advance, I'm not saying that,
but like just in the idea that, like, don't just
go stick in your dick in every fucking situation you see, right, Yeah,

(01:00:12):
maybe the fact that some people are having a ward
doesn't mean that you need to like make a call there, right.

Speaker 2 (01:00:17):
Even though you fell in love with one of them.

Speaker 1 (01:00:19):
Even though you fell in love with one of them,
and even though it is very sweet to say I'm
going to liberate his entire race, Yeah, yeah, it's also
pretty fucked up and orientalist to do. So maybe just
don't do that. Maybe maybe just buy him like some chocolates,
you know, maybe chocolates are better than launching a rebellion.

Speaker 2 (01:00:39):
Maybe the ring of power needs to be cast into
the fiery yeah pits of Mount Doom.

Speaker 1 (01:00:43):
Yeah, I'm sorry, yes he is. There is some strong
Boramir vibes to t Lawrence. Yeah, he was boramir maxing
there for a little while.

Speaker 2 (01:00:54):
Wonder some of the story about like going across the
desert to go get the Allies to attack the city. Yeah,
liked Tokien read that and then a going to go
find the like undead army to bring it to bear.

Speaker 1 (01:01:06):
Like Token obviously would say like no, you know, this
is none of it because that was always his stance.
But like yeah, also, like obviously World War One influenced
what he wrote, and this is part of World War One.
This definitely who definitely takes from this. This is the
basis of doom, right, Yeah, Like this is directly like

(01:01:27):
this is not I'm not like going out on a linear.
This is directly what inspires a lot of doom.

Speaker 4 (01:01:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:01:32):
Right, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, and it's
not really all that hard to see why, you know. Yeah.
And it's also it's interesting because it shows that Frank Herbert,
I think, understood this similarly to we Do to how
we do, because dude is fundamentally about how like it's
a really bad idea to have this white savior stumble
into another culture and just start leading a war. It
does not end well. He goes crazy. He com it's

(01:01:54):
a shitload of war crimes. He becomes an absolute monster,
and like, Okay, you got it. You really took the
right thing out of the te Lawrence story. Unfortunately, everyone
is going to interpret your book wrong for forever because
you made the horrible mistake of doing it making it
all look really cool.

Speaker 3 (01:02:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:02:15):
Ah, well that's why I don't.

Speaker 1 (01:02:17):
Like Yeah, this is why I don't write fiction about,
for example, anarchist militant characters who are are meant to
be very complicated and not necessarily good people. But I
also like writing about cool people, so they wind up
sounding cool, and then people are like, oh, is this
guy a good guy? No, no, he's not.

Speaker 2 (01:02:37):
And Bernie was curious they should go read Robert's book
After the Revolution, because that is what that is talking, Yes.

Speaker 1 (01:02:42):
A book full of morally compromised people who regret their
actions in war just get to say.

Speaker 3 (01:02:48):
Where sunscreen, yeah, plots of water, touch grass, and pet
a dog if that dog says they want to be petted.

Speaker 2 (01:02:55):
And if you want to do a moral action that
is essentially never wrong. Feed people.

Speaker 1 (01:02:59):
People don't blow up bridges, you know what. Honestly, more
often than not, blowing up bridges works out badly. Sure,
don't don't blow up a bridge unless you're a hurricane.
Then like that's your business, you know, And not that
I support it, but you know, you have that right.

Speaker 3 (01:03:15):
Hurricane, And if you do want to if you do
want to do a hurricane, just call up Nancy Pelosi
because she's got that hurricane on speed dial.

Speaker 1 (01:03:21):
Oh. I don't know what that's a reference to. I
only know about to drink. What the fuck is I
assume controlling the weather? Hurricane? Oh okay, I was.

Speaker 2 (01:03:31):
Just doing I've been doing a bunch of episodes about
witches recently, and they they were believed to control the weather,
and that was a It was actually not actually what
caused the wish hunts, but a lot of them were.
People were like, oh, the witches control the weather. And
I'm like, ha ha ha, look at you, silly early
modern fools thinking people. Oh crap, nope, that's happening now.

Speaker 3 (01:03:52):
Yep. Yeah, anyway, anyway, Bye.

Speaker 4 (01:04:00):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia
dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 3 (01:04:12):
Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes
every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot
com slash at Behind the Bastards