Читать книгу With Lawrence in Arabia онлайн

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“As we tinkled across the plain to the rhythm of the bells on the horses’ necks, we had food for thought in what we had seen. If Britain governs much of the world, we wondered if it did not because of the merit, capacity, and good sense of her sons in all lands. Impressions of this chance visit to Carchemish were deepened by residence in Constantinople throughout the World War, where we watched the German play for the big stake, of which the Euphrates Bridge was but an incident. And the German lost because of the way he went after it.

“Thomas Lawrence worked another way. His extraordinary achievement was wonderful beyond measure. But it was not a miracle. It was but the outworking of intelligence, imagination, sympathy, character.”

Robert Louis Stevenson in “An Apology for Idlers” deplores that “many who have ‘plied their book diligently’ and know all about some branch or other of accepted lore, come out of the study with an ancient and owl-like demeanor, and prove dry, stockish and dyspeptic in the better and brighter parts of life.” But in Lawrence Stevenson would have found a kindred spirit. Though scholar and scientist, he is neither bookish nor owlish. During the early days of the Arabian Revolution, a Captain Lloyd, now Sir George Lloyd, recent governor of Bombay, was in the desert with him for a short while. He once said to me: “It is difficult to describe the delight of intimate association with such a man. I found him both poet and philosopher, but possessor of an unfailing sense of humor.”