Evening star., 1935-09-29
BY Mary.Carter Roberts.
THE SEVEN PILLARS OF WISDOM.
BY T. E. Lawrence. Garden City:
Doubleday, Doran & Co,

THE SEVEN PILLARS OF WISDOM.
BY T. E. Lawrence. Garden City:
Doubleday, Doran & Co.
~ EADING at last this most pub
~ iicized book Of the century, one
n is impressed by two things:
a y The first is the prodigality
Of the fate which governed the Arab
ian affair, in vouchsafing to it without
exception or, at most, with one ex-
ception, those attributes which 60 to
make up what the world has recog-
nized from Homer down to be the
Great Adventure.
For, in war that everywhere else
was sordid and mechanistic, the
Arabian affair had inspiration for the
souls of its fighters and open combat
for their bodies. Inspiration for the
soul it had in its ideal, the ideal OF
freedom, the sense of being engaged
in throwing off bonds and moving
toward liberation. Inspiration also
lay in the nature of the enemy. He
was not a set of principles in Arabia,
nor a negation of IA points nor de-
termination to corner the world mar
ket in aluminium. He was forth
rightly, the Turk. He was familiar,
he was loathed, and above all, he
was tangible. He made a reasonable
focus for hatred, without which war
is a mere obscenity. doubly obscene
because of necessary attempts to ra-
tionalize phenomenon beneath the
function-or the need-of reasoning.
THAT, more than any one other
fact, may serve to bring about the
end of armed combat in the future,
unless, of course, robots may be made
to fight, or, as seems likely, fighters
may be turned into robots)
Thus the fortunate Arabs had the
ingredients of true war before them.
They had something to fight for and
something to fight against. And that
brought desire into it for them, and
heat and urgency, and sense of being
united in an idea, of being one with
the Christian, their ally, and of riS-
ing above the old tribal enmities that
had divided them for decades. Their
singleness of purpose was dramatically
OClOIC LllCLl1 az GAL ACA2 ASodCl
Lawrence, personified it.
And when they went about their
fighting they were able to go, as near
as may be, cleanly. They went at it
in the primitive manner which makes
men feel themselves to be engaged in
heroism. They moved by great marches
any by open charges. They rode in
great bodies behind their hereditary
leaders, with rival poets Zone on the
left hand of the chief and one on his
right singing improvised songs about
the greatness of their families and ex-
ploits. They lay out at night, waiting
to ambush the enemy. They were
ambushed themselves. They had hard
ships, hunger, thirst and death-all
clearly for freedom. And, for a the
ater, they had about them the calm
eternal desert, absorbing the triviality
of human conduct and holding up be-
fore them the eternal memory of God.
1t was background spectacular
enough.
That is what impresses one first in
Lawrence's record of the World War
as fought in the Near East. And Sec
ond, one is impressed by the person.
ality of the man who wrote the record.
Like all great natures, ne would
seem to have been capable of leading
many lives. He must have been four
men at least in his desert war. He
was, of course, the military thinker for
the Arab soldiery. He planned the
strategy, he executed many pieces of
1t. And then he was the brother-in-
arms of those Moslems; only by filling
such capacity was he able to assume
the authority which he had And,
beyond their understanding, he was
the empire builder; he was seeing, be-
yond the immediate revolt, new plan
for England's influence in Asia. He
was alone in all these roles. Even in
his empire planning be was not au-
thoriZed. He says himself that only
q handful of men in England grasped
his scheme, and they were not the
men in power. He was alone, as few
men in our times have been permitted
to be alone, with tremendous scheme
hA4N q u iCllICA1AOuo NOllSldIlI
bility. He was raised, for the time
being, above the ranks of human be-
ings; he became seer, prosecuting his
vision in perilous activity.
And last, he was the incurable
scholar, the oxford don, the humorous,
prescient aesthetic. Time rolled on
and his military leadership came to
an end. His comrades in arms were
lost to him. His ideas of empire did
not transpire into reality. The scholar
alone remained, but with a heroic
memory. 1t was the scholar who
wrote the present book.
And so 1t stands, scholars work
great record of great enterprise, a
true anatomy of what may prove to
have been the last crusade, all other
combatS being merely world wars and
q prodigality of cunning. 1t is through
the scholars eyes that the reader will
view this undertaking of pageantry
and vision. Lawrence of Arabia did
not write it; he never would have
written anything. 1t was Lawrence of
Oxford who put the record down.
No wonder the man, after that,
could take no part in any lesser thing,
unless by dramatizing its utter unim-
portance. He knew, beyond all ques-
tioning, that he had lived his day and
his dream. Earlier in this review it
has been said that the fate that gov
-erned the adventure vouchsafed it all
the attributes of greatness save per-
haps one. That one was a second
Homer. It deserved that. But 1t is
too much to have asked. Achilles to
write his own undying song. 1t has
never been done yet. Why should we
ask 1t here? -
IN PRAISE OF IDLENEss, BY Ber-
trand Russell. New York: w. w.
Norton and Company.
THIS book is an expression of the
nostalgia Of the cultured man in
the present mechanistic age. Some
what in the mood of Ruskin mourning
over the destruction of English rural
life. Mr.. Russell utters polished plants
against the trend Of the time toward
the discrediting of all types Of knowl-