06/02/2010 by jmw.

Those who have seen Rory Stewart’s recent BBC TV documentary  The Legacy of Lawrence of Arabia might appreciate the passages below, taken from a private letter from Lawrence to a journalist written in 1927:

“The Arabs have their chance now - for what they are worth - of proving themselves capable of self-control, and Irak is nearly our first ‘brown’ dominion.”

“I could (and did) retire with some self-contentment, with the whole job done. I wanted the Arabs to have leave to make their own mess: and not to go on holding their hands to save them from messes. People learn by falling down, like babies.”

The letter was published in the National Review, 10 September 1963

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17/01/2009 by jmw.

If I have restored to the East some self-respect, a goal, ideals: if I have made the standard of rule of white over red more exigent,  [then] I have fitted those peoples in a degree for the new commonwealth in which the dominant races will forget their brute achievements, and white and red and yellow and brown and black will stand up together without side-glances in the service of the world.

T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, The Complete 1922 Text, Chapter 1

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