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INTRODUCTION

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I was pleased and proud when Mr. Allen Lane first suggested that my Lawrence chapters (IX and XVIII) in Orientations contained the makings of a Penguin. When, however, we came to compute we found that, assuming the quality, the quantity even after expansion (and revision) amounted to barely half a bird. I offered to build up the remainder by chapter XV, the Excursus on Zionism; and this also found favour in his eyes. The upper half, particularly when lengthened by a P.P.S. bringing it to the date of going to press, proved also much the larger; so that this particular Penguin will lurch and shuffle rather a top-heavy little fowl into the public eye.

I have tried to make each section “autarkic”, but I cannot deny that Lawrence, taken out of his appropriate setting of the Hejaz episode, and Zionism, unsupported by the four long Palestine chapters which it divides, may to such as have read Orientations both appear relatively isolated. Yet to hatch, and to hutch these extra chapters would demand (what the Oxford English Dictionary calls) a regular “Penguinery” or “colony of pen’gwins”.

The personal sketch of Lawrence would have been richer and better if I had from the first taken copies of his hundred odd letters, some ninety of which perished in the burning of Government House, Cyprus. The estimate of Zionism, which is reprinted as originally written (but brought up to 15th March, 1940, by a P.P.S.), will on the whole be found to have stood the test of time, and is, whatever its demerits, at least so balanced, that each of the parties involved continues, as in the past, to accuse me of favouring the other. I can only defend myself by accepting the double charge, and by likening my attitude (I hope with becoming reverence) to that of Hera towards Achilles and Agamemnon:

ἄμφω ὁμῶς θυμῷ φιλέουσά τε κηδομένη τε

For in her heart both of the pair

Did exercise her loving care.

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The emblem on the obverse binding is my Arabic, on the reverse my Hebrew seal as Military Governor of Jerusalem (December 27, 1917, until July 1, 1920).

The unacknowledged quotations in these pages are from my diaries or private letters.