File 756/1917 Pt 1 ‘ARAB BULLETIN Nos 1 to 65’ [‎583r] (1170/1240)

20. If you wear Arab things at all, go the whole way.
Leave your Lughsh friends and customs on the coast, and fall
)ack on Arab habits entirely. It is possible, starting thus level
with them, for the huropean to beat the Arabs at their own
game, foi we have stronger motives for our action, and put more
heart into it than they. If you can surpass them, you have taken
an. immense stride toward complete success, but the strain of
living and thinking in a foreign and half-understood language,
the savage food, strange clothes, and stranger ways, with the
complete loss of privacy and quiet, and the impossibility of ever
relaxing your watchful imitation of the others for months on end,
provide such an added stress to the ordinary difficulties of deal
ing with the Bedu, the climate, and the Turks, that this road
should not be chosen without serious thought.
o
21. Religious discussions will be frequent. Say what you
like about your own side, and avoid criticism of theirs, unless
you know that the point is external, when you may score heavily
by proving it so. With the Bedu, Islam is so all-pervading an
element that there is little religiosity, little fervour, and no regard
for externals. Do not think from their conduct that they are
careless. Their conviction of the truth of their faith, and its
share in every act and thought and principle of their daily life is
so intimate and intense as to be unconscious, unless roused by
opposition. Their religion is as much a part of nature to them
as is sleep or food.
22. Do not try to trade on what you know of fighting.
The Hejaz confounds ordinary tactics. Learn the Bedu prin
ciples of war as thoroughly and as quickly as you can, for till you
know them your advice will be no good to the Sherif. Unnum
bered venerations of tribal raids have tanffiit them more about
some parts of the business than we will ever know. In familiar
conditions they fight well, but strange events cause panic. Keep
your unit small. Their raiding parties are usually from one
hundred to two hundred men, and if you take a crowd they only
get confused. Also their sheikhs, while admirable company com
manders, are too “ set ” to learn to handle the equivalents of bat
talions or regiments. Don’t attempt unusual things, unless they
appeal to the sporting instinct Bedu have so strongly, or unless
success is obvious. If the objective is a good one (booty) they
will attack like fiends, they are splendid scouts, their mobility
gives you the advantage that will win this local war, they
make proper use of their knowledge of the country (don’t take
tribesmen to places they do not know), and the gazelle-hunters,
who form a proportion of the better men, are great shots at
visible targets. A sheikh from one tribe cannot give orders to
men from another ; a Sherif is necessary to command a mixed
tribal force. If there is plunder in prospect, and the odds are at
all equal, you will win. Do not waste Bedu attacking trenches
(they will not stand casualties) or in trying to defend a position,
for they cannot sit still without slacking. I he more unorthodox