T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 604

3. VIII. 27 Dear K. I owe you letters, and cannot write them, for my energy out here has dwindled, so that it hardly suffices for the 'last call' upon it: and R.G. and yourself have kept it busy lately. His book should not have been commissioned in such haste. Next spring would have been soon enough for Doran, and that would have given R.G. time to think and gather new matter. What I have read of his sheets up to now strikes me as manufactured. Some of the first pages were promising, and then it died off into little more than an echo of my own writing. Had I been in his place I'd have cut the Arabian years 1917 and 1918, to a chapter, and concentrated on the later periods. But he had not time to arrange or think. A great pity. Your maps are sketches, and seem to me complete enough. You miss out the Turkish war-time railway which went down to near Beersheba from near Ramleh. But I cannot help you, for I have no map out here, not even the little map in the Seven Pillars. There were some very good maps of Allenby's campaigns printed in a thin large volume (Hugh Rees, the bookseller of Regent St. would show it you) in 1919. They were the actual maps we used in the operations, and show everything. I've begged R.G. to be more careful how he used incidents from the Seven Pillars. That's my private meadow, and I hate the idea of first one and then another nibbling at it. His example will serve as precedent, you know. I can't stop X. legally, if he can show that Y did much the same thing, a little while back, without protest. The premium on piracy is great, now the S.P. stands at so foolishly high a price. I wish it would fall to £100 or so, again. When this dust storm (shit-storms we call them, and that idea was in my mind) has blown over I'll feel unhurried again, and will try to write properly. Yours, T.E.S.