So far as I know there was only one thing that Lawrence wanted out of the war, and that was something that he didn’t get. I asked him once if there was anything to be bought with money that he couldn’t afford but would like to have. His answer, which he gave unhesitatingly, showed how human and simple he is. He replied, “I should like to have a Rolls-Royce car with enough tires and petrol to last me all my life.” The particular car that he would have liked to have had was the Rolls-Royce tender called the “Blue Mist” which he used during some of his railway demolition raids around Damascus. But after the war it was overhauled and became Allenby’s personal car at the Residency in Cairo.
Lawrence has often been criticized for refusing the various honors offered him. But the truth of the matter is that he did not decline them merely to be eccentric. For instance, before the war he was presented with the Order of the Medjidieh by the sultan of Turkey for having saved the lives of some of the Germans at work on the Berlin-to-Bagdad Railway when the natives were going to mob them. Then, shortly before the outbreak of the Arabian Revolution, while still a subordinate in Cairo, he received and accepted a number of decorations including the Legion of Honor. But he refused the rewards offered to him for what he had accomplished in Arabia because he had realized from the very beginning that the Allies, once victory was secured, would find it difficult not only to satisfy the claims of the Arabs, but even to fulfil their obligations to the Hedjaz leaders. He realized full well that the French were determined to have Syria, and he knew all along that they would never agree to the Arabs’ even keeping Damascus. Lawrence therefore felt that he did not care to accept anything in return for having conducted a campaign based on promises which the Allies could not fulfil to the extent to which he believed they ought to be fulfilled. Perhaps he would have felt differently had he known that his friend Emir Feisal would be crowned king in Bagdad after losing the Syrian throne, which Lawrence foresaw he would never be allowed to occupy for long. But at the end of the war no one dreamed that Feisal was going to be the founder of a new dynasty in the city of Harun al Rashid after first being driven out of Damascus by the French.