text: Twenty-Seven Articles of T. E. Lawrence
  is founded on some immoral or irreligious principle. A thick head cloth forms a good protection
  against the sun, and if you wear a hat your best Arab friends will be ashamed of you in public.
  18. Disguise is not advisable. Except in special areas, let it be clearly known that you are a British
  officer and a Christian. At the same time, if you can wear Arab kit when with the tribes, you will
  acquire their trust and intimacy to a degree impossible in uniform. It is, however, dangerous
  and difficult. They make no special allowances for you when you dress like them. Breaches
  of etiquette not charged against a foreigner are not condoned to you in Arab clothes. You will be
  like an actor in a foreign theatre, playing a part day and night for months, without rest, and for an
  anxious stake. Complete success, which is when the Arabs forget your strangeness and speak
  naturally before you, counting you as one of themselves, is perhaps only attainable in character:
  while half-success (all that most of us will strive for; the other costs too much) is easier to win
  in British things, and you yourself will last longer, physically and mentally, in the comfort that
  they mean. Also then the Turks will not hang you, when you are caught.
  19. If you wear Arab things, wear the best. Clothes are significant among the tribes, and you must
  wear the appropriate, and appear at ease in them. Dress like a Sharif, if they agree to it.
  20. If you wear Arab things at all, go the whole way. Leave your English friends and customs on the
  coast, and fall back on Arab habits entirely. It is possible, starting thus level with them, for the
  European to beat the Arabs at their own game, for 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 dealing with the Bedu, the
  climate, and the Turks, that this road should not be chosen without serious thought.
  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 fervor,
  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 principles of war as thoroughly and as quickly as you can, for till you know them your
  advice will be no good to the Sharif. Unnumbered generations of tribal raids have taught 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 commanders, are too 'set' to learn to handle the equivalents
  of battalions or regiments. Don't attempt unusual things, unless they appeal to the sporting instinct
  Bedu have so strongly, 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
  Sharif 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. The more
  unorthodox and Arab your proceedings, the more likely you are to have the Turks cold, for they
  lack initiative and expect you to. Don't play for safety.
  23. The open reason that Bedu give you for action or inaction may be true, but always there will be
  better reasons left for you to divine. You must find these inner reasons (they will be denied, but
  are none the less in operation) before shaping your arguments for one course or other. Allusion