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Britain also counted on a potential second Lawrence of Arabia, Major John Bagot Glubb, commandant of Trans-Jordan's independent Arab legions since 1930. The Arabs
(continued on third page following) call him Abu-el-Hanak ("The Man With The Jaw"). He won their admiration and confidence by leading bands of Iraqi and Bedouin tribesmen against raiders from Saudi Arabia in 1924. Quiet, studious, slender, stooped, Major Glubb spoke Arabic even better than Lawrence did, was believed to have even more influence than Lawrence had.
Ethiopia is no Arab-country, and far from wanting to raise a revolt among the Arabs who came mostly into Britain's sphere of influence after World War I, Britain wanted nothing so much as to keep them quiet. But various dialects of Arabic are the language of Egypt, the Sudan and Libya, as well as of the Asiatic shore. Furthermore, the Arabs are expert desert soldiers and might prove useful allies to the British in Libya and the Sudan, where roads are almost as scarce as railroads, and the chief highways are furrows in the sand worn by the feet of generations of camels traveling from oasis to oasis—where in fact the only cultivated land is the green strip that follows the winding Nile.
The Italians on their part, soon after entering the war, began advancing on the Sudan from the Abyssinian watershed where rise the Blue Nile and the Atbara River, around Lake Tana in Ethiopia. Fear of these streams' sources falling into Italian hands was one of the factors which undermined the famed Hoare-Laval Deal in 1935, whose adoption might have averted the Axis' being formed. Ethiopia became Italian anyway, and the threat to the vital water supply of Egypt and the Sudan was underscored by the Italian advance in this region.
Methods of desert warfare have altered materially since Colonel Lawrence campaigned in Arabia. Now the territory is covered with numerous airfields (indicated by red windsocks on the map). The opening phase of the war was a continual exchange of bombings between Libya and British posts in Egypt, including Alexandria. More important, perhaps, air reconnaissance makes difficult surprise attacks and raids across the desert such as those at which Lawrence was adept.
Moreover, the warships of the deserts are no longer camels but tanks and armored cars. The picturesque British Camel Corps, set up in Africa 50 years ago, now rides in tanks, armored lorries and motorcycles.
When Italy entered the war, defending the British position in the Middle East were the same kinds of soldiers who won it 22 years ago: 80,000 English soldiers, 15,000 Australians (not allowed in Egypt because they raised such hell there last time), 10,000 New Zealanders and several thousand Indians, in the basic force in Palestine and Egypt. To these are added numerous local detachments such as 1,000 Indians and Britons at Aden. The total strength of the R. A. F. in the region was believed to be about 1,300 planes.