ALLENBY OF ARABIA

He predicted to T.E. Lawrence that in the future Lawrence of Arabia would be a household word while people would have to go to the war college to find out who Allenby was. The prophecy seems to have come true. Allenby was widely trumpeted as ""The Last Crusader."" He was the British general who took Jerusalem from the Turks in the North African campaign and both he and Lawrence got the Lowell Thomas Instant Myth treatment. Somehow, with Allenby, it failed to take, although he was administrator of Egypt for some time after the war. This biography lacks color. Perhaps the man did too. He had earned the not so affectionate nickname of ""The Bull"" from his men and his temper tantrums had been a legend even before his great days in the war. He had been a good soldier in the Beer War and had a happy marriage. His greatest rival was Haig, a fellow cavalry officer who was his competitor and contrast. Allenby was a go-ahead general and Haig has latterly been blamed for the stick-in-the-mud campaign disasters in France. This is a competent military biography of a soldier/imperialist of the old school, carefully analyzing Allenby's administrative ability. As such, it is readable but scarcely capable of rescuing Allenby's name and restoring it to household word status.