LIFE OF LAWRENCE OF ARABIA

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21733, 16 March 1936, Page 12

LIFE OF LAWRENCE OF ARABIA

tribute at memorial SERVICE ADDRESS IN ST. PAUL’S BY LORD HALIFAX (from our OWN CORRESPONDENT.) LONDON, February 10. A memorial to Lawrence of Arabia (T. E. Shaw) was unveiled in the crypt of St. Paul’s Cathedral. At the service of dedication which lowed, the nave and the great cathedral were filled with a congregation which was remarkable no less for lts ” u ,® ho than for the varied types of peopte wo formed it, and was striking evidence of the way in which the personality of Lawrence has gripped the imagination of his countrymen. ■. The memorial by Lord Halifax, who also delivered a n address at the service of dedication, both of which tasks he performed ■ * tation of the Dean and Chapterinvir tue of his association with Oxford as Chancellor of its University and. a Fellow of All Souls, So, too, in au parts of the congregation there were familiar figures whose lives or services were in some measure associated with the life of Lawrence—men who had associated with him in the Arab war, like Lord Lloyd, Colonel Robm. Buxton, Lord Winterton, and Sir Ranald Storrs; Sir John Shuckburgh of the Near Eastern Department of the Colonial Office, and Sir Henry McMahon, representatives of the Royal Air Force headed by Lord Trenchard; statesmen like Mr Churchill, (with whom was Mrs Churchill); many representatives of Oxford life like the Principal of Jesus College and others who had been Lawrence’s friends, including Lord and Lady Astor, Mr D. O. and Lady Evelyn Malcolm, Lady Halifax, Lady Worsley, Sir Herbert Baker, Mr and Mrs Robert Brand, and Mr Lionel Curtis. Of Lawrence’s own family there were present his mother and two of his brothers, Dr, Montague Lawrence and Mr A, W.- Lawrence. As An Oxford Man Lord Halifax, in his address, said;— “I take it as an honour paid to the University of Oxford that her Chancellor should have been selected to perform this ceremony, and to say something about one of the most remarkable of Oxford’s sons. It is my misfortune that it never fell to me to enjoy that friendship with him, the memory of which is the possession of many here. So it cannot be of their Lawrence that I must principally try to speak. Rather from a standpoint more detached must I make some attempt to appraise the character and performance which we here commemorate. "It is significant how strongly the personality of Lawrence has gripped the imagination of his countrymen! To comparatively few was- he intimately known; his fame rested, upon achievement in distant corners of the world; to the vast majority he was a figure legendary, elusive; whose master motives lay far outside their cognisance. So true it is that men often admire most what they are least able to understand. “There has been no character in our generation which has more deeply impressed itself upon the mind of youth. Many of us can remember when we began to be told stories how impatiently we used to ask the teller if it was really true; and Lawrence's life is better than any fairy story. As we hear it we are transported back to the days of medieval chivalry, and then we remember ‘that * these things happened not yet 20 years ago; and were mainly due to a force present in one man, that we acknowledge under the title of personality. “To Lawrence in an especial sense Oxford played the part of understanding guardian. Trained of old to discern the signs, she readily knew in him the divine spark that men call genius, tended and breathed upon it, until self-taught it kindled into flame. And it is perhaps not untrue to say that the discovery by Lawrence himself of his own powers and destiny was in no small measure due to their earlier recognition at Oxford by Dr. Hogarth, whom he was accustomed to describe as a great man and the best friend he ever had. Keen Self-Criticism “I cannot tell what fed the fire that made him so different from the common run of men. It has been said of him that no man was ever more faithful at any cost to the inner voice of conscience. Everything he did fell under the lash of his own self-criticism, and the praise of men was unsatisfying and distasteful. But I cannot doubt that some deep religious impulse moved him; not, I suppose, that which for others is interpreted through systems of belief and practice, but rather some craving for the perfect synthesis of thought and action which alone could satisfy his test of ultimate truth and his conception of life’s purpose. “Strange how hje l loved the naked places of the earth, which seemed to match the austerity of life as he thought that it should be lived. And so he loved the desert, where wide spaces are lost in distance, and, wanderer himself, found natural kinship with the wandering peoples of his adopted home. “His was the cry of Paracelsus:— T am a wanderer: I remember well One journey, how I feared the 0 , ' track was missed So long the city I desired to reach Lay hid: when suddenly its spires Flashed through the circling clouds: . you may conceive My transport: soon the vapours ~, , closed again. But I had -seen the city; and one ~ , . ~ such glance ‘ No darkness' could obscure,’ Yet, side by side-with this craving to accomplish ran another strand of feeling that lifts the veil from the inner struggle which, I suppose, grew his lat + er August, 1934, he was writing to a friend about his own disquiet;— 1 1 think it is in part because I am sorry to be dropped out. One of the sorest things in life is to come to realise that one is just not good enough Better perhaps than some, than many almost But Ido not care for relates fm matching myself against my kind! There is an ideal standard somewhere fiSd it y .? at matters ’ and 1 cannot “There we must leave it, for the waters of genius run too deep for hu man measure.” p nu ‘