ANOTHER WAR HERO

Greymouth Evening Star, 3 September 1934, Page 7

ANOTHER WAR HERO

LAWRENCE OUTDONE ? i UNHONOURED & FORGOTTEN ........ r.jx... ... , i ’•'♦hl [BY CABLI —PBESS ASSN. —COPYBIGHT.] (Recd. Sept. 3, 10 a.m.) LONDON, September 2. Lawrence or Leachman, which was the real hero of Arabia? is a question raised in “Shifting Sands,” which is being published shortly, says “The Graphic.” . The author, Major N. N. Bray, Indian Army officer, calls Colonel Leachman one of the greatest men England produced. He controlled thousands of Bedouins between Bagdad and Hedjaz, while Lawrence was working in a much smaller area, yet he lies unhonoured and forgotten in a grave in Baghdad. Bray, who was Governor of Kerbela during the war, told “The Graphic” he had decided to write Leachman’s story, owing to the fantastic Arabian nights atmosphere surrounding British idea of what happened in Arabia. lie says: that Britain backed the wro.ng horse, when she supported Feisul. The Arabs wanted Ibn Saud. It had taken much bloodshed and gold to rectify the mistake. The Arabs planned a revolt against the Turks before the war. They wanted no romantic white leaders like Lawrence to lead them, where they had already planned to go. Leachman’s task was to link nomad tribes to Britain and frustrate German gold propaganda. His influence was extended infinitely further than Lawrence’s, yet he was single-handed, unaided by 1 British money. Britain sent him to quell an Arab rising in 1922. A premonition that he would not return was fulfilled, when he was assassinated by the son of a petty sheik, whose activities he exposed. The German agent, Preusser, who was captured in 1918, asked permission to shake the hand of the greatest man in the East, and wrote: “Turkish gold and the blandishment of the all German effort cannot undermine the influence on the Arabs of one man, Leachman.”