LAWRENCE OF ARABIA

Greymouth Evening Star, 12 February 1936, Page 12

LAWRENCE OF ARABIA

MOSLEMS BELIEVE HE IS ALIVE. LONDON, December 28. the legend that ‘‘Lawrence of Arabia” is still alive, and is carrying on work among the Arabs in secret, is one of the most persistent in East Africa, according to the Jibouti correspondent of the British United Press. He has, he declares, talked with many Moslems, who are convinced that Lawrence will not die until Britain has fulfilled his promises to the Arabs. Protestations that he is dead create the impression that these are the beliefs of an ignorant infidel. “Time after time during the three months I was reporting the war in Abyssinia,” he writes, “ ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ was pointed out to me, by some whispering awe-struck Near Easterner. Thousands of the less-in-formed natives on the Arabian and East African coasts are convinced that Lawrence is alive, and engaged on some mysterious mission among the Moslems, that is, those living in Abyssinia and along its frontiers. Correspondents travelling through British Somaliland were told by wily Arabs and Somalis that Lawrence was actually in the Ogaden. Lawrence was represented by these people as working to bring the Abyssinian Moslems in line with British policy —but they never knew what that-policy was. In Harrar I saw a man/ alleged to .be Lawrence. He wore; the same sort of headdress as that-worn by Lawrence in his Arabian travels. . His. beaxL-trimmed robes were those of a man of importance, and 1 saw him conferring with Abyssinian officials, leading Moslems, and even British officials. It was a week before he was identified as an Arab Sheikh, a wealthy trader, but he had no political influence, and all bis conferences dealt -with the sale of goods. Wherever Moslems and Arabs demonstrated in sympathy "with Abyssinia it was whispered in the market-plac-es that Lawrence had not died, -and that, he was more active than at any time since the days of the Great War.”