MYSTERY MAN

Taranaki Daily News, 22 September 1931, Page 12

MYSTERY MAN

LAWRENCE AGAIN. The Soviet Foreign Commissariat has received two long reports from Soviet agents at Bukhara, in the Tajikistan Republic, ascribing tribal revolts to the machinations of Colonel Lawrence. ■They allege that as the agent of Great Britain he is financing tho Emir’s campagn for an independent Bukhara free of Communism, says the Daily Telegarph. The agents report that “Colonel Lawrence’s influence is spreading throughout Turkestan, and it will be impossible to quell the revolts in any way permanently unless a powerful Soviet garrison is established in that region.” The Foreign Commissariat is puzzled over the reports because of tho previous report that “Colonel Lawrence” was killed in an aeroplane disaster in England earlier this year. Colonel Lawrencie “of Arabia” has become a veritable bogy, both in the Near and Far East. He has been mentioned as a British anti-Communist agent by witnesses in several of the theatrical State trials in Moscow. During the last twelve months alone his mythical adventures would make several good mystery novels. He is supposed, for example, to have spent several months in Hong Kong investigating the death of Mr. Douglas Carstairs, the manager of the local Navy, Army, and Air Force Institute. A little later he again appeared in China, where he made secret investigations for the use of the British representatives in tho extra-territoriality negotiations. In February of the present year he was detected at work in Asia Minor, where he organised the Menemen religious riots. Not content with ascribing these attacks on Turkey’s secularism to him, the Turkish Press a little later killed “Lawrence of Arabia” off in a flying boat accident at Plymouth. Meantime, the real Colonel Lawrence has been living a more or less uneventful life as Aircraftsman Shaw with the R.A.F. at the Mount Batten Air Station, Plymouth.