HERO OF ARABIA

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 77, Issue 209, 4 September 1934, Page 5

HERO OF ARABIA

LEACHMAN’S FINE WORK. LONDON. Sept. 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 has produced. He controlled thousands of Bedouins between Baghdad and Hedjaz while Lawrence was working in a much smaller area. Yet he lies unhonoured and forgotten in a grate in Baghdad. Major Bray was Governor cf Kcrbeld during the war. He told the Graphic that he had decided to write Colonel Leachman’s story owing to the fantastic Arabian Nights atmosphere surrounding the British ideas of what happened in Arabia. Ho says that Britain backed the wrong 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 Turk before the war. They wanted no romantic white leaders like Lawrence to lead them where they had already planned to go. T.cachman’s task was to link the nomad tribes to Britain and frustrate the German gold propaganda. His influence extended infinitely further than Lawrence’s. Yet he was single-handed and unaided by British money. Britain sent him to quell an Arab rising in 1922. A premonition he would not return was fulfilled when he was assassinated by the son of a petty sheik, whose activities he exposed. The German agent Prousser, who was captured in 1918. asked permission to shake the hand of the greatest man in the East. He wrote. ‘Turkish gold blandishments and all the German effort eannot undermine the influence on the Arabs of this one man. Loachman.”