MYSTERY MAN

Hokitika Guardian, 10 October 1931, Page 8

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 the Elmir's campaign for an independent Bukhara free of Communism (says the Daily Telegrapli). 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 these reports because of the previous report that “Colonel Lawrence” was killed in an aeroplane disaster in England earlier this year. Colonel Lawrence “of Arabia” has become a veritable bogey, both in the Near and Far East. He has been mentioned as a British anti-Cbmmunist agent by witnesses in several of the theatrical State trials in Moscow.

During the last 12 months alone his mythical adventures would make several good mystery novels. He is supposed, for example, to have spent several months in Hongkong investigating the ’death of Mr Douglas Oarstairs, the manager of the local Navy, Army and Air Force Institute. ,

A little later he again appeared in China' where lie made secret investigations for the use of the British -representatives in the extraterritoriality negotiations.

In February of the present year lie was detected at work in Asia Minor, where he organised the Monemen 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. Meanwhile, the real Colonel Lawrence has been living a more or less uneventful life as Aircraftsman Shaw with the Royal Air Force at the Mount Batten Air Station. Plymouth.