ARAB REVOLT

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 401, 9 December 1932, Page 6

ARAB REVOLT

OPERATIONS OF LAWRENCE AGAIN ST TURKS RECALLED EYE-WITNESS' STORY. An eye-witness' account of the Arab revolt against the Turks in 1916-18 was given to members of the Wellington Rotary Club at their luncheon this week, the speaker being Mr. F. C. Hawley, who was in charge of the Bristol fiighting aeroplane which was lent to Lawrence, the leader of the revolt. The facts of this revolt, said Mr. Hawley, would probably be never fully known, Lawrence being so reticent, but the fact remained that it had stirred the imagination of the world more than any other incident in the war. The speaker showed how Lawrence had come to be the leader of this revolt. He had accomp'lished, singlehanded, the amazing task of welding together the warring tribes of Arabs to fight for a single cause, for an Arab empire with Damascus as the capital city. After every success, Lawrence gained more and more adherents, until at last the British authorities were forced to take notice. They provided him with material for war and with gold, the latter being of great importance for keeping the Arabs together. Lawrence by his operations struck terror into the Turks and made them withdraw from the Palestine front, thus helping materially toward the solution of the problem of guarding the right flank of the Allied Palestine army. Detailing some of his flying experiences during this revolt, Mr. Hawley said that before his machine arrived on the sccne two German machines used to bomb the Arabs every morning. "I lost 80 men every time," Lawrence told him, "eight being killed and 72 getting the wind up, and that is too expensive." However, the knowledge that the Bristol fighter was there frightened off the German aeroplanes. On another occasion it was only the manipulation of his false teeth that savod Mr. Hawley and his flying companion from death at the hands of Arabs who thought that a flying machine was an invention of the evil powers and aviators were evil spirits. In giving details of the operations in Arabia, Mr. Hawley drew a picture of Lawrence as a man who knew no difficulties and who feared no danger. He never asked an Arab to do what he would not do himself. In his many disguises he penetrated into all kinds of places. Such was the fear that he struck into the hearts of the Turks that they set a very big price on his head, dead or alive. Yet Lawrence

himself was of comparatively frail physique, undersized, and almost shy, an archaelogoieal student recently down from Oxford — the very antithesis of what one would expect in the most romantic figure ~pf modern times." e