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Surely Destiny never played a stranger prank than when it selected, as the man to play the major rôle in the liberation of Arabia, this Oxford graduate whose life-ambition was to dig in the ruins of antiquity, and to uncover and study long-forgotten cities.

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IN SEARCH OF A LOST CIVILIZATION

When we first met in Jerusalem, and later on in the solitude of the desert, I was unable to draw Lawrence out about his early life. So, after the termination of the war, on my way back to America, I visited England in the hope of being able to learn something concerning his career prior to 1914, which might throw a light on the formative period when Destiny was preparing him for his important rôle. The war had so scattered his family and early associates that I found it difficult to obtain aught but the most meager information about his boyhood.

County Galway, on the west coast of Ireland, was the original home of the Lawrences. This may partly account for his unusual powers of physical endurance, for the inhabitants of Galway are among the hardiest of a hardy race. But in his veins there also flows Scotch, Welsh, English, and Spanish blood. Among his celebrated ancestors was Sir Robert Lawrence, who accompanied Richard the Lion-Hearted to the Holy Land, seven hundred and thirty years ago, and distinguished himself at the siege of Acre, just as the youthful T. E. Lawrence accompanied Allenby to the Holy Land and distinguished himself in its final deliverance. The brothers, Sir Henry and Sir John Lawrence of Mutiny fame, pioneers of Britain’s empire in India, were among his more recent predecessors.