Lawrence of Arabia / Being an Address delivered by Viscount Halifax

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LAWRENCE OF ARABIA Being an address delivered by Viscount Halifax, Chancellor of Oxford University, in St. Paul's Cathedral on the occasion of the unveiling of a Memorial to the late T. E. Lawrence on 29 January 1936. ITAKE it as an honour paid to the University of Oxford that her Chancellor should have been selected to perform this ceremony, and to say something about one of the most remarkable of Oxford's sons. It is my misfortune that it never fell to me to enjoy that close friendship with him, the memory of which is the possession of many here, so it cannot be of their Lawrence that I must principally try to speak. Rather from a standpoint more detached must I make some attempt to appraise the character and performance which we here commemorate. It is significant how strongly the personality of Lawrence has gripped the imagination of his countrymen! To comparatively few was he intimately known; his fame rested upon achievement in distant corners of the world; to the vast majority he was a figure legendary, elusive, whose master motives lay far outside their cognizance. So true it is that men often admire most what they are least able to understand. There has been no character in our generation which has more deeply impressed itself upon the mind of youth. Many of us can remember when we began to be told stories how impatiently we used to ask the teller if it was really true; and Lawrence's life is better than any fairy story. As we hear it we are transported back to the days of medieval chivalry, and then we remember that these things happened I