T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 172

XEXMXZMXZXMXZXMXZX To Dr. A.E.Cowley, Oxford. If you can do the squeeze I would be most grateful: if not, D.G.H. has gone some. Profound thanks! As for copying on the squeeze.... I'm afraid the paper is not sized, and so it won't carry the .... You could do it in pencil, or ink a piece of tracing paper over the squeeze, & work on that. I am afraid that the chance of my c...ing down to see you go it is very remote. Khalxassa is about 45 miles from Gaza, I believe. In any case I'll I rang...e it & see: and it is on high roads to Fetra and Akaba. T's book will be called The wilderness of Zin, by C.L.Woolley, (The archaeological report of the survey of S.Palestine for the .... in...(inserted above , at top of page) and will be the 1914-1915 annuals of the Palestine Ex...loration Fund. It is due about Xmas, but I may have to delay its little longer. Our journey was from Gaza down the Turk-Egy...t frontier to Akaba, and included all the triangle Gaza Beersheba, Akaba. D... (too, deleted) [We went as far as, inserted) Wadi ...including Fetra. But most of the book is history, and a discussion of Kadesh Bernes, and an account of Byzantine ruins S. Of Beersheba. Tod has written about a lot of Greek inscriptions we got. Parts of the book are frivolous, as don't tell it: k...acriptions couldn't help!..... as I notice people usually go. You ask when I am coming down..... I don't know. You see, there is only thr Head of the Department (Col. Hedgley) left now, & in myself and an errandst she so things are really a little short. Before the war there were six little men to help him, and there's more to do now. I don't know if one gets days off.... as an exceptional favour I think one can, but I don't like such things. And working all days a week till 7 or £8 P.t. doesn't leave much time for the humanities. I disapprove of London on eighteen counts, of which most are ex-militia: but they take a long time. London seems curiously unroofed. Salaʻam me to Mrs. Cowley. Please tell her I also talk French & to Belgians, the subject of conversation being lithography. It is very hard to get the hang of their terms: especially as in English I don't very well know what a rotary rubber-bed offset machine really is. Many thanks indeed for the insertion. T.E.