“One day in Jerusalem we were walking down Christian Street when a group of Arabs passed us going in the direction of the Damascus Gate. We noticed that one of them was a beardless blond. Well, in Arabia there are no fairhaired people, and unless you have a beard you are not full-grown. And this young fellow was dressed in the robes of an Oriental Potentate, and wearing the gold sword of a Prince of Mecca. Our curiosity was so aroused that an hour later we called at the Palace of the British Military Governor of Jerusalem, and asked him who this fairhaired Arab could have been. He ushered us into an adjoining chamber, and there, seated on a Turkish divan, with his feet disrespectfully planted on top of the desk which the German Commander-in-Chief, Von Falkenhyn had used in working out his plans for trying to keep Allenby out of Palestine, reading a book on archaeology, was the Arab we had passed on Christian Street. General Storrs, in introducing him said — ’I want you to meet Colonel Thomas Lawrence, the Uncrowned King of Arabia.‘”

-Lowell Thomas
“With Lawrence in Arabia” (1919)