The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-08-02
Dr. Arthur Lynch One of Worlds Soldiers Of Fortune

in him are the seeds of revolt by for sire one of the men who set up the flag of the Australian republic and enforced the granting of responsible government to Victoria, he halls, on his mothers side, from the rebel clan of Rob Roy Macgregor." rebellious all ways, as Lynch claims. against oppres sion, meanness and fraud.
 He was born at Smythesdale, near Bal larat, in what was to all intents and purposes mining camp 'I was a spin dlin glittle chap he said, with possibly some pulmonary defect, and certainly an intensely forward mind My intellectual beginnings I trace to one day as a boy of perhaps ', when was feeling un- speakably low in health, l wandered out in the country and sat down on a log to think I believe now that as l sat there I could have let myself die, and the temptation to do so was strong, for life as I had seen it seemed wholly pur- poseless and death had an absolute at traction, but then, suddenly the thought struck me that as l was in life at all it was my duty to discover what justi- fled living. Having thus faced death I knew that I could have no moral fear of any other thing by which I might be menaced, and from that day I sought to inure myself by regular training to face all realities"
 Meanwhile he began going to school where he soon showed what a vertable thirst for knowledge he possessed. "In the morning carly" he said. T used to run downtown, about mile read the news, including politics. in the local newspapers ,and run back in time to do my lessons before breakfast" German he learned, too. from one of his fathers farm hands. and at 13 or IA he had read and annotated most of the philosophers. 'I well remember he said, 'the first time I picked up Locke's great work On the Human Understandings The index thrilled me like symphony of Bee thoven."
 So he progressed to Melbourne univer- sity, where, by the way, he once wrote and recited an elegiac setting forth his views with the result that he came near getting expelled. After graduating, he engineer. and subsequently, taught mathe- matics and lectured on engineering and scientific subjects in Melbourne and then his craving for knowledge deepened still further, sailed away to Germany to be- gin what he describes as -four years of intense toll and lonliness." During this time he wrote and published his first novel, which he called Approaches; the Poor Scholars Quest of a Mecca' and soon afterward set foot in England for the first time, there to have experiences that were not calculated either to soften his native contempt for monarchy and all connected herewith nor to increase his not too strong devotion to the mother country
 My feeling toward England and condi- tions here even today" said he lis one Of the same wonder that I should have among the denizens of the African jungle, and when l stood in the dock in the court of Kings bench and heard myself de- nounced as a traitor I felt toward my accusers exactly as 'Deerslayer' might nave felt as he stood tied to the stake while red devils with murder in their hearts threw tomahawks at him. Ir France or in the United. States l am among ideas and ideals that under stand, but I am wholly antagonistic to a country where the last imbecile son of a nondescript duke actually counts for more In the social cosmos than the most pro- found thinker. Nor were my first exper- fences of the English literary worlc happy poet myself. I joined the SO called 'Rhymers' club of which Yeats and Le Galliene were the central figures and found 1t collection of log rollers whose reverence for art was actually m in comparison with their determination to preserve their own ascendency.
 Then followed my first visit to Ireiahu to which came as I came 10 oouti Africa and to Germany, as stranger and where a few weeks later was stand ing as a candidate for Parliament. I'm was in 1892. I stood for Galway City al a Parnellite and was defeated by onl! 92 votes. From the day l sat foot 1. Ireland. as I soon discovered. detective dogged my steps-it was thus Ireland wa ruled in those dayD-auo this dgc0ver,