It turned out, however, that this so-influential assertion had been based on incorrect information supplied to Aldington by Lawlor (and was later specifically refuted by political scientist Don Rawson in his 1968 Dissent article on political violence in Australia).

When Aldington originally opened the correspondence with Lawlor (via a mutual friend, expatriate Australian journalist Alastair Kershaw) it was because he had reason to believe that Lawrence had encountered something sinister in Australia in 1922 - something reflected in one of the final sentences in the novel:

It was as if the silvery freedom suddenly turned, and showed the scaly back of a reptile, and the horrible paws.

(This "quote" appeared as above in the original Seltzer and Secker, and later Heinemann/Viking editions of Kangaroo. However, in the wider-circulating Penguin edition the last word - from 1950 onwards - was changed from "paws" to "jaws". The correct word is "paws", which is how it appears in the holograph manuscript. No doubt the Penguin editor could not see how a reptile could have paws, and so gave it "jaws" instead...a bad error, given - as we shall soon see - the significance of the "quote", and who this scaly animal was intended to represent [take note again, in this context, the cover-illustration above, with its blood-encrusted paws].)

Aldington had started the exchange with Lawlor in the belief that Kangaroo's secret-army plot might indeed have been based on fact. That was the reason he wrote to him, after obtaining Lawlor's address from their mutual friend Kershaw in France.

His suspicions, Aldington explained in an early letter to Lawlor, had been aroused when he was staying with Lawrence at Port-Clos on l'île de Bréhat in the Mediterranean in 1928.

Several naval officers from Toulon had come to the island asking about Lawrence, who insisted on departing the island forthwith.

Aldington got the distinct impression that Lawrence was afraid of something. (Aldington's subsequent curiosity about Lawrence's behaviour could have stemmed from something Lawrence told him during or following this incident.)

In his first letter to Lawlor, Aldington wrote: "If that spy scene between Somers and Jack is invented I should be surprised. There is real rage in it, which I don't think Lorenzo could have worked up over an imaginary episode."

The "spy scene" is a reference to the "Jack Slaps Back" chapter in Kangaroo when the secret-army figure Jack Callcott accuses the Lawrence-figure Somers of spying on his organisation ("You didn't try drawing us out? I should say that you did."), telling him that they wanted "some sort of security" that he would "keep quiet" before they would allow him to leave Australia. (See below for the full text of that "spy scene".)

This was shortly after the fictional secret-army leader Cooley had himself threatened Somers with severe retribution - death in fact - if he divulged anything about what he had learnt in Sydney.