The Letters of Gertrude Bell (Volume 2)
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Title: The Letters of Gertrude Bell (Volume 2) (1927) Author: Gertrude Bell * A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook * eBook No.: 0400461h.html Edition: 1 Language: English Character set encoding: HTML--Latin-1(ISO-8859-1)--8 bit Date first posted: September 2004 Date most recently updated: September 2004 This eBook was produced by: M Fulton Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editions which are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright notice is included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particular paper edition. Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this file. This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg of Australia License which may be viewed online at http://gutenberg.net.au/licence.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE LETTERS OF GERTRUDE BELL

SELECTED AND EDITED BY LADY BELL, D.B.E.

VOLUME 2

1927 BONI AND LIVERIGHT

Publishers New York

PRINTED IN ENGLAND FOR BONI AND LIVERIGHT, INC.

VOLUME TWO CONTENTS

XVI 1917 - BAGDAD

XVII 1918-1919 - BAGDAD

XVIII 1920 - BAGDAD

HISTORICAL SUMMARIES:

1. MAJOR GENERAL SIR PERCY Cox, G.C.M.G., Etc.

2. H.E. SIR HENRY DOBBS, K.C.S.I., Etc.

XIX 1920 - BAGDAD

XX 1921 - BAGDAD

XXI 1921 - BAGDAD

XXII 1922-1923 - BAGDAD

XXIII SEPTEMBER 1923 TO JUNE 1924 - BAGDAD

XXIV JULY 1924 To DECEMBER 1924 - BAGDAD

XXV 1925 - BAGDAD-ENGLAND

XXVI 1926 - BAGDAD

XXVII CONCLUSION

INDEX

VOLUME TWO ILLUSTRATIONS (at the end of this file)

VOLUME TWO

CHAPTER XVI

1917 - BAGDAD

To F.B. and H.B.

April 15th, 1917.

We are within two hours of Bagdad and I'm free to admit that coming up this river gives one a wholesome respect for our lines of communication. This is the 9th day we've been at it, tying up for a few hours at night but steaming 17 or 18 hours a day notwithstanding. It's well that it wasn't a month later for already the temperature is 90 and on a crowded ship it's hot. We passed Kut before sunrise, but I got up to see it--poor tragic little place--it's shelled walls and shattered palm trees catching the first flash of day. It is quite empty still, but we are going to clean it out and build it up as soon as possible.

We anchored last night just above Ctesiphon. I know the river banks well, for I've ridden up them more than once. Our big camps are the only unfamiliar objects. It's exactly three years to-day since I last set out from Bagdad across the Syrian Desert on my way back from Arabia.

To H.B.

BAGDAD, April 20th.

Such an arrival! Sir Percy made me most welcome and said a house had been allotted to me. I went off to see it and found a tiny stifling box of a place in a dirty little bazaar. It was absolutely empty--what furniture I had was with my heavy luggage and not yet landed, and I hadn't even a boy, as I had left my servant to look after the heavy luggage. Fortunately, like a good traveller, I had not parted from my bed and bath. These I proceeded to set up and further unpacked my box which had been dropped into the Tigris, and hung out all the things to dry on the railings of the court. It was breathlessly hot. I hadn't so much as a chair to put anything on, and when I wanted water for washing I had to open my front door and call in the help of the bazaar. Fortunately they responded with alacrity. I dined with Sir Percy, armed myself with a loaf of bread for breakfast and returned to my empty house to sleep. By good luck my servant turned up late that night, so that there was someone to water tea for me next morning.

I confess, however, that after having done my hair and breakfasted on the floor I felt a little discouraged. It was clear that something must be done at once, and I proceeded to hunt for one. The first thing I tumbled on to was a rose garden with three summer houses in it, quite close to the Political Office and belonging, fortunately, to an old friend of mine, Musa Chalabi. I decided at once that this was the thing, but a kitchen had to be built and a bath room, and sunblinds to be put up--a thousand things. I got Musa Chalabi to help me and summoned in an old man, a servant whom I've known for ages, and after five days' work I'm in--'tant bien que mal' and it promises very well. My old man Shamao has engaged me a cook and the Englishman who runs all the supplies Col. Dixon is my faithful friend, having been charged by the I.G.C. to look after me. And my roses I must tell you are glorious. Oh, but it is hot! I'm longing for my thin summer clothes. I wonder when they will reach me here.

Meantime all my acquaintances and friends have flocked in to see me. I've visited the Naqib, the head religious man and an ally of many years' standing, and have been received with open arms. And it is all wildly interesting--War Office telegraphing for signed articles from me, etc., etc. I'm going to have an exciting summer. Sir P. gives me lots of thrilling things to do and is the kindest of chiefs. Bagdad is a mass of roses and congratulations. They are genuinely delighted at being free of the Turks. The rest for another time, I am so busy.

To H.B. and F.B.

BAGDAD, April 27th, 1917.

I'm never here, that's the pity of it, but I intend, when I write my War Office articles, to retire here solidly for the afternoons; otherwise I'm so terribly interrupted by visitors. I love seeing them and they are most useful for purposes of information, but they eat up the hours. I have the most amusing reunions with gentlemen I met at Hayil and Najaf and Heaven knows where besides. It's immense fun, and also it's a great pride to be provided with so many acquaintances. But the heat! It's 90 in my coolest room to-night after dinner, and of course that's nothing really. Next month it will be 10 degrees hotter at least. My programme is to ride from 6 to 7:30, come in and have a bath and breakfast and then straight to the office. I don't get away till Past 7 or sometimes nearly 8. Very shortly I shall begin the day an hour earlier and try to come in at 7 for dinner. I'm conscious of an unworthy rejoicing at the material comfort of existence. At Basrah one could get nothing--lived on tinned milk and butter for a year, and at last I lived without them because one grew so sick of tinned things. Here I have fresh milk and butter and sour curds every day. A bowl of sour curds is my lunch, and it's the nicest possible meal in this weather, that and a cup of Arab coffee. And then masses of roses everywhere. My duties are of the most diverse kinds. We are very shorthanded. I take on everything I can to spare Sir Percy--interview representatives of innumerable creeds, keep an open door for tribal sheikhs and messengers from the desert whose business I discover and send up in brief to Sir Percy, and then behind all this there's my real job, the gathering and sorting of information. Already the new tribal maps and tribe lists are getting into shape, and the first big batch of confidential notes on Bagdad personalities will be issued to Our Political Officers to-morrow--that's not bad going. Presently all the new surveys will begin to come in and I shall have the revision and correction of the place names, a thing I like doing because in the first place it's so nice to get them right, and in the second it teaches me so much geography. The head survey man is an enthusiast, and gives me a free hand. And then I'm going to be Curator of Antiquities or at least I'm going to show the Revenue Commissioner all the old buildings and scraps of buildings that are left here, and he has promised to keep guard over them...It's a thousand times more interesting than Basrah, you understand. To-day there arrived by miracle two charming black satin gowns from Marthe which makes me hope that my new cotton gowns may presently arrive also. I'm very badly in need of them. It's almost too hot already for unwashable clothes, even in the evening. I shall rejoice when I hear that muslin gowns are on their way...

Oh if it were as near the end in France! Is Maurice still out of it? Every time a post comes in I dread to hear that he has gone back.

[Maurice (now Colonel Bell, C.M.G.) had gone to the front in the beginning Of 19 15 in command of the 4th Battalion, Green Howards. He was invalided home the following year and then had a command in England.]

To H.B.

BAGDAD, MaY 3rd, 1917.

* * * *Please will Mother have sent to me by post six pairs of thin white thread stockings, and the same of brown--rather dark brown.

The days melt like snow in the sun. But it's just as well, for I've been realising this evening that if I weren't so very busy I should be very lonely. To-day I was in the office from 8:30 to 8, and had scarcely anything to show for it by reason of the reams of odds and ends that take up all the time. I can't write any of the interesting and pre- occupying things, so you must put up with small change. I spent a couple of hours yesterday before breakfast inspecting an exquisite 14th century mosque and a tomb of the same date and seeing what repairs were immediately essential. The two learned men who dwelt in the respective mosques were my enthusiastic guides. I took the Revenue Commissioner with me, Mr. Garbett. We must have a trained architect out as soon as possible. Fortunately Mr. Storrs from Cairo (Sec. to the High Commissioner) is on his way up on a short visit. He'll give me a hand over getting out the man I want and over several other things.

The Bishop of Nagpur wants me personally to conduct him to Babylon, which I'm well qualified to do I may say! I hope the plan will materialize. I would like to go back there, though it will make my heart ache a little. They were all so kind to me, the German excavators, and no war can put an end to the affectionate esteem in which I hold Koldewey.

We have not got nearly enough clerks and typists, one never seems to roll the stone finally to the top of the hill--it rolls back for want of mechanical appliances. I suppose it will all straighten out in time, meanwhile it's laborious. Thank Heaven my house is finished, so that I don't have to begin the day by interviewing carpenters and bricklayers-- it was the last straw! Still on the whole, in spite of the rush and scramble, it's so deeply interesting that one doesn't bother about a straw more or less.

To F.B.

BAGDAD, May 11th, 1917.

This week's post is drifting in--a very welcome one from Moll announcing the sending Off Of my summer clothes. The patterns are charming--it's to be hoped they'll wash. But Lord how glad I shall be to have them. my present appearance is that of a hobbledehoy in straitened circumstances who has outgrown her wardrobe--only it's my gowns which have diminished (from much washing) not I who have increased. The event of the week has been the arrival of Mr. Storrs from Egypt. He's here for a fortnight. He brings a perfect hurricane of fresh air from outside and I'm jigged if we shan't send him back on the wings of a similar storm which will blow open their eastern-facing doors and windows. An admirable plan it is having such interchanges. I've taken him round to all my religious dignitaries and learned men, Who delight in him and his Arabic also--the comfort it is to go about in the company of a Father of Tongues! Unfortunately I'm too busy to go about with him much, but such interludes are very reviving and the result is I've applied and outlined a reasonable scheme for the Government of this country--'pas dégoûté!' which I really think may be useful as something to bite upon. There's nothing like a spice of audacity.

* * * *I'm getting to be rather a dab at Arab politics--but it doesn't make them seem the easier. We've shouldered a gigantic task, but I can't see what alternative there was.

This is how I pass my days : I'm out riding before 6, sometimes through the gardens by the river bank, sometimes round the old line of the city wall, a gallop in the desert and home through the bazaars. Occasionally I inspect an ancient monument on the way back--I did so this morning. A bath and breakfast and so to the office before 9. I'm there till after 7. I have a cup of coffee and a bowl of sour curds at 12:30 and tea with Sir Percy at 4--it's the only time I peaceably see him. People drop in all day. Occasionally one has a clear hour or two--generally there's a lull between 12 and 2 and one tries to straighten out all the information one has acquired. But the end of the day finds me with two or three unfinished things and no hope of getting at them the day after. They are piling and piling up and I can't think when I shall be able to clear them off. That's the only bother--there's always just a bit too much to do. I come back to dinner in my garden at 8 and I generally go to bed at 9:30, at which time I begin to fall asleep. It's gloriously cool still but that must certainly end in a day or two.

I must tell you I love Bagdad, and the people are so outgoing--partly propitiatory no doubt, but they are glad to have us.

To H.B.

BAGDAD, May 18th, 1917.

...I couldn't possibly come away from here at this moment. It's an immense opportunity, just at this time when the atmosphere is so emotional; one catches hold of people as one will never do again, and establishes relations which won't dissolve. It is not for my own sake, but because it greases the wheels of administration--it really does, and I want to watch it all very carefully almost from day to day, so as to be able to take what I hope may be something like a decisive hand in final disposition. I shall be able to do that, I shall indeed, with the knowledge I'm gaining. It's so intimate. They are beyond words outgoing to me. What does anything else matter when the job is such a big one? Incidentally I may tell you--so that you won't be surprised when you see me--that this summer will turn my hair quite white. it is one of the results of this climate. However, that won't matter to gentlemen like one I had in to-day, who was so holy that he couldnt look an unveiled woman in the face! It didn't prevent him from desiring to have a long talk with me on his private affairs, and at the end I'll admit be tipped me a casual wink or two, just enough to know me again. General Wauchope has been here, Mr. Philby has come up from Amarah, he's so quick and intelligent...There never was anything quite like this before, you must understand that--it's amazing. It's the making of a new world. You see I couldn't come away. The W.O. has telegraphed for a series of signed articles on Mesop. and Asia Minor. I shall have to set about them, but it's a wide order.

I never get through my work, but that's better than having no work to get through. Only it makes my letters Scrappy. And I feel so ashamed when I get splendid screeds from You two who are just as busy. It's not really hot yet, seldom up to 100, but it must begin soon. I ride daily in the early morning on MY love of a pony, and keep fit thereby. I really must have another copy of Amurath; will you please send me one. It's in great request, there being nothing else so modern. It is 8 o'clock, and I have been in the office uninterruptedly since 9, with 20 min. for lunch!

To H.B. and F.B.

BAGDAD May 26, 1917.

...The post brought me a letter from Mother this week--and also, what do you think? Two muslin gowns! I hope they are swallows, so to speak, announcing all my summer clothes. But I regret to say that one of them which according to Moll's pattern was intended for me to wear in the evening was no more an evening gown than it was a fur coat, and won't do at all for that purpose. It's rather a blow, for I had a vision of some nice trailing muslin gowns with floating sleeves, and far from it. However, I shall just have not to dine out when it gets hot. It really hasn't reached that yet. We're almost through May and the breeze has never slackened. It's wonderful. Of course you would think it warm in England--it's got to 100, but that is nothing here.

[Gertrude's disappointment expressed in this letter about the evening gown is explained by the fact that the fashion in London dresses had changed and that there were no 'trailing muslin gowns with floating Sleeves.']

Mr. Storrs leaves next week. He has done us an infinite amount of good. One becomes so provincial seeing no one from outside. The great event in our circles is the arrival of Fahad Bey, paramount sheikh of the Amarat, an almighty swell and an old friend of mine. I stayed with him in the desert three years ago on my way back to Damascus. I hope that with his help we shall get a move in among the tribes. Anyhow, it's a great 'coup' getting him to burn his boats and come in to us. We had the most tenderly affectionate meeting I assure you. Now I'll tell you a sweet story. There came in a couple of old sheikhs, hopelessly ragged and very sorry for themselves, for their tribe happens to be just in the borderland and first they had been harried by the Turks and then by us, and finally making the best of a bad business, they had sought refuge with us, and we, after our truly idiotic manner, had clapped half their followers into gaol, and they couldn't find them, so they came to me and I said I would ask Sir Percy what could be done. At that they almost wept with gratitude and declared that they would forthwith send me a beautiful mare. But I said no, it was a kind thought, but I could not take presents and therewith I went down to talk to Sir Percy. When I came back I found them with their two old heads together and as soon as they saw me they said, "Khatun--if you won't take the horse we're going to send u--a gazelle!" The gazelle hasn't materialized yet, and I rather hope it won't, for gazelles eat everything including your most important papers, but wasn't it nice of them to hit on such small change for mares. The great pleasure in this country is that I do love the people so much.

We revel in fruit here. The excellent oranges are nearly over, but the apricots have come in in masses and small sweet greengages, and now the good little melons have begun. )next we shall have grapes and figs--truly a bountiful country. I'm. loving it, you know, loving my work and rejoicing in the confidence of my chief. One morning last week when I was out riding I paid a very early call on my way home on the son of a celebrated old warrior a Circassian whom I knew in the old days. And I found, too, a great man of letters, a native of Bagdad, who is writing leaders for me which I send to the Egyptian papers, and we sat round and sipped tea and coffee and talked and I went away feeling that I really was a part of Bagdad. You know I'm growing into it terrifically fast-- taking root; what do you think of it? I don't think I shall ever be able to detach myself permanently from the fortunes of this country. But I don't bother to look ahead. It's enough that my job is here now. But it's a wonderful thing to feel this affection and confidence of a whole people round You. There are so few of us, you see, that each one is absolutely salient and each is a focus for so many hopes and fears. But oh to be at the end of the war and to have a free hand!

To H.B. and F.B.

BAGDAD, June 1, 1917.

Dearest Parents, I had finally to take desperate steps to cure the above mentioned cold. I lay flat on a bed in a draught in my nice cool room in the office for 3 days and saw no one, and curious as the treatment seems it has now restored me to rude health. I told You about Fahad Bey, didn't I. We had a conference with him one morning, in which he ended by describing the powerful effect produced by a letter from me last autumn--I wrote to him from Basrah. "I summoned my sheikhs" he wound up (I feeling more and more of a person as he proceeded) "I read them your letter and I said to them, Oh Sheikhs,"--we hung upon his words--" This is a woman--what must the men be like!" This delicious peroration restored me to my true place in the twinkling of an eye. We took him to see an exhibition of flying yesterday to his immense delight. He said he had never enjoyed anything so much. He even ventured into an aeroplane--so that he might tell the Arabs, he explained; but once there he turned to me anxiously and said "Don't let it go away!"

Oh my dearest ones it's so wonderful here--I can't tell you how much I'm loving it.

To H.B.

BAGDAD, June 8, 1917.

I must write to you because I've been reading with profit your papers on dumping and the future of trade. The former appears to me to be unanswerable and the latter both brilliant and moderate. My compliments.

I'm completely recovered--no further bulletins will be issued. But I've retained the excellent habit of sleeping for an hour after lunch, which, though a terrible waste of time, brings a remarkable increase of energy. I'm busy at spare moments with the W.O. articles of which I told you. I've written 4 and I think they will run to 7. It's no light task in the midst of so many other things. They are as good a plea as I can make for the Arab race and I want people to listen. Frankly, who knows if I don't? Life has been 'égayée' by the coming of a harmless old lunatic from the Syrian side of the desert. The motive of his journey was as follows: he met in the desert a woman of stupendous stature and luminous countenance. On being questioned she declared that she was the sun, but this reply did not, apparently, satisfy our friend and pressing her further she admitted that she was the British Government. Thereat he resolved to come straight to Kokus (Sir Percy Cox) seeking the sun, as he reasonably explained.

The word Kokus is rapidly passing into the Arabic language, not as a name but as a title. You are a Kokus, just as once upon a time you were a Chosroes or a Pharaoh. I'm currently described as a Kokusah, i.e., a female Chosroes. Isn't it delicious!

To F.B.

June, 1917.

I've been dining out frequently. Sir Percy and I dined with General Cobbe. Next evening I dined with General Gunning. The matron of the hospitals was of the party, a nice woman. And it's so pleasant to meet a woman. My chief female friend is the Mother Superior of the Dominican Convent, a charming French woman from Touraine. She comes in often to the office to see me on business of one sort and another, and I have often, to my great pleasure, been able to help her. It's something to be a " Kokusah " you see. Last night--to continue--I dined with the head of the police, Major Gregson, and spent the evening talking to a General called Edwardes. Let me announce to you the arrival of 2 charming hats-- for which many thanks to Moll-your chiffon veils, brown stockings. Of the gowns 2 arrived a fortnight ago and no more since.

The gazelle has materialized and now inhabits my garden. It lives chiefly on the little wizened dates which fall at this season from the unripe bunches on my date trees, and on cucumbers both Of which for a child of the desert must be acquired taste. But it seems to flourish on them. It is a darling little animal. I'm on the look out now for a mongoose.

To F.B.

BAGDAD, June 22nd, 1917.

Ramadhan began last night and everyone is fasting. We keep Ramadhan in state here with big guns at sunset and an hour before dawn. I was awakened to-day by the latter. It is to warn people that they must hasten with their last possible meal. And as I lay wondering over it all I was aware of a bright light through my garden. I sleep on the roof of My central Summer House, and looked up to see a blazing palm leaf fire in the still hot air near my gardener's tent. It was his wife cooking the last meal which must be eaten while it is light enough to distinguish a white thread from a black. Strange isn't it? to be so much in the midst of it all--strange and delightful for I love it.

It has become to me more than a second home now--it's a new life a new possibility of carrying on existence. Only I'm afraid of my personal perspective melting. I'm so flattered, so absurdly over-estimated by my chiefs in England by my colleagues, and of course the Arabs.--If I become too egregious do call me smartly to attention. It is so immensely difficult to preserve the values...

The sand flies are outrageous to-night. I stop in every sentence to engage them in mortal combat but they carry out a strategic retirement after inflicting some casualties. The flying ants are as numerous but they don't bite Heaven be praised. Still I hate the way they cock their tails in the air.

No more muslin gowns! I have telegraphed to Basrah to make enquiries.

To H.B.

BAGDAD, June 29th, 1917.

All my colleagues are enchanting to work with--they make our collaboration delightful, and best of all is Sir Percy's kindness and consideration. He treats me with what I can only describe as an absurd indulgence. Anything that I want done--anything reasonable--he puts at once into execution. This week, really to please me he has rushed through this arrangement for a local Arabic newspaper for which we have all been longing. We have been held up till now for lack of paper, but it would have dawdled on through many official stages but for my great desire for it. Mr. Philby is official editor and my principal friends in Bagdad, Arab friends, have posts on the staff, and we bring out this first number with a flourish of trumpets on July 1st. We are going to make a great splash. It is called The Arab because it is the first paper published under the new order of Arab liberty. I have, as indeed I ought to have, with the opportunities I am given, a growing sense of mastery in my own work, of familiarity with country people and conditions which is very enjoyable.

There is always an immense amount to learn, but one knows how to learn which is the main thing.

To F.B.

June 30th, 1917

May I ask you to oblige very kindly with 4 shirts? 'Crèpe de chine' if you please, 2 ivory and two pink. I enclose some advertisements of Harrods which look nice, specially the cross one.

I should also be very grateful if Lizzie could find and post me a green silk woven jacket thing with silver buttons.

To H.B.and F.B.

July 6th, 1917.

I have no letters from you as yet by this mail, but Oh my parents, everything is blotted out by the fact that I have two muslin gowns from the L.S.C. Now isn't that great? I was beginning to wonder what I should do and whether I should ask the nuns to make me some clothes and one really hasn't energy to bother about these things now, for its damned hot. I can't conceal it from you. I'll try not to repeat that observation. You may take it as a marginal note passim in my letters for the next two months. I've been very unsociable this week for I've been writing--I have written my five articles on Turkey after dinner. I can't well get the time by day for these things in the press of other work. I've been arranging and getting out the mass of tribal stuff collected since I've been here and have now got all the tribes to the N. and N.E. alphabetically tabled and beautifully typed in many copies for Members and all generals with whom I'm friends. It's really a great work and most useful--to judge by the use we make of It at our office, and I'm busy with this huge confusion of the Euphrates tribes I hope to have reduced to a similar order by the end of next week. I've seen every Sheikh when he has come in to Pay his respects to Sir Percy and got this information about his tribe direct from him so that this body of stuff I have is not a bad beginning...I don't know whether it is a scientific truth but its undoubtedly in accordance with facts--full moon nights are by far the hottest and the stillest. Two nights ago I was completely defeated. I tried to work sitting outside in my garden after dinner, but after half an hour the few clothes I was wearing were wringing wet and I so much exhausted by a day similarly spent that I went to bed helplessly and fell asleep at once on my roof. I hadn't been asleep long when I woke up to find the Great Bear staring me in the face. I lie looking north. It was very strange to see the Great Bear shining so brilliantly in the full moon of Ramadhan and while I wondered half asleep what had happened I realized that the whole world was dark, and turning round saw the last limb of the moon disappearing in a total eclipse. So I lay watching it, a wonderful sight the disc just visible, a dull and angry copper colour. In the bazaar a few hundred yards away everyone was drumming with sticks on anything that lay handy, to scare away the devil which hid the moon, and indeed they ultimately succeeded, for after a long, long time the upper limb of the moon re-appeared and the devil drew slowly downwards, angry still with deep red tongues, and wreaths projecting from his copper coloured body and before I had time to sleep again the Ramadhan moon had once more extinguished the shining of the Bear.

But as for people who read of these things in their almanacs and know to a minute when to expect them, I think nothing of them and their educated sensations.

We've got our treaty settled with my friend Fahad of the Anazeh.

To H.B.

BAGDAD, July 13th, 1917.

We have had a week of fierce heat which still continues, temperature 122 odd and therewith a burning wind which has to be felt to be believed. It usually blows all night as well as all day and makes sleep very difficult. I have invented a scheme which I practise on the worst nights. I drop a sheet in water and without wringing it out lay it in a pile along my bed between me and the wind. I put one end over my feet and draw the other under and over my head and leave the rest a few inches from my body. The sharp evaporation makes it icy cold and interposes a little wall of cold air between me and the fierce wind. When it dries I wake up and repeat the process. This evening Sir Percy and I went out motoring at 7 but it was too hot. The wind shrivelled you and burnt your eyeballs. They say it does not last very long like this-- inshallah! at last the sand-flies have given up the ghost. Also you get an immense satisfaction out of iced lime juice and soda, usually rather an anaemic drink. There is a pleasant hour just after dawn when I usually ride. My room in the office I shut up all day long and have it sluiced out with water two or three times a day. By these means I keep the temperature just under 100. Yes, that's what it is like.

To H.B.

BAGDAD, July 20th, 1917.

I shall undoubtedly revert to the weather, so I may as well begin with it. We've not had the temperature under 116 by day for a fortnight. At night it drops to 82 just for the dawn hour. My room at the office is 99 all day, by dint of keeping it hermetically shut. Yesterday I went in the evening to one of the big hospitals, to see General Gunning. I went into the first ward to ask my way. It happened to be the ward where they treated the acute heat stroke cases, men with a temperature of 109 and 110--the latter don't often live. You don't consciously suffer with fever like that, but it is awful to see and hear. To-day there hasn't been a flicker of air. Mr. Philby and I motored a little after sunset --the dust hung in the streets like a dense fog, and in the desert it lay in Mysterious wreaths, marking, I Suppose, the track of some motor or cart. People here say they haven't had such a burst of heat as we had last week since 1882, but now I imagine, it's normal, and we have six weeks more of it to wear through. Well! ...

There came in the other day a tribesman who had been my guide on the last four days into Najaf when I came up from Hayil. They were the worst days of all the road, and he served me well. He is a grave silent man, well known in the desert. Twice to my knowledge he saved me from being stripped to the skin--on one occasion, though accursed of their two parents, the Iraq tribes had surrounded my caravan and couched the camels before they saw him. On his rebuke they left us. I had sent word to him that I was here and bidden him to come. Besides the usual present from Sir Percy which they all get when they come for the first time, I gave him Rs. 100, and clothed him. He stood solemnly while I flung round him a thick cloak, heavily woven with gold--such wear in this heat!--and draped an orange coloured silk kerchief over his head. I owed him a costume in return for that which remained on my back thanks to him. Another nice thing happened this week. One of my Damascenes who came down with me to Nejd, has turned up here. He heard I was at Basrah, " and I come to your service," he said. Sir Percy is delighted to have him; we shall put him to use.

The hot silence has been broken by 20 big gun shots, which announce the end of Ramadhan. Even I hear them with thankfulness. It has been oppressive to think of people thirsting through these long days.

A Reuter says that Edwin has gone to the India Office. It's splendid. He will be my chief, you realize. Won't that be fun. I wish you would go and see Sir A. Hertzel, the Permanent Under--Secretary. He is a friend of mine, and an ally.

To H.B.

BAGDAD, July 27, 1917.

Another week--it's less hot. I don't think we're likely to have a second bout such as we've had. It has caused as many casualties as a battle and what is tantamount to another breakdown in the hospital arrangements. I have a long letter from Beatrice [Lady Brownrigg]--will you please thank her for it if you're seeing her...I can't pick up the thread where I dropped it two and a half years ago; I can't. And it becomes more, not less difficult. Oh if one could look forward and see a time when thought should stop, and memory, and consciousness, I'm so tired of struggling on alone.

Still I'll do it, as you know. At least it's easier here than in England.

On the feast day after Ramadhan Sir Percy and I paid the Naqib a congratulatory visit. Our personal relations with him are useful as well as pleasant. Sir Percy is so charming with the people of the country, grave and kind and attentive. I don't wonder they respect and trust him. He never himself realizes how strong his personal hold is, but we count it one of our best assets. The satisfaction that it is to work for a Chief who is always at the height of the situation ...

I paid another before breakfast call yesterday, on the Jamil Zadah family, some of my oldest friends here. They are landowners, very rich, upright, honest people, staunchly pro-English. Their friendship is worth having. I sat for a long time talking to Abdul Rahman Effendi, the head of the house, --and then with him and his wife and sisters whom I also visited--I knew them before--and came away with a warm sense of cordial and even affectionate companionship. It's when one gets that that one gets the best that can be had. Abdul Rahman's friendship takes also an agreeably tangible expression! He sends in weekly a great basket of fruit from his estate--at this season it's filled with huge white grapes.

Oh and more muslin gowns came last week:--a red letter week! That makes 7.

To H.B.

BAGDAD, August 3, 1917.

I must tell you I've been on the sick list this week and am not off it yet. Having survived the heat I caught cold with the first chill morning and a cold in this country reduces me at once to a state of maddening and unconquerable feebleness. It's no good forgetting it; --one has to knock under. So for 4 days I've done absolutely nothing and am still much as before, confound it. But the first day when I was lying in my comparatively cool room in the office and cursing, in came Col. Willcox to pay me a friendly call--I could have embraced him, his visit was so Opportune. So now he comes regularly to see if I have pneumonia or consumption--but I never have. Well, he told me some interesting things about the heat wave and its consequences. (It began on July 10 quite suddenly with a temperature of 112 and ended on July 20 with a temperature of 122.8. In between it was frequently over 120. He notes that 115 is the limit of human endurance. The moment the temp. rises above that point, heat strokes begin, and when it drops below, they end. We could have saved many lives if after the crisis was over there had been any cool place to put the men in. But there wasn't and after fighting through the heatstroke they died of heat exhaustion. I suppose if we had had masses of ice we could have made cool places, but ice was lacking. It happened once or twice that we well people went without it because the hospitals needed all there was. I don't think I shall stay through the whole of next hot weather unless there is any very strong reason for it. I shall come to England for a month and return in September. But who knows what we shall be all doing by then. I don't believe we shall still be fighting. Some way or other peace will have to come about.

To H.B.

BAGDAD, August 10, 1917.

I've had rather a slack week getting gradually better and I now consider that I'm returned fit for duty...

The worst of the extreme physical weariness which is apt to attack one in this climate is the mental weariness, not to say desperation, which accompanies it. You feel as if you never again would lift a finger without exhaustion and for all the iron and arsenic you are taking three times a day you're persuaded you'll not get well--not that you want to get well, far from it. However I hope I'm through it now for the moment. ...

The thermometer rarely goes much over 110 and is sometimes below that.

The truth is that we are living in a rather exasperated state, concerning which I refer you to Edwin, to whom I have just been writing a long letter on Mesopotamian economics.

I've invested in a cock and four hens, for to lay me eggs, but so far without any very marked success. They don't lay many more eggs than my gazelle, or to be exact they've laid exactly one more. I never liked hens and I'm contemplating the conversion of these into roast chicken. On the other hand the dates in my garden are ripe and very good. The fresh date is a thing apart.

To H.B.

BAGDAD, August 31st, 1917.

I am coming out of hospital to-morrow. I am perfectly sound but very slack. I don't suppose I shall be much better till the weather begins to cool down, which it ought to do in the latter half of Sep. It is still damnably hot.

There have been some very good articles in the Spectator lately on War Economies, sound common sense about attempts to fix prices and regulate markets. Will you tell St. Loe [Strachey] if you see him that I've found them most useful as propaganda. Every economic mistake that could be made has been made here, with the result that all trade is at a standstill and food prices have quadrupled. I turned up a document the other day in which one of these announced blandly that he felt no anxiety at the rise in the cost of living, because nothing would be easier at any moment than to fix a maximum price. As a cure for scarcity. I ask you! Doesn't it rouse 'Nôhnisch' laughter.

To H.B.

BAGDAD, September 3, 1917.

I didn't go to Samarra after all, Doom struck out, as the poet says, like a blind camel and he caught me straight and full. For with my box and bedding packed, my dinner almost carried to General Lubbock's hospitable board--I was going to dine with the Father of Railways On my way to the train--I began to feel curiouser and curiouser and anyhow very certain that I had fever. And then Col. Willcox drifted in (Providence always directs the angelic man to my door just when I want him) took my temperature and shattered my Plans --I held out for two miserable days in my own house, too achy and above all too headachy to stir, and then came into hospital with a temperature Of 102. Sandfly fever. Everyone has it. I don't know how I've escaped it so long. They don't know what it is really; they haven't caught its microbe yet. But you get your money's worth out of it, if only from the intolerable headache. Quinine is no good. They give you febrifuges and phenacetin and feed you only on slops, all of which things being unfit, so to speak, for human consumption, you find yourself pretty ragged when at last the devil thing goes.

I'm really over the thing--its gone. But there's no doubt I shall feel cheap for a bit and as soon as I can I shall go away for a fortnight. Col. Willcox is very keen that I should do this and I think it will be salvation. Its so beautifully cool now that one can go any-where. They are extremely kind to me in this hospital. They treat me as if I were a Major General.

Damnable as sandfly fever is it isn't a matter for the smallest anxiety so please feel none, you and Mother. I feel ashamed of behaving like this.

To F.B.

BAGDAD, September 6, 1917.

There's one thing I forgot to answer in some old letters from you and Father. Please, please don't supply information about me or photographs of me to newspaper correspondents. I've said this so often before that I thought you understood how much I hate the whole advertisement business. I always throw all letters (fortunately they're not many in number) asking for an interview or a photograph straight into the waste paper basket and I beg you to do the same on my behalf...

I've been five days out of hospital and I feel much better though still rather weak in the knees and imbecile in the mind. But another day or two will put me right. My quiet leave hasn't been quite as peaceful as might have been wished for the second night after my return I found a large wasp in my bed. I found him by the simple process of lying on him, upon which he retorted after his kind. The next night when I came back from the office I went to look at my pony and found him having a bad fit of colic. We had some restless hours doctoring him and walking him about, and finally he recovered.

It's still very hot, but the temperature is falling, though very slowly. The nights are quite pleasant, but in the middle of the afternoon it's usually about 112. I won't deny that when you come to September here you feel you've reached about the limit of human endurance. I shan't stay through the whole of next summer.

To H.B.

BAGDAD, Septembor 15, 1917.

I've got a day out with the week and find suddenly that it is Saturday morning and mail day instead of Friday as I fondly hoped. Fortunately the most important letter--to Bridget [Richmond)--I wrote last night. I asked the kind Red X Commissioner, Major Stanley, about your launch. He says it is the best on the river, never sick or sorry. I went to a party this week--the first party I've been to since Delhi. There was a regatta on the Tigris and G.H.Q. entertained us all at tea. I think, by the way, I was one of the hosts, since we're included in G.H *Q. I didn't see much of the regatta because there was a glaring sun an the river, even at 5 p.m. but I sat under an awning and talked to all the Major Generals and felt that I was seeing life. It resulted in my going to tea next day with General Marshall, he commands the 3rd Corps, a very interesting man whom I had just met as he passed through Basrah last summer and hadn't seen since. I went to see some carpets and china which he had bought, very pretty and I should think one or two of the rugs very good, but I know less and less about rugs I find. He is coming to see two of mine which are also rather pretty. But I no longer buy any on account of the War Loan--that was a little burst when I came to Bagdad. It's really getting cooler; my room at the Office is never above 91 and these last two days I haven't needed a punkah till 10 O'clock. Its so blessed. Apropos of the Red X I can't tell you how beneficent they are here. I get my money's worth--or yours--out of them, for Major Stanley is always supplementing my needs with various odds and ends otherwise unprocurable. However, as I served them for a whole year I feel less reluctance in sponging on them for comforts. I'm much better, almost quite well. Its time too. This country is a desperate place for recovering from anything. You go staggering on feeling like a worm long after there has ceased being anything the matter with you. But its all the more pleasurable when at last the worm begins to turn.

To H.B.

BAGDAD, September 21, 1917.

We are having deliciously cool weather, between 70 and 80 and quite cold at night. I want nothing better but I think the moment of sudden transition is rather trying even if it is enjoyable. One doesn't know how to adapt oneself at first. I had an afternoon out this week--General Cobbe and I went to Kadhimain, 2 or 3 miles above Bagdad, a sheikh town with a very sacred mosque. I remember last time I was there, in 1909 it must have been, how I hurried past the gateway of the mosque with a sidelong glance into the courtyard. Turbaned gentlemen did us the honours and escorted us well within the gates to the very edge of the courtyard. Except as an unexampled privilege there wasn't much in it, for it's all the worst modern work, gimcrack and hideous, with tiles 30 years old already peeling from the walls and no loss either. Nevertheless I was vastly entertained, having been nowhere since I came to Bagdad.

Kermit Roosevelt turned up this week with letters of introduction to me and to Sir Percy. We both liked him--a very pleasant creature, quite unostentatious. He is serving here as an engineer and has three brothers in the American army in France. They are doing their bit, aren't they? I still dine out of doors, but I sit indoors afterwards, with all doors and windows open. It's most pleasant. I'm longing to begin riding again and indeed I did begin a few days ago, but it wasn't a great success--I felt too tired afterwards. So I shall be very prudent and wait a little longer. It isn't a time of year to play pranks; nearly every one has little goes of fever when the heat begins to drop. I've escaped that luckily. My dear love to all my family. I write indifferently to you and Mother as the letters are equally to you both.

To F.B.

BAGDAD, September 25, 1917.

I'm writing this week because I'm going to Samarra for a day or two. It will be very nice and I think it will do me good for I've not been very flourishing this last month since I came out of hospital and it will be a pleasant change of air and scene. I haven't stirred out of Bagdad since I got here in April. But its amazing how unmonotonous it has been. ...

To think that I've been nearly two years without a maid! but I'm exceedingly tidy, thanks to your good supply of clothes. Oh would you please send me a pair of plain tortoiseshell combs. There's a lizard walking about my walk and catching, I suppose, sand flies. God prolong its existence!

To H.B.and F.B.

BAGDAD, October 12, 1917.

I'm better and going to-morrow to the Convalescent Hospital, a mile down stream from Bagdad...

Maurice doesn't sound very flourishing, which worries me. I do hope he'll come back to R'ton now to set about his own work. Its very difficult not to feel a growing depression. Perhaps I'm rather influenced by being so slack still and certainly the last two months have been horrid. However I expect the winter will set me right and I shan't stay here all through next summer, war or no war. It wouldn't be profitable. -

I can match you at food--we've had no butter all the summer and when we have it its turned and I would rather be without it. I've forgotten what potatoes taste like--the meat is almost too tough to eat., chickens ditto milk turned--how sick one gets of it! Bread I never eat what one gets is fairly good, quite good indeed, but that doesn't affect me--much. Its all right when one's well, but when one's feeling rather a poor thing one does hate it all.

Well,--well--I daresay I'll write from Samarra in a different key.

To H.B. and F.B.

OCTOBER 18th, 1917.

Yesterday came your telegram through Admiral Hall enquiring after my health. I'm afraid you will be rather agitated when you come to hear that I've been ill again which I haven't told you in my present reply. But I'm now very nearly well of my fever which I don't suppose I should have had if I hadn't been rather run down before. I've been for the last 6 days at the Convalescent Hospital, a delicious place on the river about 2 miles below Bagdad. They have taken immense care of me and I've got well with great rapidity. In 3 days' time I'm going up to Samarra for a week to stay with Gen. Cobbe. I hope to return in far more flourishing health than I've been since August and since the cold weather is now definitely beginning and the winter climate is delicious I'm as well here as anywhere. Whatever happens I shall not stay here all through next hot weather. I spend my days very peacefully, breakfasting in bed, reading and doing a little work afterwards. I spent this morning in Bagdad getting warmer clothes from my house and doing various odd jobs. The mail had just come in. Bless you both. I can't tell you what it is to have your love and sympathy always with me...

I might be able to see Mrs. Taggart's grandson if he's at Bagdad. I'll try anyhow.

[Mrs. Taggart was a woman at the Clarence ironworks, a very old friend.]

It's bad hearing that there's no more parcel post to Mesop. You don't seem to be aware--indeed I only knew of it by letters of congratulation received this mail from Sir Reginald Wingate and others--that I'm a C.B.E. I am, however. Its rather absurd...

I have a delightful letter from Beatrice Chamberlain which I really must answer, but time is too short this week.

To H.B.

BAGDAD, October 18th, 1917.

You know your friendship is more to me than anything. What a thing it is to be able to talk of friendship with one's parents. Those who haven't got it don't know what it means.

I'm much better. Even after my racketty morning at Bagdad I don't feel a bit tired, and I've been writing letters all this afternoon. But oh, I do long to be back at work! However, I'll be patient this time and take the Samarra time to get really well in.

To F.B.

BAGDAD, October 26th, 1917

Thank you for your congratulations--I don't really care a button about these things. As for Samarra, I've no luck with it, for just as I was starting--actually stepping into the launch to go and dine--with General Lubbock on my way to the station, came a telegram from General Cobbe putting me off. Turks had heaved into sight and there was a possibility of active operations. They've since heaved out of it again, and I may after all go up presently, but I've ceased to believe it. I'm very much enjoying being back in the office though I'm not much more than a half timer as yet. Still I'm getting better every day. The weather is delicious but it is extraordinary how one feels the cold. My room at the office is now under 70, but after sunset I sit wrapped up in a thick coat and add to it a woollen comforter to walk home in. It's a way the human frame has of showing resentment for having been called upon to endure a temperature of 122. I find that this is the season for gardening operations; I've some vegetables, peas, lettuce, onions and a local sort of mustard and cress--the latter I've not only sown but eaten. And in order not to be too utilitarian, I've bought 7 Pots of geraniums and 4 Of carnations besides sowing carnations and eschscholtzia. I wish I had snapdragon seeds. A clump of chrysanthemums is coming into bloom, and my rose trees are flowering. Everything comes to life when the summer is over, even the washed out European. And one forgets at once how infernal it was. I hope my bijou residence won't prove too damp in winter; it's so nice being quite away by oneself. Anyhow it's particularly pleasant now.

The shirts haven't arrived but I expect they'll turn up and I've enough to go on with for the moment. And oh I'm so sorry to bother you, but would you send me 8 pairs of white thread stockings--they will go by letter post at the worst, and they'll arrive just about the time the warm weather begins again. Those I have are worn out beyond mending.

To H.B.

BAGDAD, November 2, 1917.

You sent me a lot of interesting pieces which I read with much satisfaction and agreement. I always feel when I read your works such an admiration for your style as well as your matter. Its so lucid and so pointed, so entirely unstrained. I hand on some of your works to Sir Percy who reads them with grave attention, not unmixed with surprise. It is all new to him.

For my part I'm quite well. I've even taken to riding again of an early morning, with great profit to my health and spirits. It's ideal now at that hour. The sting has gone out of the sun which has become a cheerful and companionable luminary. Samarra is off for the present...

We have now got a judicial Officer, Mr. [now Sir Edgar] Bonham Carter from the Sudan. A highly trained man with a very level head is just what we want and I do welcome him sincerely.

To H.B.

BAGDAD, November 9th, 1917.

No mail as yet this week. Happy to tell you I'm much better and have felt to-day quite a zest in life--for the first time. Partly, I think, because yesterday I spent the whole day, nearly, out-of-doors, for Sir Percy and I motored to Baquba. It was 6 years since I went along that road--I say 6 years because it was in 19 11, but really it's a lifetime-- when I was on my way to plan Rasawan palaces at Qasr-i-Shirin, over the Persian frontier. I remember it as a long and tedious day's ride; we did it yesterday in 2 hours. It's 32 miles of bumpy desert road. Baquba is a nice little place set in palm gardens and olive groves on the Diala. I looked at my camping ground near by the river bank and tried to remember the sort of person who pitched tents there, but I couldn't. I hadn't been out of Bagdad since April, nor Sir Percy since March, So you think what a pleasant sense of irresponsible holiday it gave both of us. I only wished we could have gone on further. I am beginning some nice new jobs. One is the taking over of the editorship of Al Arab, the vernacular paper we publish. I'm full of schemes for making it more alive by provincial correspondents and a local news-writer. I feel certain my public will take more interest in hearing that Ibu so and so was fined for being out without a lantern after dark than in the news that an obscure village in Flanders has been bombed. PPère Anastase, the sub-editor comes weekly to read our leading articles, which I censor. He's an Arab from the Lebanon, straight out of Chaucer --all the same; very learned in his own tongue, he speaks and writes French like a Frenchman...

In my garden there's the most gorgeous mud pie I've ever been privileged to see. It's not, however, for frivolous persons; we're busy mending my roofs against the rainy season, and mud is what you do it with. I'm credibly informed that when there's a high flood my garden is under water and that objects from the house I inhabit have been observed to float down the neighbouring street. It's a gloomy thought. I don't know whether to wish for a dry season for my comfort, or to hope for the rain which is essential for our next harvest. If I'm obliged to move out I shall no doubt manage to get a lOdging for the necessary two months. Sir Percy would put me uP, In any case, but I do very much prefer living alone. It's a comfort to get away from the Office and think of other things which it is morally impossible to do if you remain in the Place you've worked in all day.

To F.B.

BAGDAD, November 15th, 1917.

You all sound over-strained. I don't know how you can be anYthing else. You know we are out of that atmosphere here; I Often feel ashamed of escaping it, but it is so. There are not the Perplexities and the worries that assail you in England, and then the work is all of one kind and runs naturally along its Own groove.

I have quite recovered and have polished off a lot of things that had got into arrears. We have all moved into winter quarters in the Office, out of dark, cold rooms into sunny ones. It is strange to welcome the sun again. My room is charming, warm and comfortable, with some delightful rugs which I've bought here on the floor, and all the new maps of Mesopotamia pinned up on the walls. Maps are my passion; I like to see the world with which I'm dealing, and everyone comes round to my room for geography.

To F.B.

SAMARRA, November22nd, 1917.

I wrote to you last week the day before I was to come up here with the I.G.C. We all dined that evening with Col. Dixon, the Director of Local Resources; the C. in C. was to have been there also but sent a message at the last moment to say he wasn't well. At the beginning of dinner Colonel Willcox was called away--an urgent case of illness, it didn't occur to anyone to ask who it was. Next morning before breakfast the I.G.C. came to my house and said that our departure must be postponed, the C. in C. was dangerously ill of cholera and was not expected to live. I flew round to Sir Percy--it was still very early--and found that he had not yet been informed. It was almost incredible to us all. There had been a little cholera in the town for some weeks past, nothing very serious but very widely distributed. There were a few cases among the troops and one officer had died last week. We had all been inoculated and thought no more about it. Certainly the last person likely to fall a victim was the C. in C. who saw no Arabs and scarcely ever went into the town. He had been at the entertainment at the Jewish school the night before, but we all went there, drank coffee and ate cakes and no one else was any the worse. So there it was--where he got the infection it is impossible to say. He rallied in the afternoon and was distinctly better next morning, well enough to receive a telegram from his wife and dictate an answer. Then his heart failed, he became unconscious and died in the evening. The I.G.C. came in after dinner and told me. It has had for him a tragic ending, the conquest of Bagdad, and yet how fortunate it is when the man dies before the name. There is a splendid sentence in Ammianus's Marcellinus history of that other conqueror who was mortally wounded, N.E. of Ctesiphon,--the Emperor Julian, and "praised the Almighty God that he should die in the midst of glory fairly earned." General Maude was, I should think, a greater Commander, but the epitaph might be his ...

...It's a wonderfully picturesque little walled town with the golden dome of the shrine closing the vista, incongruously enough, in the narrow tumble-down streets...

Oh, there is such a good smell of rain--the first rain, this dry year, since February. If only we have a good plash of it, it will mean a good harvest next spring. An early rain is the most important thing in this country; it sets all the desert growing and starts cultivation--the people can't begin to plough till it comes.

To her Family.

SAMARRA, NOvember 30th, 1917.

I'm still here though I wanted to go back a day or two ago. The Corps Commander (my kind host) insisted however on my staying till the end of the week to "complete the cure." I'm really most briskly well and longing to get back to work. I'm going back to Bagdad the day after to- morrow. Col. Willcox came up this morning for a change (it's looked upon as a health resort, Samarra) and brought me a bag of letters. I was rather pining for news of you. It's a great comfort to think of Maurice back at home but what with household and industrial difficulties, present or ahead, you don't any of you seem to be having an easy time. We score over you now in weather--day after day of bright sun and exhilarating N. wind. It's perfect and in this empty desert one gets the best Of its advantages. I've been out all day, usually riding the whole morning and motoring somewhere in the afternoon--if you can call it somewhere when it's just desert with the scoring of old canals and mounds of dead villages far out in what is now uninhabited wilderness. It's almost impossible to picture what the country must have been like when it was irrigated by loop canals from the Tigris and (to judge by the village mounds) thickly peopled ten miles out on either bank of the river. It is now cultivated only in the low ground by the river edge, a mile, perhaps, deep on one bank or another, but after last week's rain (we had 18 hours of it) the people are all busily ploughing and the turned up earth looks a live brown instead of a sandy yellow.

To F.B.

BAGDAD, OFFICE OF THE C.C., December 7th, 1917.

I wish to announce the arrival of 6 pairs of white and ditto of brown stockings which I found here when I got back a week ago...

I was very glad to get back. I plunged at once into a mass of accumulated work and have scarcely lifted my eyes from maps and files. But the pleasure of being well and able to work the whole day long! The truth is that one can't do without that narcotic. To be idle means having time to think and no thoughts are bearable...

The new régime promises well. I haven't seen General Marshall since I came back but he gives signs of being sympathetic towards our side of the game. It's as well, for we were running fast on to rocks, in my opinion. We are now in the middle of operations on our R. flank which seem to have been very successful so far, and that's very encouraging too, though I don't believe we can accomplish anything very dramatic while the Turk holds off as far as he can. The presence of an enemy is an essential element in battle. And we can't walk after him indefinitely because an army walks on its stomach. Vigorous steps have been taken to ensure a good harvest next spring--but that is not till the middle of April and meantime we are going to be hard put to it to get the civil population fed. This morning I was riding in the desert, out on the Diala road, when I met Arabs from the Diala bringing in donkey loads of brushwood to sell. As soon as I had opened the conversation with a God- save-you they began to tell me how hungry they were out there, and I to explain what we were doing to bring the hunger to an end. I expect they don't usually live in the lap of luxury, those mean tribes on the Diala river, but with prices what they are they must be well pinched this year. We had a very bad harvest this year, what with lack of rain and neglect of canals. They are all being dug out now, seed corn distributed and advances given in money. But it is a big job. To-night it's warm and windy, we might have rain.

My dear pony which I bought up from Basrah is lame. But kind Captain Lupton, who is at the Remounts, has let me send it up to be blistered and meantime he has let me have a charming little mare, a little pocket mare which I feel sure would be up to nobody's weight but my diminished stones, so I'm harming no one. But what she lacks in height she makes up in spirit and we had a delightful gallop this morning out on the Diala road--road, I call it but it's just desert--with the sun rising and a Warm wind in our face. It's everything to see a little of the world outside of a morning I see plenty of the world inside--a succession of callers all with some axe or another to grind and one's task generally being to remove the grindstone gently out of their reach!

To -

BAGDAD, December 13th, 1917.

...My only news of the outer world is derived from the egregious Reuter and that not good, and one begins to consider what the end will be. Till the Americans can bring in great reinforcements--and can they across all the seas?--it's clear that we shall be put to it to hold our own. It's like the first year of the war over again. Well, it's no good guessing, and we know too little even to guess. Here War is at an end, but administration goes on apace. We are taking hold of the Euphrates valley to the S.W. and getting into lands unmapped and tribes little known. I want to go down there at the end of the month. Meantime I'm puzzling over Euphrates geography and writing a sketch of it as best I can. It's the sort of job which is almost impossible to do in the Office, where one is constantly interrupted, and I generally bring home books and maps and work at it after dinner. The days fly and the weeks hurry after them; it's terrible to think that we're nearly at midwinter. The desired rain hasn't come but we have had a week of delicious cold. The water basin in the middle of my garden has been iced over the last two mornings. It's amazingly invigorating. Yesterday I was out in the desert at dawn in a frosty air which was quite delicious, even though I came in after nearly an hour's brisk riding, with numb hands and feet. I went one afternoon to see the Remount establishment outside the town. Capt. Lupton presides over it. A clearing place with the horses playing about in great paddocks under the palm trees, and a model farm attached where they grow their own maize and barley and vegetables. Capt. Lupton offered me a very handsome Arab mare if the General (Holdsworth) consented. I met the latter next day in the Street and he approved the suggestion. So, in the official phrase, I'm issued with her--Heaven prosper me for writing such horrible English.

To -

BAGDAD, December 21st, 1917.

Bagdad, and, indeed, most of Mesopotamia is immobilized by mud. My daily walk to and from the office is a real feat of gymnastics, but, as I stumble and reel through the swamp which was once a road, I return thanks for the rain which has gone far to assure next year's harvest. We had about 24 hours of it. I woke after the first night to find my garden a lake, from which emerged a few islands, but I had been provident enough to construct a brick causeway between my bedroom and sitting room--they are at opposite ends of the garden--and along it I was able to get to breakfast high and dry. The water has vanished to-day and a smoothly hard bed of mud remains. I'm rather disgusted to see in Army Reuter Orders that on the days when we thought the weather so shockingly cold the max. temp. was never below 52. One loses all sense of proportion about climate.

The new régime has ordered the Force to take a holiday on Sunday afternoon, and in obedience to their decree I dragged Sir Percy out riding last Sunday. The immortal baked clay preserves the trace of human habitation when all else has returned to the dust it was; as soon as the canal dries up, the village is deserted, the roaming Arab pulls out the roof beams and breaks up the doors for firewood, the mud walls disintegrate and nothing remains but the imperishable pot. You may break him up as much as you choose, but unless you take a hammer to him and reduce him systematically to powder, he will continue to bear witness to the household which he served. Usually this rough peasant pottery is undatable; you know it isn't of yesterday, however, when you find masses of it in places which have not been irrigated for the last 400 years.

To H.B.

BAGDAD, December 29, 1917.

I am very glad to hear that Maurice is better and congratulate Mother on her pleasant nights with Zeppelins...On Xmas Day I dined with General Stuart Wortley, a Ladies' Dinner, the other guests being matrons and nurses, a quite agreeable evening, but I've crept, on the whole, into a very long shell and seldom care to be pricked out of it by anybody's pin. Also I've got a temporary (let's hope) anaemia of the brain which makes me work SO Slowly that I never get through my jobs and bring work home every night to finish after dinner. Incessant interruption at the office adds immensely to the fatigue Of Putting together reports or compiling information. I've no sooner got hold of the thread than it's broken by someone with a petition or a complaint or what not, and my slow mind must laboriously gather it up again. Perhaps a fortnight's absence in the Euphrates Will make me a litile less imbecile. There are times when I can scarcely find words to talk or write in French, much less in Arabic. And memOrY is a lost art. Though half-witted I'm physically well. I've liked this cold weather and not felt cold as I did last Year, though it's much colder here than in BasraH. But it's the general sense of being too much driven through not working quickly enough--because I can't--which is tiresome. I would like to take a month off, learn Arabic and see people --but the awful amount one would have to catch up at the end of it deters me. I'm almost reluctant to go away because I know what a task it will be to write the next fortnightly report when I have to look everything up instead of jotting it down as it happens. But I very much like doing the fortnightly reports, which are the record of our work here, and though I haven't leisure to do them as well as they should be done, they will still be valuable.

Did I tell you of a visit I paid to the home for Armenian girls? Over 100 of them have been collected here, from all places and of all ages. There's an American fund to provide for them. Some had lived for months with the Arabs and were tattooed like Beduin women, some had just borne children and some were such children themselves that they could not remember whence they came. The Beduin coming down to our frontiers from the north bring hundreds of these girls with them. One woman when she first saw the Tigris burst into tears. "Ah," she cried, "the mass of water here! and my sister died in the desert of thirst." And ah! the rivers of tears, the floods of human misery that these waifs represent. What is life worth in this age of violence?

I write every week and if you don't get letters it is not because I don't send them.

CHAPTER XVII

1918-1919 - BAGDAD

To F.B.

KARBALA, January 3rd, 1918.

I'm having a little holiday which is very pleasant and beneficial. I was beginning to feel terribly caged and stale and, though I haven't stepped out of the cage very far, or for very long, it's agreeable to be knocking about a tiny corner of the world again. It's a corner so full of associations. So many times I've come over the Bagdad-Karbala road after long desert expeditions, with a sense of accomplishment, and, at the same time, with that curious sense of disappointment which one nearly always feels with the accomplished thing. The best time, I think, was when I came back with the plan of Ukhaidir in my pocket--the worst when I came up from Arabia. I find myself forever stepping back into a former atmosphere--knowing with my real self that it has all melted away and yet half drugged with the lingering savour of it, and chiefly what I miss is the friendly presence of my good Fattuh, who smoothed all the way of travel and is now where? dead, I fear. I hear there are no men left in Aleppo; all have been taken for the War and Turkish soldiers have a poor chance. However--I'll tell you of my adventures, very modest ones, not like the old days. I left Bagdad on the 31st, a beautiful sunny morning, and motored out to Musaiyib on the Euphrates. We spun over the first three-quarters of the road, but the last eight miles, over low ground, unspeakably muddy, were not so advantageous to motors. We stuck once badly and I called in some 10 or 15 Arabs who were removing the mud from one part of the road to another--that seemed to be the extent of their activities--and made them haul us out...

[The fortnight's holiday takes her motoring through familiar places full of memories.]

Yesterday, I motored out along the sandy road, the very familiar road, to Karbala, and reached Major Pulley's house about midday. He had put me up close at hand in Col. Leachman's house, the latter being out in the desert with the Arabs, my very own Arabs, Fahad Bey's tribe, but I can't go to them. And then out through mud and swamp on to the edge of the Syrian Desert, which lifted its yellow shoulder in front of me in a manner so inviting that I could scarcely bear to turn away from it... I had tea in my own house before a wood fire and afterwards received a visit from one of the desert merchants one of the Agail who had somehow heard I was here. I knew one of his brothers in Damascus and another in Bagdad. They come, like all Agail, from Central Arabia, and we sat talking desert gossip for a long time--until I felt again that I could scarcely bear to be so close and not to go in to the tribes. What a welcome Fahad Bey would give me. He's about 2 days away.

To H.B.

HILLAH, January 16th, 1918.

I wrote to you almost at the beginning of my fortnight's holiday and now that I've come almost to the end of it I'll begin another letter. I get back to Bagdad to-morrow and feel very much like one going back to school. I'm not sure that it's a good plan to get out of the cage for a fortnight and enjoy the illusion of days that were almost like a former existence. Certainly I've never realized more keenly than I do now the chains and bonds which war draws about one. I wrote from Karbala, didn't I? I spent three days there, saw many people, was greeted by friends from the desert and had the wildest desire to escape into it and be heard of no more...

On my way home yesterday I stopped at Babylon, having been asked by Sir Percy to advise about the preservation of antiquities. 'Tempi passati' weigh very heavy there--not that I was thinking of Nebuchadnezzar, nor yet of Alexander, but of the warm welcome I used to find, the good company, the pleasant days spent with dear Koldewey--it's no good trying to think of him as an alien enemy and my heart ached when I stood in the empty dusty little room where Fattuh used to put up my camp furniture and the Germans and I held eager conversation over plans of Babylon or Ukhaidir. What a dreadful world of broken friendships we have created between us.

To F.B.

BAGDAD, january 25th, 1918.

Yesterday I went all over the Civil Hospital with the Municipal doctor, Capt. Carey Evans--he is a son-in-law of Mr Lloyd George. He is doing his work with real intelligence and is full of schemes for the future. ...Medical organization is of the very first importance, not only because there is so much to be done but also because it is so deeply appreciated. It is an invaluable political asset if you choose to look at it from that point of view. Hospitals and dispensaries are the first things the people ask for, and they flock to them, men and women, and don't hesitate to undergo operations or any treatment you please. Capt. C. E. says the ftandard of vitality is much higher than in Europe; the people here pull through operations which he would not dare to attempt at home. Their nervous system is much more solid. They don't suffer from shock ...

To H.B. and F.B.

BAGDAD, January 31st, 1918.

I have your letters. Also Father's very good and wise piece about Capital and Labour, which I read with profit. A remarkable writer, there can be little doubt.

...The price of living here is enormous, and, though I'm rationed, a great many of the necessaries of life have to be bought, such as soap, rice, eggs and sugar, and they are all at preposterous prices. This also means that one has to raise wages. Kind Musa Chalabi, my landlord, has got me out of difficulties with regard to my gardener's family. There have been living in a single mud room, my gardener, his aged father and mother, two brothers, a wife, a sister and all of them came piteously to me for help and support. I couldn't help feeling that my garden was overcrowded, but, with feeble compassion, I didn't like turning them out into the mud. But there came a day when they quarrelled, and I called in Musa Chalabi as arbitrator. He arbitrated with some vigour and the aged father and mother, together with other members of the family, have found other lodgings. I relinquish any personal share in their fortunes.

I found some irises and some verbenas in a market garden which I used to frequent here, and transferred them to my flower beds. They were very dear, but the joy of them will be worth the price. I have a few pots of violets which provide a tiny bunch for my writing table. Their little blue faces are very friendly and cheerful. I now pursue a happy plan of going out riding or walking every afternoon, generally alone but sometimes in company...There is a great bend in the Tigris below the town which is my favourite resort. It makes a huge peninsula full of gardens and cornfields, and almost empty of soldiers, and there I go and remember that I am really part of Mesopotamia and not part of an army of occupation. The spring is there and colour and life and sound have come with the rains, the sound and colour of the reviving world. We had a tidy drop of rain this week, enough to make 2 days of mud, but we want more. Heaven send it! we are barely up to 2 in. yet and I'm afraid we shall not get our average 6.

The days I don't ride I generally find myself in the bazaar a mildly expensive form of exercise. To-day, after I had been to see additional houses taken on for the Armenian refugees, I dropped into the new shop of an old acquaintance--he used to have a much nicer poky room in a khan--and came away with a very charming Chinese bowl, a little copper incense burner 300 years old (it has a dated Arabic inscription, a thing I can never resist) and a metal water bottle, not old, but such a good shape. All these metal water jars are lovely, traditional shapes which you may see in any 16th Century Persian miniature. The bowl was cheap for it's good Chinese stuff --no bowl would have been cheaper, but there! even the bowl and the verbenas don't run extravagance into a high figure.

I rather fear that my friend Thomas Effendi (he's an Armenian) will send me round a pair of rugs to-morrow. Let's hope they won't be good. Talking of rugs, I'm hatching a plan which, though it isn't directly concerned with rugs, touches their place of origin. I have been thinking about schemes for the summer and am rather inclining towards a 3 months' travel in Persian mountains, I should take tents and might very likely land up in Teheran ultimately, and home by Ispahan. The journey home takes at least five weeks, four of them through heat and the monsoon, whereas I can motor in 2 days to Kirmanshah and reach at once a temperate climate. Then motor through great hills to Urumiah perhaps, which is a paradise. Col. Willcox gives the plan his warm approval from a health point of view, but it's great drawback is that I shan't see you this summer. At any rate, when you get this letter, you might telegraph and say what you think, and meantime I'll consider things more closely. I like the Persian idea much better than Baluchistan, for to get there one still has the terrific journey down river and across the Indian Ocean--terrific in June or July heat. It's the thought of getting into camp once more, and being out of doors among mountains that attracts me and also the possibility of being away from people for a while.

One Of the worst drawbacks of the occupation, from the Point of view of the inhabitants Of the country, is the requisitioning of houses. I don't see what's to be done, for we haven't time to build and we must be lodged, but it's a terrible hardship to the luckless ejected ones ... I have a clean sheet myself, for my house isn't a house and probably no one but me would think of living in it. (They would be wrong, for it is quite comfortable and the space and freedom of my garden are invaluable boons.) It's certainly very difficult to be popular rulers in war time.

With which reflexion I'll close, merely adding that I'm very well now and much less thin.

To H.B.

BAGDAD, February 8th, 1918.

It is getting quite perceptibly, but pleasantly warmer. I've begun to discard some of the innumerable wraps I wear by day and coverings by night. To-day, with the soft air blowing into my room, I thought of R'ton in February and wondered whether by chance it were snowing with you...It is curious to find how many of the Bagdad notables are tribesmen, often only settled in the town for the last generation or two. Some sheikh builds himself a town house, sends his sons to school and starts them in a learned profession leading to Government employment. And at once they settle down into citizens. But the tribal links are unbroken. Any sheikh with business in the town looks by right to his kinsman's house for entertainment in the matter of daily meals--a pretty expensive duty it is--and if a member of the town family gets into trouble he will seek sanctuary with the tribe, safe in the assurance that he would never be given up. Several men I know fled to their tribe during the year before the Occupation, when the Ottoman hand was heavy on the Arabs of Bagdad. Most of these are now in our service and their tribal connection makes them all the more useful. We have a few really first-class Arab officials, just as we have found a few really first- class sheikhs who will assume responsibility and preserve order. There are not many of them, but such as there are, are invaluable. And we in our turn have an immense responsibility towards them...We are pledged here. It would be an unthinkable crime to abandon those who have loyally served us. But there! if I write of Arabs I shall write all night.

To H.B.

BAGDAD, February 15th, 1918.

...All the telegrams prepare me for a terrific assault in France. I've also got your address at the Horden meeting which is excellent. It is so full of ideas and of wise appreciations. When I feel stale I think of your wonderfully fresh mind. There's no doubt you are a very remarkable person and I say it quite without prejudice...

The peace with the Ukraine is the worst thing that has happened, it seems to me. I agree with Lady Macmahon who said she thought the Almighty had shown Himself disappointingly neutral...

To-day I combined business with pleasure and paid a call on Père Lion, abbot of the French monks, and Père Anaftase who is a Syrian. I went to discuss the buying of MSS. for the Indian Government and the translation of the Shiah traditional books, which is a hobby of my own that I'm pressing on the India Office. You see, the first thing in this Shiah country is that we should have a real understanding of the things that lie at the bottom of the Shiah mind. We all 3 sat together in the parlour overlooking the quiet little monastery court which lies in the heart of Bagdad; we had a delightful talk and as I came home through the incredibly narrow crooked streets--the leaves almost touch overhead and the streets wind in and out of them--I had a warm feeling of being part of it all. And so I am, you know; just as much as I'm part of English surroundings. It's a curious sense to have two native lands and to be wound into this one as with that by long links of associations. It made me content with a decision which I've just taken, not to accompany Sir Percy to Cairo and Jerusalem, where he is going for a Conference. He invited me to come too, and though it would have been most interesting, I'm not necessary and I think I had better stay here now when the weather)s so good and we can work. I shall have to go away in the summer for reasons of health. I'm rather discouraged about Persia because people coming in from there give such terrible accounts of the destitution of the country. You can't travel in a place where there's nothing to eat. England, with Palestine on the way, is another idea, but anyhow there are 3 months still before I need decide. The truth is I have a great longing to see you...

However many native lands I may have I've only one father and mother anyway and I'm therefore ever your devoted daughter.

To H.B.

BAGDAD, 22nd February, 1918.

You will get this letter quicker than all the others because Sir Percy carries it. He is coming home on a hasty mission and will probably only be in England a few days, but I have asked him to communicate with you on his arrival, because I feel sure you will want to see him. Also he will discuss with you my plans for the summer...Anyhow, he will be able to tell you what it is like, and, if I can get home without an unreasonable delay, I think I will probably come...

Springy's [Sir Cecil Spring Rice] death is just another piece of the old life gone--a life which I can't in imagination carry on into the future...

Well now, I will finish by writing you an ordinary letter of my doings...

On Monday afternoon, I had a funny, charming expedition. I borrowed a motor and took my old friend and landlord, Musa Chalabi, with his wife and daughter, to their garden outside Bagdad, five or six miles away. Musa's brother, Shakir, lives there and looks after the farming. It was a ramshackle place, with a couple of big single-storied mud-built houses; refuse heaps scattered around and even inside the courtyard; a dirty, smelly, Arab village, half tent, half reed hut under their walls; but the sun shone on the river bank and growing things and the palm trees, and there were three most darling little children of Shakir's to show me the hens and the puppies and the other wonders... And then we motored home. Musa and his ladies were in the seventh heaven, never, I think, having motored before...

You know Sir Percy has been an angel of kindness to me always, but he absurdly exaggerates the value of anything I've done here...

I knew I had another story to tell. To-day there came in to see me one of my travelling companions Of 1914. An Arab of the Dulaim tribe, who rode with me for four days when I was going back to Damascus. He was a good guide, and I was glad to see his pleasant face again--as glad as one can be when one of these ghosts of an independent past rises up before one. He set me longing for the desert. The grass is springing there and the black tents flowing with milk, and man and beast prosper.

To F.B.

BAGDAD, March 1st, 1918.

We had a day or two of wind and rain this week after which the world burst into loveliness. I rode directly after the rain through the gardens S. of the town and found them a vision of apricot and peach blossom and brilliant green cornfields. Everything grows together, fruit tree and palm and corn, with a marvellous luxuriance. If only it weren't going presently--and very soon--to be so infernally hot. I have been very busy this week, contributing some chapters to the review of administration here during 1917. It makes a most remarkable story, the truly remarkable part being the way the people have accepted it. The immense energy with which agricultural development has been pushed forward has been of incalculable political value...There is nothing easier to manage than tribes if you'll take advantage of tribal organization and make it the basis of administrative organization. And our people, with their natural inclination to deal with men on their merits, at once establish familiar relations with sheikh and headman and charge them with their right share of work and responsibility. And the men so treated respond wonderfully well--but then they are men, they've got stuff in them and that's all that is necessary...The European news is terribly bad and I see no prospect of an end. The strain on you at home is more than I like to think of. Don't you wonder often when you wake in the morning, how you are to carry on through the day? I wonder often enough how you bear it...

Yesterday afternoon I went to see one of our new primary schools where the headmaster is a friend of mine. There wasn't a very large attendance. I went round the 3 classes and asked them questions. In the smallest class we held a kind of general intelligence examination and I began by asking who was king of England. One student of history (aged about 7) replied unhesitatingly Chosroes, and another with a better grasp of modern politics amended with Lloyd George. (I don't know whether Father will be able to bear that story!)...The roses in my garden will be out in a week or two and I'm eating my own lettuces, but I'm sorry to say the cabbages have burst into luxuriant yellow flower before they ever became cabbages, so to speak.

To F.B.

BAGDAD, March 6th, 1918.

I'm going away the day after to-morrow down Euphrates again to gather up the remaining threads of tribal information which I want in order to complete my monumental work on Mesopotamian tribes. So if I don't catch a mail next week you'll know why. I'm looking forward to it very much and I hope I shall be able to get the material I want, but it's a difficult job and if one thing's more certain than another, it is that all one writes on tribes is sure to be full of mistakes. One ought to live for a month or two in each district in order to understand them.

This afternoon I attended a small function, the opening of a Civil Dispensary in the heart of the town. It has been the darling wish of Capt. Carey Evans to have a dispensary on this side of the river, and it will be infinitely valuable. There's a ward with 6 beds besides accommodation for seeing outpatients. All the notables came, secular and religious; it was most gratifying as well as being most agreeable. I sat in a row with the Qadhi, the Mudir of Church Lands (Muhammadan), the judge of Appeal and so on and so on, and we had tea and talked and were pleased to see one another. The Grand Rabbi, the Prior of the Dominicans, the Mother Superior and representatives of other Christian denominations were there too.

That's not the only party I've been to, but the other was improvised. Mr. Bullard and I were riding last Sunday through the exquisite fruit gardens S. of the town and I insisted on paying a call on their owner. We found him in his orchards, a hale old man who owns 2 square miles, or thereabouts, of the richest gardens near Bagdad and plants his seedling potatoes with his own hands. He led us through his fruit trees, showed us where he was laying out a new orange grove and where transplanting spring onions. Apricot and peach, apple and greengage are all in white and pink flower, and the thick grass lines the water channels, as it does only in exceptionally good years. Therewith he took us to his house and gave us an excellent tea of fresh bread and butter --the latter a rare luxury--and preserved fruits. We sat on a wide wooden bench in his mud-built guest room and listened to his shrewd talk. As a sequel to the visit he sent me to-day a present of eggs and fresh beans, wrapped up in a red cotton handkerchief.

With Sir Percy away, I have even more visitors than before and most of my morning is taken up with interviews. The Naqib's water pipe has been the question of the hour. I may say it has devastated my prospect as well as swamping the Naqib's quarter, for nothing in this world will keep it in repair. Yet you can't treat it like an ordinary pipe, for it is a religious bequest and must therefore be approached with the utmost circumspection. At length the Naqib, after much heart searching, has agreed to let the Municipality be responsible for its upkeep and a load is slipping from my shoulders.

Yet it's because matters like this one have been so tactfully handled by Sir Percy that all the notables come to tea at the Civil Dispensary...

[In March she again leaves Bagdad to motor among the Sheikhs and] " got a lot of tribal stuff."

[I include here some extracts from letters written by Gertrude at this time to Mildred Lowther (daughter of Lord Ullswater) with whom her friendship had become very close during 19 15 when Mildred helped in the work for tracing the wounded and missing.]

To Hon. Mildred Lowther. March 6th, 1918.

I want to see you so very much, beloved Milly. I feel as if I had jumped into old age during the last two years. You would scarcely believe from outside I am the same person, but inside I am not changed.

To the same.

BAGDAD, March 18, 1918.

My Father eagerly desires me to leave this summer but I can't settle myself to making plans while the fate of the world swings in the balance.

To the same.

July 6th, 1918.

No, I'm not coming back yet, darling. Do not forget me. When I come back I shall want your help and understanding so much. It will be so difficult to pick up life in England I dread it. You must give me a hand as you did before.

It is too hot to write more. I shall go up on the roof and lie on a hot sheet while the sandflies drift through the meshes of the mosquito net-- that's the Arabian night if the truth were known.

To H. B.

SAMAWAH, March 17th, 1918.

At kufah while I was standing on the high point aforesaid I saw some black tents and camels in a hollow to the S. and presently the owners crept up to us and laid their difficulties before me. They were men of the Ghazzi, a semi-nomadic tribe near Nasiriyeh, and they had been out in the desert since October. Now they wanted to go back to their own people by the river for the summer, but when they got to Shinafiyah where they meant to cross the river, behold there were soldiers and people riding about and the devil's own puzzlement. And they wanted to know whether there was permission for their crossing or what was to happen to them if they might not come down to the river. I said their Sheikh was a friend of the Govt. and bade them go in peace where they liked, but they were not happy till I wrote them an order to say they might cross and continue on their way. With that they kissed my shoulder and departed reassured, I hope, but think what bewilderment all these strange happenings must cause to camel folk who don't know what the intention of the soldiers and the Govt. may be. Next day was disgusting, a high wind and terrific rain. Fortunately my tent stood - (by a miracle) and my roof didn't leak much. There was nothing to be done but to continue sitting under it. I wrote up my tribal notes, and in the afternoon was visited by various sheikhs and saiyids and had some interesting talk, the net result of which was that they too were a little bewildered and anxious like the camel people. We have only been in effective occupation in these parts for the last three months; we are new and strange to them, and they to us. I've had in masses of sheikhs to see me and I think I've made a pretty good tribal register...

It's immensely interesting seeing this bit of the Euphrates and making acquaintance with its inhabitants. No doubt I've only got the vaguest outline of what there is to know, but at any rate it is an outline of a very complicated bit of tribal country, concerning which we were, a few months ago, in complete ignorance...

To F.B.

BAGDAD, March 28th, 1918.

...A terrible cloud has fallen on our work here in the murder at Najaf of one of our Army Political Officers [this was Captain Marshall]. He was a brilliant creature--I personally was very fond of him, and spent a delightful afternoon with him three weeks ago when I was at Kufah. He had I thought a great future, and I do most bitterly regret him...

This tragedy cast a great storm over the end of my journey, but I must tell you the remainder of my tale. I wrote to you from Samawah the day before I left. I came up the Hillah branch of the Euphrates in a motor launch from Samawah to Diwaniyeh. Capt. Goldsmith, a young Surrey officer, came with me for the first couple of hours, with a party of mounted Police--for honour you understand, not for safety. I could have done with less but in spite of them all the ride over the desert green with aromatic plants was delicious. The smell of a desert in spring is like nothing in this world. Each night I held a levy of notables after dinner. The second night when I had listened to the praises of myself, my government and my host, I was fortunately relieved by the entrance of an aged worthy whose appearance and conversation I must describe to you. His face was black with age, his beard scarlet with henna; the black and red were enfolded in a gigantic white turban. As he entered we all gave him salutations which were repeated when he had sat down. Talk then flagged until he took up his tale. "As I came in," said he. "As I entered the very door, without a pen I composed a verse." "Without a pen!"--ejaculations of surprise and admiration fell from the company and we begged to be acquainted with the production. He raised his ancient bony hand as though he would bid the world listen, and in a cracked voice recited three times running, an egregious couplet to the effect that all had learned humanity from the high Government, and that the coming of the Khatun (me) had filled the universe with joy. After the third recital I felt it my duty to write it down--seeing that he had no pen. The rest of the hearers overflowed with praise and a general hope was expressed that "Please God" and with His help the Haji would that night be able to complete the ode so felicitously begun. But whether he did or he did not I don't know, for I fled from Diwaniyah in a motor very early before the notables were awake.

The I.G.C. has been up for a couple of days cheerful and cheering as ever. Also whom do you think I have seen? Driver Woodcock, Mrs. Taggart's grandson. I gave him some cigarettes and a book of mine, which he asked me for, and to-day I've got him some razors and things from the Red Cross.

I must tell you, I'm a person of consequence, for Father's launch is beating all records.

Father's letter of Jan. 15th came also with my last mail. I wish you wouldn't write me such splendidly long letters. Though I love them, Father's account of his week's work is really appalling. His billiard table groaning with his papers! I also got your wire about the Geog. Soc. Medal. It was an absurd thing to give me; they must have been hard up for travellers this year.

To her family.

BAGDAD, April 5th, 1918.

Mr. Bullard and I rode miles up the Tigris and dropped in to call on a charming old gentleman who owns a large garden by the river bank. We were received by his servants with enthusiasm and led out into the garden where we found Faik Bey budding orange trees. He then took us through his fruit garden and cornfields, out to the edge of the desert. It was all green and wonderful with the barley in the ear and deep grass under the fruit trees. So we went back with him to tea, which consisted mainly of dates and oranges. My other gardener host, Haji Naji, came in to see me this week. He was dressed in beautiful purple cloth and looked very imposing: "Do you sit here all day and work?" said he, inscribing imaginary epistles in the air with his forefinger. "Very laborious!" and he tapped his forehead to indicate his sense of my mental effort. "You must come out again to my garden and be happy among the fruit trees."

A raging south wind, which brought that night a wild storm of rain--rain which lasted intermittently for 3 days and that's unusual at this time of year--but very fortunate, for it keeps the world cool and fresh. On the second afternoon the rain held up a little and I, not being able to bear sitting in the office any longer, waded out through the mud and had tea with the French nuns, darling creatures, whom I found trembling with anxiety about the news of the battle--as who is not? ...

Behind all one's doings lies the terrible sense of these days in France. The first assault seems to have spent itself--at what cost!--and we now, with deep anxiety await news of the second.

Goodbye, my beloved family...

To H.B.

BAGDAD, April 10th, 1918.

I am sending home 50 little black sheepskins in 5 parcels. My fur coat is in holes and some day they will do to make a new one, being both pretty and cheap.

The Willingdons are here on a short excursion from Bombay, staying with the C. in C. It is very nice having them