Baghdad Oct 31 Darling Father. I've just received your letters of Oct 12 and 18 by air mail. As I'm going to Sulaimani [Sulaymaniyah, As] on the 2nd I shall leave this to be sent by the next air mail, in case I don't get back in time to catch it. Lord! I do need a rest! my brain simply won't work.
As to Hugo's present I've telegraphed that I'll join in. As to the rose garden, I'm in favour of taking out all the trees, and always 'as [sic] done, but I like your idea of leaving the Irish yews and cypresses respectively at the end of the Palm House path and by the steps. That's that.

Thank you very much indeed for your letters to H.M. and H.E. They were exactly right and I've no doubt that the addressees will reply in person. I'm also most grateful for your inquiries with Garter as to the flag. They have altered the order of the colours so as to differentiate the 'Iraq flag from the Hijaz. As for the Royal Standard they've put a big gold crown onto the red triangle, which you say in all right. It's very effective.

I'm feeling too dull to write letters properly so I'll just give you a short review of my doings. I gave a dinner party for Major Young on Friday 28th - a number of my old friends, the Minister of Auqaf Fakhri Jamil, Abdul Majid Shawi, 'Abdul Jabbar Pasha Khaujat (one of the leading Christians here) and on top of all Taufiq Suwaidi, Naji's brother, a clever young lawyer who has recently come over from Syria. Major Young was extremely pleasant and we had an interesting and profitable talk about the future treaty and the need of making it advantageous to both sides. Taufiq Suwaidi was streets ahead of the others, quick, intelligent, full of ideas. Major Young was much impressed by him and by the contrast he presented with the older lot and I think he realized more clearly than he had done before that while keeping the latter in play, it's the Taufiq Suwaidi kind who have the push and the drive and therefore must be got to work in harmony with ourselves.

On Saturday I took Major Young to tea in Saiyid Ja'far's garden at Kadhimain [(Al Kazimiyah)] - where I took you, you remember - and had some of the Shi'ah merchants of the place to meet him. It was also quite useful and Saiyid Ja'far was immensely gratified at our coming.

On Sunday I had a day out. The Dulaim are completing a big new system of canals, taking off from the Euphrates above Ramadi [Ramadi, Ar] and watering the whole desert nearly up to Baghdad. It's a very fine undertaking the execution of which has been due mainly to the energy and imagination of Shaikh 'Ali Sulaiman, backed by Major Yetts. Last time the latter was in, we arranged that I should come out and see it. Accordingly I got hold of Mr Thomson, who is the nicest of companions and together we set off to Fallujah [Fallujah, Al] by motor about 7 a.m. It takes about 2 hours to motor across to the Euphrates. At Fallujah we met Major Yetts, stepped into his car and set off to see the canal. It replaces a very ancient canal called the Saqlawiyah which has been for long a danger to Baghdad for it has been scoured deeper and deeper by the current until, unless drastic measures had been taken the whole Euphrates might easily have turned into it and joined the Tigris just Bellow Baghdad, flooding the town in the process. So what they've done is this: [illustration] They've put a great head work on the Saqlawiyah where is takes off from Euphrates and another some 4 miles lower down where the new system begins, 2 canals to the north of the Saqlawiyah and one (not yet dug) to the south. The Saqlawiyah itself becomes the drain. We motored to the second headworks and then all up the northern canal (A) which is much longer that I've room to show, and then in between A and B till we came to X where we found a large Dulaim camp and lunched in Ali Sulaiman's tent - he had motored out to meet us with a pack of shaikhs. A and B will be finished in about 10 days. There are some 1500 tribesmen at work. They keep themselves and get no wage but when the work is done they'll claim their bit of irrigated land. We motored through what looked like virgin desert which in a fortnight's time will go under the plough. It wasn't however, really virgin; if you looked closely you saw the track of ancient canals though they were almost obliterated; moreover almost always where a mound rises above the level of the plain it yields ancient bricks. So it is that[?] industrious cultivators of Abbasid times save their descendants expense and labour by providing them with building materials for the headworks of their new canals. We could not go very much further by motor for a great length of the central canal had been used for irrigation last year and all the ground near it was tilled. We headed however for some tents and there got a couple of Arab ponies and a guide to take us in to Nuqtah, half way on the Baghdad-Fallujah road. We rode as fast as the broken ground, and also the broken saddlery would allow. My saddle held out bravely and I even had a bridle, but I didn't use it for my pony was accustomed to nothing but a halter and jibbed at the harsh bit. Mr Thomson was less fortunate; his bit of string that served as a bridle and his pony didn't go as gently in its halter as mine. Nevertheless it was a wonderful two hours' ride. The country was alive with tents and flocks, the early barley, sown for fodder, was thinly green, the fish lept [sic] in the canals as we spashed through them and the people were wandering in to their tent villages, here a camel or two stalking along the canal bank, there a few cows or a little flock of sheep, and the evening meal a-cooking by the black booths. The sun set as we reached Nuqtah, and having given our guide enough and to spare to provide himself and the ponies with a night's food and lodging, we got into our motor, duly waiting for us, and came contentedly home.

Nov. 1. [1 November 1921] Faisal came back from his Hillah [Hillah, Al] tour on Monday. He has been to Karbala, Najaf [Najaf, An], Diwaniyah [Diwaniyah, Ad] and Rumaithah [Rumaythah, Ar] and seems to have had a triumphal progress. I think the provinces are beginning to wake up to the fact that they really have got an Arab King, and that it's something to be proud of. The tribes come in by the thousand horse to bid him welcome and they say that in Karbala his progress to the shrine surpassed everything of the kind that the town has seen, even the famous visit of Naszud Din Shah of Persia. I haven't however heard his own account of it, for I've been both tired and busy and he also is preoccupied with the preliminary negotiations with Sir Percy and Major Young over the treaty, in which I have no part. Also I fancy he is very much taken up by Haddad Pasha who arrived by air on Sunday and I hope will depart by air or otherwise at the earliest possible date. For he's a busybody of the first water - he came to see me on Monday morning, a pleasant garrulous old man with whom I should have enjoyed conversing if I hadn't been acutely conscious that he regards himself as peripatetic advisor to the British Govt (and everyone else) on all Arab questions and that he'll offer advice as gaily about Mesopotamia after a 12 hours' acquaintance with it as he would about his own Syrian country. I've managed to wriggle out of a second appointment with him and I've a pious hope that when I come back from Sulaimani [Sulaymaniyah, As] he may be gone - it certainly won't be Sir Percy's fault if he isn't! He talks admirable English, having lived some 30 years in Egypt; he was Director of Public Security in Damascus [Dimashq (Esh Sham, Damas)] under Faisal and followed him in exile to Europe where he was very useful in helping to put up the Syrian case. But for all that he's the veriest old windbag and we've got enough of his sort without importing more.
There was another big dinner party last night at the Military School which I should have enjoyed very much if I hadn't been so tired. Mrs Joyce and Mrs Slater were there and two other women whose husbands have jobs in the Arab army; Ja'far and Nuri, by whom I sat and a number of Arab guests, including Haji Naji. It was extremely pleasant and friendly. But I do wish (this is highly confidential) that our women would show some sense of suitability in their attire. Mrs Slater came in a brilliant green and gold gown, cut outrageously low, with no sleeves at all, and this in a party which included a number of respectable old Saiyids and magnates whose conception of female attire is that it should leave no female visible. Isn't it incredible that our women shouldn't realize what they must look like to eyes thus trained! I can do nothing but curse in private to Sir Percy who heartily echoes my oaths (Lady Cox, I needn't say, is a model of discretion and backed me when I issued a request - in her name - that the women who came to the Municipal dinner in July should wear high gowns.) I hope that Sir Percy, the first time he himself goes to one of these functions, will send out a sumptuary order, but I had to beg him not to do it on my report - I don't want to antagonize the whole feminine world, with which I stand badly enough already. Im grossen und ganzen damn women!

Today the post brought letters from you and Mother dated Oct 6 - I suppose you'll write henceforward by air mail. Your account of my finances isn't over satisfactory, bless you for it all the same. What an excessive amount of trouble you take about your children and we accept it all as a matter of course and more shame to us. At any rate I do realize from time to time what it is to have someone always watching and caring for one, without the care having any relation to the worth of the object it's expended on. The object is worth less than you can guess. I think I may have been of some use here but I suspect I've come very near the end of it. But at least I'm your endlessly loving daughter Gertrude

This is to Mother: never mind about the frames for my diamonds - it's just like that stupid Marie not to know where they were. I can't for the life of me remember the necklace you so very kindly offer me as a fender, but far be it from me to refuse any generosity! at the same time don't let me ave [sic] anything you like to wear yourself. I daresay the Arabs won't mind if I don't put any diamonds in my hair.