Baghdad Sep 17 Darling Father. I got your telegram from Port Said yesterday, bless you, and was doubly sorry that I had not been able to write to you directly there. Ceylon [Sri Lanka] posts are certainly very irregular. I have had no letter from you for the last two mails. So I didn't know the name of your ship. A great deal too many things are happening at once. You will have seen that the Turks invaded 'Iraq territory on the 14th and that we Air Forced them out. Their object was to punish some Christian (Assyrian) villages who are actually outside our administrative frontier and had been so imprudent as to attack and capture a Turkish Wali who was travelling about there. He was afterwards set free but the Turks are out for their blood and were taking a short cut through 'Iraq administered territory when we caught them. We can't think what will happen next. That's one thing. Fortunately Sulaimani [Sulaymaniyah, As] is going well. Shaikh Mahmud's supporters, who were mostly Persian Kurds, have left him and gone back to their own mountains, and his other followers, of whom he has very few, are deserting. So we may hope that that matter is in a fair way towards solution. Then there's the Hijaz. The King is of course very much worried but he is being very reasonable. Both he and Zaid know quite well, and say so to us, that Husain deserves anything he gets, that he is absolutely impossible and that he must go; but Faisal says that as a Moslem he must oppose in any way he can the domination of the holy cities by the Wahhabis. I myself think that it is barely conceivable that the world of Islam will stand it. Meantime H.M.G. not unwisely hold their hand till they learn the trend of Moslem opinion in India. The last pilgrimage, just over, has been a scandal. Husain has extorted money from the pilgrims right and left, and he can't keep the Beduin in hand so that the road to Mecca [Makkah] was closed and the people who tried to get there looted and robbed. The truth is that the Beduin hate Husain who never gives them what he promises them for keeping the road open and they are larning [sic] him to be such a toad. A minor worry is that the Shaikh of Muhammarah is convinced (I don't doubt rightly) that the Persian Govt means to deprive him of his liberties and he is going to fight. He thinks he will have to fight some day and that he is now in a stronger (and the Govt in a weaker) position than later. That means disturbance all along our frontier and besides I'm personally sorry because I like the Shaikh and he has been a loyal friend to us. He may, after all, win; I don't know what the Persian army is capable of. Sir Henry came back last night - 6 days and 4 hours from England to Baghdad! He flew straight through from Cairo yesterday. He had a two hours' talk with the King this morning and he tells me that he means to deal faithfully with Col. Slater, about whose doings the King lodged immediate complaints. I feel much relieved. This is of course private. And what do you think I was doing this morning? I was taking a friend of yours to Babylon, Mr Tom Griffiths. This is how it came about. Two labour members and a unionist, Mr Griffiths, Dr Williamson and Mr Davies are here for three days on their way to Muhammarah and on to India. It is a tour arranged by the A.P.O.C., whose guests they are - a bit of propaganda. Lionel Smith and I took them to Babylon - not Mr Davies, he has arrived ill and I haven't seen him. We started, I may mention, by trolley on the railway, at 5.20 a.m. Mr Griffiths conceived a high opinion of me when I told him I was your daughter and it wasn't diminished when he heard that I was sister in law to Charles. "We call him Charlie" he observed affectionately; "our Charlie." I hope you like Mr Griffiths; I think him such a nice man (like Mr Terrapin) and certainly I never had a better audience at Babylon than I had today. But he is naively proud of his office, keeps alluding to himself as a Minister and dilates on his duty to introduce people at levies. It is so naif that it is amiable. It was quite cold going down in the early morning and not too hot at Babylon, but coming back, from 10 to 1, it was infernal. There was a wind that scorched you. I had to take refuge on the floor to get out of that hell blast. I still feel like a cinder. Yasin Pasha gave an official dinner party on Monday - Acting High Commissioner, Oriental Secretary, all Ministers and Advisers and all Consuls were asked. There has been rather an affair about it, for Col. Slater had previously sent out invitations to a big dinner. Nigel, quite properly, when he got Yasin's invitation telephoned apologies to Col Slater for throwing him over on the ground that he felt obliged to go to the P.M.'s party. Col. Slater tried to get Yasin to put his dinner off; Yasin dug his toes in; Col. Slater did likewise - very foolishly - and the net result was that the A.V.M. (whom Yasin had invited) did not come on the ground that he was previously engaged to Col. Slater and Mr Drower (Justice) did not come either. All the other Advisers came to Yasin, whether they had been engaged to Col Slater or not. I hadn't been asked by Col. Slater, so my course was easy. The Ministers are furious with him. It was the only official party which the P.M. has given and they think their Advisers ought to have come to it. So they ought. It is just the kind of silly business which makes the worst bad blood. Incidentally, the dinner was interminable. I sat between 'Abdul Muhsin Beg (Minister of Interior) whom I love, and the French consul, whom I don't. As Muhsin had the Persian Consul on his other side, with whom he has no common tongue, I devoted most of my attention to Muhsin, though I was very obliging and polite to the French consul also. Afterwards Nigel, Ja'far, Sasun and I played bridge and I never held a card higher than a knave. There now, I think I have told you most of my news. I've been seeing a good deal of the King who likes to have his hand held when crises occur, poor darling. The next thing is to leave the rest of your Ceylon story. I hope for some of it on Saturday. Father, will you try to get my poor Ken Cornwallis to come to Rounton, and be kind to him. He writes me such miserable letters. Ever, dearest, your very loving daughter Gertrude I had forgotten that Lord Cowdray was the owner of the Westminster. You might do a little spade work there, in the intervals of discussing Kent coal.