Baghdad Aug 13 Darling Mother. Your diary letters are delightful but I like having the little special letter to me too. But this is specially to thank you for the two books - the Adding Machine and Men and Masses. Modern literature is very queer isn't it, but it's also extremely interesting. One has to get oneself accustomed to entirely new forms - that which they embody is as old as the world because it is variant of the human story. I thought both those books - I can't call them plays - very striking and I'm so grateful because that is just the kind of thing I miss, not knowing about them. Yes, I've read St Joan, this week. I thought it was wonderful; I wish I had seen it on the stage. It's so clever of him to have made her a bluff - not to say rough - country girl. Of course so she was, with the mysticism threaded separately through her.
I'll tell you a novel I thought extremely clever - God's Step Children; have you read it? by Millin. I've been chiefly absorbed however by a new book on Mohammadan architecture by a man I'm ashamed to say I've never heard of, namens Briggs. It's admirable, but unfortunately deals only with Egypt and Syria which is all he knows. So I've written to him and invited him to come here and study our monuments - without which he can't really (but I didn't tell him so) write a history of that kind at all. He makes a lot of mistakes when he alludes to them.

There; I've wandered into bookland, haven't I. Ever your very affectionate daughter Gertrude

You talk about wearing too many clothes in the heat - one's clothes here are reduced to a minimum. I wear a silk chemise, a crepe de chine foureau and a muslin gown. None of them have any fastenings or Bellt so that except for my stockings all my clothes hang quite loose from my body. Fortunately the fashion lends itself to this scheme of dress.