Baghdad May 26 My dearest Mother. Thank you so very much for your letter of May 11 which arrived by air mail and was the very first news I had of your doings during the general strike. Father's two letters came next day. You don't sound as if you were living in a strike at all, but it is wonderful how little difference it made, even in London, I gather from Elsa. But if the coal strike drags on and on, it will be very dreadful and it must end in dislocating life. I forgot to ask Father what Charlie's attitude is. Will you tell me. Moll hasn't written since just after she was ill.
I am sure that Maurice must have been admirable at Middlesbrough but there were anxious moments, weren't there. They were very anxious for me when I read about disturbances there. Oh dear, isn't it a horrid world.

I hope you won't think I'm wrong in saying that I can't go away yet and leave all my antiquities unarranged and unguarded. I have been writing to Father about it. I'll see later how things go on, but it's so very expensive to return home and then come back here that I think I would rather finish and then go away. It isn't because I don't immensely want to see you and Father, but I know you will understand that it means a very great deal to leave everything that I have been doing here and find myself really rather loose on the world. I don't see at all clearly what I shall do, but of course I can't stay here forever; already I feel that when Bernard is here, and Sir Henry, I'm not at all necessary in the office. I would have liked to stay in the Dept of Antiquities if I could come home every year, but I don't feel justified in asking the 'Iraq Govt to give me anything like a permanent post. The Director here should know cuneiform and be a trained museum official. What I can do is just to tide them over and I should be useful in the autumn if Andrae came out to Babylon - vide my letter to Father.

All the same I feel very much torn between you and this. You yourself have rather encouraged me to stay this year so I hope you won't disagree. Tell me what you think, will you please. Ever your very loving daughter Gertrude