Basrah [Basrah, Al (Basra)] Nov 16 Dearest Father. I have letters this week from you of the 5th and 11th Oct. and from Mother of the 0th. Common Sense also has come, but I've not had time to read it all yet - I've been so busy since I came back from Qurnah [Qurnah, Al]. I take a little exception to the leader - bear with me! I don't see how we are to ensure peace unless we break Germany's power to make war. No promises, no sense of humanity, no Common Sense binds her, we know that, we've learnt it. When you are up against a wild beast, such as she has proved to be, your first thought must be how to chain it lest it devour you. Years of prosperous won't pay for a European war and who is to guarantee that Germany will not spend them in preparing for another? The terms must be stringent, more stringent than any the world has known.
Well, I had a pleasant 5 days away from Basrah. I went to Qurnah and made that my headquarters, living on my launch but spending most of the day in the A.P.O.'s home. I saw innumerable shaikhs and got all the information I wanted. One day I went a further bit up the Euphrates to Madinah [Madinah, Al] to see the shaikh there who was too ill to come to me. And one day I lunched with the Shaikh of Qurnah - I'm too old a hand to look on lunching with shaikhs with unmixed delight, but it was quite an amusing entertainment as such things go. The river was heavenly, shining days and lustrous nights. It was delicious to see the world which had been under water when last I passed that way - a world of gold-green rush, and green palm groves, and the open desert, green too, coming down to the water's edge with a floating wreath of smoke here from some tiny encampment and a giant cloud there from the reed beds which the Arabs set alight when they can't harvest them - such acres and miles of them as there are. The weather is perfection. The rain hasn't come yet - it ought to have come but I'm in no hurry for it. The temperature hangs about 80°, with cool damp nights. This morning I was out riding as the sun rose and in the desert half an hour later - the air clear as crystal, you count[?] the tamarisk trees at Sha'aibah [Shu'aiba (Ash Shuaybah)], 8 miles away. It was wonderfully beautiful. From all of which you may gather that I am extremely well, as indeed I am. I wonder what letters of mine went down in the Arabia and whether I asked for anything in them! I know I did ask about that time for a winter hat - smallish felt, dark blue or purple, and for 4 thick white silk shirts, turned open at the neck and I think I wrote to Rudolph in Sloane St for two bottles of hair stuff - oh one's hair after the hot weather! - but I hope it may all have been before. Rudolph might be asked if he got the letter, otherwise I shall be bald.

I've just had a telegram from the General at Nasiriyah [Nasiriyah, An], who is a friend of mine, asking me to come there on Sunday, by rail! I think I shall go for a couple of days, if only to take a railway journey. Also I have some jobs to do there. And I like General Brooking. One motors the last lap - it would be rather amusing. The ostensible object of my visit is to go out and see the great mounds of Ur of the Chaldees which I have been protecting from the ravages of Generals and railway engineers.

Tell Mother I loved having the N.E. Gazette with the account of the Winter Garden. It seems a long way off from Ur somehow. Ever your affectionate daughter Gertrude