Baghdad July 13 Dearest Father. We have had a week of fierce heat which still continues, temp 122 odd and therewith a burning wind which has to be felt to be believed. It usually blows all night as well as all day and makes sleep very difficult. I have invented a scheme which I practice on the worst nights. I dip a sheet in water and without wringing it out lay it in a pile along my bed between me and the wind. I put one end over my feet and draw the other under and over my head and leave the rest a few inches from my body. The sharp evaporation makes it icy cold and interposes a little wall of cold air between me and the fiery wind. When it dries I wake up and repeat the process. This evening Sir Percy and I went out motoring at 7 but it was too hot. The wind shrivelled you and burnt your eyeballs. They say it doesn't last very long like this - inshallah. At least the sandflies have given up the ghost. Also you get an immense satisfaction out of iced lime juice and soda, usually rather an anaemic drink. There is a pleasant hour just after dawn when I usually ride. My room in the office I shut up all day long and have it sluiced out with water 2 or 3 times a day. By these means I keep the temp at just under 100. Yes, that's what it's like.
Your photograph of the Frosty Caneasus[?] - do you remember the Robin Hood's Bay road? - arrived in the middle of all this, I've pinned it onto my paper stand to look at while I write.

I've been busy of an evening with my 6th paper on Turkey which I've finished (only one more remains to be written,) but we had a very pleasant dinner with Sir Percy, Richard, Major Munro and I, and last night General Gunning dined with me. He is going out to Ba'qubah next week, 50 miles to the N.E., and I'm sorry for I've been friends with the 30th Brigade. Among others, their padre Mr Hemming is a dear little man - 4ft 6in of him I should judge. He dines with me tomorrow to say goodbye. But he is going away to Basrah [Basrah, Al (Basra)] and then to India. The others I shall see again, for Ba'qubah is only 2 hours by motor. It was a 2 days' ride when I went there in 1911. Your very interesting letter of May 9 with food question pamphlets has come and Mother's letters of the 9th and 16th, I'm so very very sorry about Arthur Moore. I had a great feeling for him because of his care for Maurice - his poor wife! And I'm miserable about Patrick Grey. How do people live through these things - how do they endure them? - But I know how. You live but you live crippled forever. Poor Sophie.

Domnul sent me some most interesting letters from Florence describing the outbreak of war in the U.S.A. and Wilson's speech in Congress. And that reminds me - Common Sense after a long lapse, has begun to come again. In one number there was an article by Noel Buxton describing American opinion as being wholly of the view that we had wilfully refused to make peace with Germany when a favourable opportunity offered. I have been intimately acquainted with Noel Buxton's political views in places where I was qualified to judge of their value. He misjudged Turkey before the Constitution, he blindly and most harmfully midjudged the Committee of Union and Progress, taking it at its face value, and he had to eat his words a second time when it proved a worse tyrant than the Sultan. I have no shadow of confidence in his opinion. {What he writes} I have been at considerable pains for many years past to show why he and his party are not to be accepted as authorities on Turkish politics. I have no greater belief in his views on American politics and I think them at this juncture to be not only false but dangerous. When I read them printed in big type in a paper run largely on your money, I feel as if I had been stabbed in the back.

The very large beetles which live in my garden must have been making a meal on this paper.

The mails of May 31 have gone down in the Mongolia, confound it, and the parcel post of May 24, including some of my muslin gowns I take it. Damn.

And yet darling, in spite of Common Sense, I am always your very devoted daughter Gertrude.