Baghdad July 27 Dearest Father. Another week - it's less hot. I don't think we're likely to have a second bout such as we've had. It has caused as many casualties as a battle and what is tantamount to another breakdown in the hospital arrangements. Not nearly enough accommodation had been provided, with the usual consequences. Not enough ice, not enough personnel. In the middle of the fiercest heat an attack on a small Turkish position on the Euphrates was ordered. It resulted in 60 casualties inflicted by the enemy, 450 by the sun and a retreat to our starting point. No troops could stand such heat - why call upon them to try? But from the official published account you might think we had scored a signal success. I hate, I've always hated lies and now I hate them worse than ever. I have your nice long letter of May 22 with many enclosures, all interesting. I love your correspondence with the reverend gentlemen. And yes of course you were right to accept for me the godmothership of Bill Adams's daughter and to send her a gift. Will you pay yourself with my cheque book? I'll write to him sometime. I have a long letter from Beatrice - will you please thank her for it if you're seeing her. I can't answer it. I can't write chatty letters. To you I love to write, to people concerned with my job I write because it's part of my work and an interesting part; but to no one besides. I can't pick up the thread where I dropped it two and a half years ago; I can't. And it becomes more not less difficult. I'm more and more conscious of being cut off by a wall of agonizing experience from what lay before. Even memory scarcely ever goes back behind it or only to sicken wearily at the thought of what it's passing over. Oh if one could look forward and see a term when thought should stop, and memory, and consciousness - I'm so tired of struggling on alone.
Still I'll do it, as you know. At least it's easier here than in England.

On the feast day after Ramadhan Sir Percy and I paid the Naqib a congratulatory visit. He looked a very very old man after his month's fast. I hope he'll carry on for a year or two; our personal relations with him are useful as well as pleasant. Sir Percy is so charming with the people of the country, grave and kind and attentive. I don't wonder they respect and trust him. He never himself realizes how strong his personal hold is, but we count it one of our best assets. The satisfaction that it is to work for a chief who is always at the height of the situation.

One morning before breakfast I took General Cobbe to see Daud Beg's horses - I told you about them before. It was very nice because dear General Cobbe was so much delighted with them - and indeed they are delightful creatures. He thought them the best Arabs he had seen and I don't suppose one could see better. If we are all here in winter we intend to go hawking gazelle with Daud Beg.

I expect we shall be here. The truly appalling Russian news makes all advance seem out of the question. We may be on the defensive, who knows? Amiable anarchy seems to be the state of Russia, but anarchy however amiable is a crime in a world straining every nerve to decide issues which are vital to civilization. It looks now as if a very short time must decide whether Kerenski can pull the country together or whether the Germans dictate terms of peace from Petrograd [Sankt-Peterburg (Saint Petersburg, Leningrad)].

I paid another before breakfast call yesterday on the Jamil Zadah family, some of my oldest friends here. They are great landowners, very rich, upright, honest people staunchly pro-English. They haven't played any very salient part, nor are they particularly intelligent, but they are gentle folk and their friendship is worth having. I sat for a long time talking to Abdul Rahman Effendi, the head of the house, and then with him and his wife and sisters whom I also visited - I knew them before - and came away with a warm sense of cordial and even affectionate companionship. It's when one gets that that one gets the best that can be had. Abdul Rahman's friendship takes also an agreeably tangible exression! he sends in weekly a great basket of fruit from his estate - at this season, it's filled with huge white grapes.

But you know the more familiar one is with the East the more one must learn to forgive - on the principle I suppose of tout savoir c'est tout pardoner. Half the people here who are now my and our most genuine friends wrote violent articles against us when the Turks had them by the throat. That they will as violently now against the Turks, though without any strangling by us, doesn't give one cause for satisfaction. Words in the East are just words - signifying nothing. You make a secret reservation and say what you please, who's to tell which way the reservation lay? It runs all through, in religion, in social intercourse, in big things and in little - before the cock crows they'll be saying the exact contrary. It's bewildering, but you must always keep in mind the ineradicable habit of the East - for warning and for excuse. Few Orientals would die rather than abjure their deepest belief in words, as we all pray that we should have courage to die.

Today I got a very much travel stained letter form Mother dated May 29. I think it must have been swimming in the Indian Ocean. Some of the Mesop. mailbags were rescued which went down in the Mongolia.

Oh and 2 more muslin gowns {have} came last week - a red letter week! That makes 7. Ever your very affectionate daughter Gertrude

July 28. [28 July 1917] Mother's letter of May 22 has come this morning - most welcome. I've finished and sent home my last (7th) article for the War Office. If they are any good and I think they are - or at least suitable to their purpose, it's now up to the W.O. to use them. I've done my part. I should publish them as a pamphlet. They would sell, I feel sure, and do good.