Baghdad Aug 31 Dearest Father. I am coming out of hospital tomorrow. I am perfectly sound but very slack. I don't suppose I shall be much better till the weather begins to cool down which it ought to do in the latter half of Sep. It's still damnably hot. Meantime other things have been overshadowed by a terrible calamity which has fallen on Sir Percy. His only son, and only child, is reported missing in France. He got the telegram the day before yesterday, an hour or two after he had received the announcement of his G.C.I.E. He came to see me yesterday, grey and speechless with anxiety. The boy must I think have been a very headstrong creature. Sir Percy has seen so little of him that as he said pathetically "We scarcely knew him." He enlisted from school at the beginning of the war. Sir Percy pulled strings and got him into Sandhurst but he promptly ran away and enlisted again. Finally he landed up in the R.F.C. and had just completed his training in England and gone to France. Sir Percy much wanted him to come out here, but the boy replied - the letter came last mail - that he wasn't going to have anything to do with this country which he considered a backwater. One doesn't have a very pleasant picture of him somehow, but I feel pretty certain that Sir Percy's hopes for the future were all twined round him. It's terrible that he should have this sorrow to bear in the midst of his very difficult and strenuous work here. If only the boy were a prisoner - but I feel very slender hope. I wish Sir Percy would have Lady Cox up for a bit; she's in Basrah [Basrah, Al (Basra)]. It would be comforting for them to be together, for though she is unspeakably dull and more than a little second rate, they're devoted to one another.
I've been surrounded by kindness. Even the Army Commander came to see me and was most civil. I dislike him and strongly disapprove of all, or nearly all, his non-military policy (of his military capacity I can't judge, though I fancy it's good) but it's better to preserve a neutral surface. General Cobbe, who commands the 1st Corps, has been an angel, coming to see me and keeping me supplied with books. Sir Percy has been nearly every day and all my own colleagues are constant visitors. Dear Richard comes in often of a morning.

There have been some very good articles in the Spectator lately on war economics, sound common sense about attempts to fix prices and regulate markets. Will you tell St Loe if you see him that I've found them most useful as propaganda. Every economic mistake that could be made has been made here, with the result that all trade is at a standstill and food prices have quadrupled. Bad as it may be when a civil Govt. tries to mould economic laws, I can answer for it that it's worse when Generals join in the game. I turned up a document the other day in which one of these latter announced blandly that he felt no anxiety at the rise in the cost of living, because nothing would be easier at any moment than to fix a maximum price. As a cure for scarcity, I ask you! Doesn't it rouse hömisch laughter.

The mail this week has brought papers but no letters from England, for me at least. I rather hope the letters may turn up in a day or two, but the regular mail - if I can dignify it with that term - now comes in only once a fortnight. You can see I'm better this week by the length of my letter. Ever your very affectionate daughter Gertrude