Baghdad Feb 8 Darling Father. This has been the mailless week - we get letters in a day or two I believe. Meantime today I telegraphed you - about riding boots, that was my touching message. That rogue Dalton, after making my riding boots for 15 years, sends me out a pair which I can't by any possibility get into. My old ones are by now a disgrace, but I rather think there's another pair of brown boots in my bedroom at R'ton [Rounton] good enough to go with and when you get this letter you might (A) pour the most vitriolic language you can command over Dalton refusing at the same time to pay for the boots he sent and (B) tell him to make and send a new pair, but pray provide him with a black pair from my bedroom as model so that he may not repeat his abominable practices. And I must go on wearing the ragged old ones for another 2 months at least - it's detestable. I haven't made any definite plans about the summer and I don't suppose I shall till the last moment, when I'll telegraph to you. It's little likely that there will be any alternative in public affairs so far as I can see, but I can't believe that the world will support another year of war. The German strikes seem to have petered out, though I hope they are an omen, and the negotiations with Russia have apparently done likewise.
Last Sunday afternoon I went for a long and very pleasant ride with Col. Willcocks [i.e. Willcox] and to tea, by request, at an Indian hospital on the way home - with the O.C. of the hospital, not with the patients. I dined at G.H.Q. where I was to have been the guest of Gen. Gillman (the C.G.S.) whom I like very much, but he was summoned away suddenly on a mission and I didn't think I could decently get out of the dinner, and was, as I knew I should be, rather bored. Gen. Marshall is also away, on tour. Society is devastated by the presence of the nursing sisters - Heaven forbid that I should grudge them their entertainments, only I don't want to share them, for they reduce conversation to words of one syllable. I shall therefore go to no more Ladies' dinners. We have had two goes of rain this week, not very heavy, but enough to make a day's mud apiece. It's getting quite perceptibly, but pleasantly warmer - I've begun to discard some of the innumerable wraps I wear by day (oil stoves aren't very warming) and coverings by night. Today, with the soft air blowing into my room I thought of R'ton in Feb. and wondered whether by chance it were snowing with you. I paid a long call yesterday afternoon on some of my oldest friends here, the Jamil Zadah. They have a jolly house in the heart of the town and I always like going to see them, they are such nice people. It is they who keep me supplied with grapes in autumn, and in winter they send me oranges and excellent dates. They are very rich, with great properties N.E. of Baghdad - rich even in war time; some day they will be immensely wealthy. They are also extremely well-born, an old Arab family with a branch at Damascus [Dimashq (Esh Sham, Damas)] and another at Mosul [Mawsil, Al]. It's curious to find how many of the Baghdad notables - not however the Jamil Zadah - are tribesmen, often only settled in the town for the last generation or two. Some shaikh builds himself a town house, sends his sons to school and starts them in a learned profession leading to Govt. employment. And at once they settle down into citizens. But the tribal links are unbroken. Any shaikh with business in the town looks by right to his kinsman's house for entertainment in the matter of daily meals - a pretty expensive duty it is - and if a member of the town family gets into trouble he will seek sanctuary with the tribe, safe in the assurance that he would never be given up. Several men I know fled to their tribe during the year before the Occupation, when the Ottoman hand was heavy on the Arabs of Baghdad. Most of these are now in our service and their tribal connection makes them all the more useful. We have a few really first class Arab officials, just as we have found a few really first class shaikhs who will assume responsibility and preserve order. There are not many of them, but such as there are, are invaluable. And we in our turn have an immense responsibility towards them. You can't seriously govern a country without compromising all the best elements. We are pledged here. It would be an unthinkable crime to abandon those who have loyally served us. But there! if I write of Arabs I shall write all night. Your ever affectionate daughter Gertrude