Baghdad Sep. 11. Darling Father. Few letters have had a greater success than your message of congratulation telegraphed to Middlesbrough and posted from there. Sir Percy and I gloated over it - it was the first, the very first sign that anyone was taking interest in us and our affairs. Sir Percy has had several congratulatory telegrams from Mr Churchill but the public knows nothing and no one seems to inform them. We search the papers in vain for any trace of the masses of information we send home, and all we find is letters from gentlemen who protest that the Arabs would only be too thankful if we cleared out. I really think H.M.G. might do a little propaganda on our behalf. Anyhow, as I say, your message had an unexampled success. Meantime I also have your letters of Aug 2 and 10 and Mother's of Aug 3. The most interesting news is about Hugo - I do hope I shall soon hear a fortunate ending to that romance. The the poor little Stockdale boy - I hope he has recovered and finally your striking appeal for industry and thrift and your tale of municipal taxation in Poplar which is indeed a matter for thought. As for Sir E. Geddes and the Committee of Business Men - is the Govt off its head or what? And now let me return to our affairs - no, before I do so I must tell you how sad I feel about Hanagan. It was clearly best, but he was a great figure in our Rounton life - irreplaceable. I'll write to him. I left off last week in the agonies of Cabinet making - they're over; Faisal's first Cabinet is formed. On the whole we're well satisfied. Out of the 9 Ministers, 6 are eminently capable men, well-fitted for their job. All but 2 of these were in the Provisional Govt. The two new men are Naji Suwaidi (Justice) perhaps one of the ablest of the younger generation, and a Shi'ah who takes Education in place of another Shi'ah - I don't think there's much to choose between him and his predecessor but capable Shi'ahs grow on very few bushes. An excellent addition to the Cabinet is an exceptionally energetic and well trained Xian doctor of Mosul [Mawsil, Al] who becomes Minister of Health, a new portfolio. I must tell you in confidence that he is my appointment. I brought him forward to Sir Percy and suggested making a Health Ministry - everyone is delighted but of course they don't know it was I who did it. Finally the fearfully debatable question of the Interior has been settled by the appointment of one Haji Ahmad Ramzi who is outside all parties. He is so much outside everything that not one of us (British officers) had ever seen him or so much as heard his name. Faisal made a shot in the dark and chose him because he has a universal reputation for absolute honesty and integrity. He is a very pious Moslem and spends one night every week praying in the Naqib's mosque. He has had some administrative experience. During the last ten days, since his name has been on the tapis, I've been hearing many stories of him. Husain Afnan told me that one day a lot of people were sitting in his office and the talk turned, of course, on the Ministry of the Interior. "Who is Haji Ramzi?" said one, and a mild voice answered, "I am". I asked Faisal what Haji Ramzi said when he asked him to take the Office. "Nothing" said Faisal; "Nothing at all. I told hm to go round to see Mr Cornwallis (Advisor to Interior) expecting that he would come back and discuss matters with me, but he never returned." "Ah well" said Rustam Haidar. "I can tell you something he said. When he came out of Y.M.'s room he passed through the Secretaries' room, and he stopped by my table and said: 'This is a very heavy job they have laid on my shoulders.'" Also I heard that a day before the appointment was announced some 20 pro-Turks, men on pensions, came to him and tried to frighten him into refusal. Tomorrow the Turks might come back, or Saiyid Talib, claiming his old post - what would Haji Ramzi do then? Haji Ramzi appears at least to have known what to do now. He rose in his wrath and said he wasn't yet appointed and anyhow it wasn't their affair; he would be obliged if they would clear out of his house and not darken its doorway again. Last of all I myself went to see him this Sunday morning, immediately after breakfast, to offer my congratulations and those of Sir Percy. I found a spare, shy little man, with a thin beard turning grey and a very sweet expression, sitting in a tiny house with a few people round him whom I had never seen before. The talk rested with me, Haji Ramzi making politely nervous replies. I can't say I was very brilliant either, but perhaps it was just as well I wasn't. Anyhow I hope he thought I was cordial, for I felt cordial. I arranged for him to come and see Sir Percy and I wonder which of them will do the talking! I assisted yesterday morning at the formal announcement from the King to the Naqib, appointing him Prime Minister. The Naqib, darling old thing, thought it would interest me, so he invited me to be present. It took place in his house on the river bank. Mr Garbett, Mr Cornwallis and I were the British representatives. We arrived and found all the Naqib's male relations, sons, brothers, cousins and nephews in the antechambers; he had summoned them all up and a very imposing gathering they made. The Naqib, dressed in his usual white, was sitting in his white audience room and with him three of the ministers who were retaining office in the new Cabinet, one of them being Sasun Eff. We sat for a little talking to the Naqib, who was in the highest spirits. He asked after you and informed the company that you and he were the same age. Then Saiyid Mahmud, the eldest son, came in and announced the King's delegation. In came Rustam Haidar, carrying Faisal's farman in a green silk wrapping, followed by Fahmi Mudarris and two of the A.D.C.s. Rustam unwrapped the Farman, laid it on his forehead, and read it out. ("From the Queen to the Duchess" said I to myself, most irreverently, for it was really a very dignified little ceremony.) We all stood up while it was read and while Saiyid 'Asim read his father's reply accepting office. The Naqib, standing rather bowed in his white robes, looked a very wonderful figure: at the end he lifted his head and wished the King long life. One by one, Rustam leading, we then went up to him, saluted him and offered our congratulations. That done, we sat down, drank coffee and sherbet, chatted a little and took our leave. 'Iraq is a small place and its Prime Minister may not loom very importantly in the world; nevertheless we were making history. Over cabinet making I've got this week more deeply inside the minds of Faisal's small bank of devoted followers than I've ever got before and I think I understand their point of view. There are not very many of them, the fervent patriots whose personal {assurance} devotion to Faisal is enhanced by the conviction that he alone has the qualities out of which an Arab King can be made, a King who will unite the Arabs and take his place among the rulers of the world. Ja'far and Nuri are to my mind the most striking examples and I love them both. What they fear is the return of the Turks, by intrigue rather than by arms. They know well that there is little genuine Arab patriotism here, that the long tradition of obedience to the Turks is difficult to eradicate and that everyone who doesn't get a job is bound to be a pro-Turk. They think some turn of the wheel in Turkey may bring the Committee of Union and Progress back to power (indeed nothing is more probable) and that it will make a strong appeal to all the former C.U.P. men here. If those men are holding the highest offices of state they might be able to do incalculable harm to the Arab cause, therefore however able they may be, however well-intentioned, my little group of friends oppose and has opposed their appointment to posts of the greatest responsibility. They are not to be actually in the Cabinet and they are not to hold administrative posts in Mosul, which is the gate, nor, if possible, in Baghdad which is the forge of politics. That is why they opposed Taufiq al Khalidi whom Faisal thought of as a possible Minister of Interior; he has now been suggested as Mutasarrif of Baghdad but I believe they will oppose that too and propose that he should be posted to Nasiriyah [Nasiriyah, An] where he can't get into touch with the Turks. I objected to Nuri, when he was explaining what he thought of Taufiq, that danger lay not only in Turkish leanings but also in the insanity of their own extremists. "Not nearly such grave danger" he said. "As long as they are Arab in feeling they don't matter. Sidi Faisal knows how to deal with them; they will disappear." And upon my soul I think he is right. As they point out it is not as if we proposed to remain in military occupation. In a year, perhaps in 6 months, there will be no more than 4 battalions of our soldiers in the land. Then the patriots must guard themselves, and they can't risk being stabbed in the back. Faisal has got into his new house, on the river above Baghdad. It's small but it's really very nice. On Wed. one of the ADCs telephoned to me and asked me to dinner, en famille, so to speak. I went up by launch. Have I ever told you what the river is like on a hot summer night? probably not - it can't be told at all adequately. At dusk the mist hangs in long white bands over the water; the twilight fades and the lights of the town shine out on either bank, with the river, dark and smooth and full of mysterious reflections, like a road of triumph through the midst. Silently a boat with a winking headlight slips down the stream, then a company of quffahs each with its tiny lamp, loaded to the brim with watermelons from Samarra. "Slowly, slowly!" the voices of the quffahjis drift across the water. "Don't ruffle the river lest we sink - see how we're loaded." And we slow down the launch so that the wash may not disturb them. The waves of our passage don't even extinguish the floating votive candles, each burning on its minute boat made out of the swathe of a date cluster, which anxious hands launched above the town. If they reach the last house yet burning, the sick man will recover, the baby will be born safely into this world of hot darkness and glittering lights and bewildering reflections. Now I've brought you out to where the palm trees stand martialled along the banks. The water is so still that you can see the scorpion in it, star by star; we'll go gently past these quffahs - and here are Faisal's steps. And you still can't form the remotest conception of how marvellously beautiful it is. We had an extremely amusing dinner, Faisal and I, Nuri, Rustam and an ADC. Faisal recounted his experiences in London. When he arrived there after the French turned him out of Syria, he went to the F.O. and saw Sir John Tilley, whom he rightly described as Meskin, a harmless individual. Sir John told him he was going to see the King, but he wasn't to talk about Syria, nor yet to mention the French, and above all he wasn't to allude to the fact that our agreements with the Arabs were incompatible with those we had made with the French. Unfortunately they had neglected to give the King the same directions and he embarked at once on all the prohibited subjects, and ended by assuring Faisal that he need have no anxiety because we were solidly behind him. Then we talked of tribes and how to guard our frontiers with camel corps - and it was the greatest fun. I took Nuri home, for he lives on the river. I also rode with Nuri on Friday morning; we went down to breakfast with Haji Naji. It was there that he told me what they felt about pro-Turks. And he told me also lots of gossip about the Sharif's family. The 3 sons by one mother, 'Ali, 'Abdullah and Faisal, of whom 'Abdullah was the favourite and Faisal always kept at a distance and sent off to do the far-away jobs. When their mother died, the Sharif married a Circassian - they never have more than one wife. She quarrelled bitterly with 'Ali over the management of the household and 'Ali hates her son, Zaid, whom Faisal loves. Both 'Ali and 'Abdullah are terribly jealous of Faisal now. As we rode back through the gardens of the Karradah suburb where all the people know me and salute me as I pass, Nuri said "One of the reasons you stand out so is because you're a woman. There are lots of political officers but there's only one Khatun. It is like when Sidi Faisal was in London and always wore Arab dress. There was no one like him. So for a hundred years they'll talk of the Khatun riding by." I think they very likely will. It may have escaped your notice that we're in the middle of Muharram. From the first to the fifteenth the Shi'ahs mourn for Husain, the Prophet's grandson, who was invited over from Mecca [Makkah] by the 'Iraqis to be Khalif, and when he arrived got no support from them, was opposed by the armies of his rival Mu'awiyah at the place where Karbala stands now, saw his followers die of thirst and wounds and was killed himself on the 15th. One small son escaped and from him Faisal is descended. (So is the Naqib for that matter.) Incidentally, when Faisal came, that story of his ancestor was always in my mind. The parallel was so complete, the invitation from 'Iraq, the journey from Mecca, the arrival with nothing but his personal following - if the end has proved different it's because I said "Absit omen!" so often. Well, the Shi'ahs are mourning hard. It takes the form of processions every night, lighted torches, drums, beating of breasts. Some of the young men in our office are conveniently lodged between the house of the Persian Consul and the house of one of the Nawabs - both Shi'ahs - and they invited me to dinner on Friday to see the processions. After dinner we sat on the roof with the big courtyards of the Consul and the Nawab on either side. Presently the wild drums drew near, the glare of torches filled the sky and the processions turned into the courtyards. Torches, and men leading horses in gorgeous trappings and men carrying huge banners and men with trays of lights on their heads. And then a black robed company which spread out in two rows across the court and they were swinging chains, with which they beat their backs - the black robes were open to the waist at the back so that the chains might fall on their bare skin. They swing them very skilfully, with a little jerk at the top of the swing so that the chains barely touched the skin, but the effect was wonderful - the black figures in the glaring torch light, swinging rhythmically from side to side with the swing of the chains, and the drums marking the time. Next came the breast-beaters, naked to the waist; and they stood in companies and beat their breasts in unison to a different rhythm of drums. Each procession surged through the courtyards, swung their chains, beat their breasts and surged out into the street, and another followed it, interminably. Having begun yesterday with the ceremony at the Naqib's, I spent the day in the office, rode after tea with Mr Thomson and had an Arab dinner party in the evening. My guests were Naji Suwaidi, loaded with blushing honours, Ja'far Pachahji, a very nice creature, quiet and unobtrusive, Kadhim Dajaili, a Shi'ah whom I know well, and a certain Sata' Beg al Hisri who was Faisal's Minister for Education in Syria and has just arrived here. He is an Allepine[?], a curious product. He is a very well educated man, speaks French and a little Italian. The thing he doesn't speak is Arabic - he speaks it like a Turk. Turkish was the official language, all his family spoke it, he was brought up in Turkish schools and held office in Constantinople [Istanbul]. He says he only learnt Arabic a few years ago, and he will never speak like an Arab. Yet he's a pure bred Arab and purely Arab in sympathy. He is married to a Turkish woman - she was educated in an English school in Constantinople and he says she speaks English perfectly - not a word of Arabic, of course. You can understand from things like this how strong a hold Turkish tradition has. Mr Glen of the Education Dept also dined - we had very amusing talks about modern Arabic and how to make a decent modern literary language. Naji and Sata' carried on the discussion mainly, the latter in his amazing clipped speech with its sharp Turkish vowels. I really must stop. Your loving daughter Gertrude. Hairwash very badly packed - only one bottle intact. Nevertheless, herewith cheque. I've been interrupted by having Ali Jaudat Beg to call and a long talk about France and the need of keeping quiet as to Syria. You know these letters to you are my private diary. I'm godmother to the little Bowman boy - would you be very kind and get a little silver thing, not more than ú5, for him and send to 17 Cambridge Sq. His name is Paul Humphrey.