Baghdad. June 2. Dearest Father. Thank you so much for all the papers which Mother forwarded to me - all but your letter to Sir H. Samuel which you didn't enclose. I note that the P.M. admitted that the owners could not accept a settlement without an adjustment of hours. The Govt's proposals, in the light of the comments of the Association, seem hopelessly muddle-headed. Meantime, yesterday's telegrams gave a ray of hope, inasmuch as some of the miners appear to be wavering over the question of hours of work and anxious to re-open negotiations. From what you say, the fact that the offer of a new subsidy should have lapsed must be all to the good.
I can't refer to the Times because I have had no papers since the general strike. I can't think why they didn't come last mail. Anyway the last Times I received was that of April 28 while your letter from Mt Grace was dated May 18. The secator [sic] for Haji Naji has arrived, however; how darling of you to send it. I have not taken it to him yet because I have been so busy in the Museum. Profiting by remarkably cool weather I've been there between tea and dinner as well as in the early morning. I know he will love it and will begin to cast round for something to send you in return - another coffee pot! I will try to take it down to him on Sunday. There is a little basket of fruit from him on my dining room table most mornings, dear old thing.

Tomorrow we have a holiday for the King's birthday and I shall have a whole day for my Museum. That enthusiast, S/L Harnett, is coming too. We have been engaged in taking down a beautiful late Abbasid inscription (cut brick) which was dropping out of the ruined building in which it stood and could not be preserved in situ. It is coming out very well and S/L Harnett is now going to clean it and build it up against the wall of the big Arab room. We spent a long peaceful morning on Sunday cataloguing cylinder seals on which he writes the serial number with exquisite delicacy. He is certainly a great asset and he seems to be amused with what some people might consider a very tedious job. I don't, for there is an indescribably attraction about these fine little things. The worst of it is that I can't extract the furniture out of the Railway people so we don't get to anything final.

I haven't told you about the floods for a long time. The Euphrates, after threatening to cover the country up to the embankment of the Hillah [Hillah, Al] railway, thought better of it. The Tigris is definitely going down, but one of the deputies told me the other day that the cellars of his house which is in the middle of Baghdad, a good deal Bellow the river level, are 4 ft deep in water. It will only disappear by the slow process of drying up which must be horribly unhealthy. My part of the town is all right though there are an exceptional number of mosquitoes, innocuous apparently, for no one is having malaria, but tiresome.

Goodbye dearest; I'm going to write to Mother. Your very affectionate daughter Gertrude.

I write to London, never knowing where you may be.

Private. Dearest. I do understand that things are looking very discouraging and I am most dreadfully sorry and unhappy about you. But I don't see for the moment what I can do. You see I have undertaken this very grave responsibility of the Museum - I have been writing about it ad nauseum for months. I had been protesting for more than a year that I must have a proper building; this winter one fell vacant and they gave it to me, together with a very large sum of money for fittings, etc. Then first I had to reroof it and next I was held up at least 2 months by the floods and the work they entailed which prevented work being done for me. Now all the very valuable objects - they run into tens of thousands of pounds and incidentally they would never have been taken out of the ground if I had not been here to guarantee that they would be properly protected - have been transferred pellmell into the new building and there is absolutely no one but I who knows anything about them, since J.M. Wilson left. It isn't merely a responsibility to the 'Iraq but to archaeology in general. I could not possibly leave things in this state except for the gravest reasons. I work at it as hard as I can, but it's a gigantic task - of course I love it and am ready to give all my spare time to it. But I can't resign from my post as Oriental Secretary for it means giving up over £1000 a year, plus the greater part of my house rent. And as I am a civil servant, I have only about 2 months' leave owing to me, which means a little over 5 weeks in England.

That is the whole position. In a couple of months or so I may be beginning to see daylight in the Museum, or at any rate a condition in which I could safely leave it for a little. Let us wait for a bit, don't you think, and see how things look

You do realize, don't you, that I feel bound to fulfil the undertakings I gave when, at my instance, the 'Iraq Govt allowed excavations to be begun 4 years ago. The thing has grown and grown - it can't do otherwise - and whereas, until last autumn I had J.M. to help me, I now have no one. All the plans that were begun before Hugo was ill, even, are now bearing fruit and I'm rather overwhelmed by them. Anyhow, darlingest Father, give me a little time to get things into some sort of order and then if you want me to take what leave I can, I will do so. But in that case I think I should have to come back for next winter, or part of it.

Except for the Museum work, life is very dull and since your last two letters came, I have been horribly worried about you. I know it's being dreadful for you with the coal strike on top of everything else. Dearest I love you so much. Gertrude