Baghdad. Jan 13 Darling Father. Your letter of Dec 29 filled in the details of your telegrams. You must, after all, have had a happy Xmas, or at least a happy New Year, with your terrible anxiety about Hugo diminishing and vanishing. You speak of its being 2 or 3 months before he can do anything - and I'm not surprised. He is only another proof that unless you club us on the head we refuse to give up the ghost!
My convalescence has been happily spent reading a great deal of archaeology and writing an article for the Encyclopaedia on the 'Iraq. The article would have been better if I had not been forced to compress it so fearfully. Even as it is, I don't think it is so bad, but it has to be vetted by the Colonial Office and perhaps they will take the spark of life out of it. I'm now embarked on the Annual Report for the League and am (if the truth were known) postponing my return to the office in order to break the back of it. For it is a terrific effort to get through a big piece of work while one is involved in the daily drudgery. I am, however, quite well, sleep and eat and go out walking daily. Indeed I think that the 10 days of enforced idleness have done me a great deal of good. You know really (but don't say it) the strain of looking after my Belloved Sylvia and doing my work at the same time, was very great. I hear from her, bless her, and write to her every week.

The 'Iraq Cabinet has accepted the new treaty and I don't think there will be any difficulty about it in Parliament. Mr Amery, very wisely, agreed to the slight verbal modifications urged by the King. They are alleviations to the British tax payer just as much as to the 'Iraq. Bernard and Ken have done excellent work and to get a treaty through in 16 days is perhaps a record.

I don't think the Turks mean to fight. Every week that they delay makes it less likely that they will screw up their courage. And we hear from C'ple [Istanbul (Constantinople)] that they are having a very serious recrudescence of troubles in N.E. Anatolia. Silly as it may seem, people won't wear hats though they have been ordered to do so. Anyway, hats aren't obtainable in a moment. I heard in Mosul [Mawsil, Al] the most ludicrous account of the efforts of people in the frontier villages, where the presence of large quantities of soldiers made it necessary to obey the new law, to provide themselves with something that would pass as a hat. They donned baskets or bits of matting, or anything that looked least like a fez or a turban, but the minds underneath were surging in revolt. Mustafa Kamal has gone far too far and too fast and the day of reckoning is on him. It is he, however, who is holding out against war, so we'll hope he won't succumb at once to general paralysis of the insane with which he is threatened. Wein and Weib are his troubles.

I will privately tell you that I gather from our extremely detailed consular reports that Syria is in a bad way. De Jouvenel has never done anything without doing it wrong. His terms of amnesty are inacceptible [sic], his method of electing the Constituent Assembly has put everyone at sixes and sevens, he has rebuffed Damascus [Dimashq (Esh Sham, Damas)], and, worst of all, he and his generals have failed to put down the reBellion. Now as we know, from our experience of 1920, even if you were in the wrong, you must restore law and order before you begin making constitutions. No doubt he is full of good intentions, but he knows nothing of the East in general, or of Syria in particular. In short he is not Sir Percy Cox  and he is trying to force a solution which it took even Sir Percy nine months to find, and then two years of wise and sympathetic handling to establish. So that I am quite stubborn about the Syrian dilemma and I still think that the French will find themselves obliged to throw in their hand ultimately. And I don't put that "ultimately" very far off. What will happen afterwards I can't predict. Syria is at present heading straight for chaos, Moslem against Christian et tout le bataclan. When you've forced an oriental country into complete confusion, it takes time and a great deal of knowledge to pull it straight. The French have neither. That's what I think.

You need not be alarmed about our 25 years' mandate. If we go on as fast as we've gone for the last two years, 'Iraq will be a member of the League before 5 or 6 years have passed, and our direct responsibility will have ceased. It's almost incredible how the country is settling down. I look back to 1921 or 1922 and can scarcely believe that so great a change has taken place. Now with the northern frontier settled, we ought to be able to double the pace.

It's all being so interesting. Archaeology and my museum are taking a bigger and bigger place. I do hope this year to get the Museum properly lodged and arranged. It's such fun, isn't it, to make things new from the beginning; I don't wonder that the Creator enjoyed those 6 days, though no doubt his judgement on them was a trifle rosy.

Did I tell you I was now started off on flints, the most enthralling study. We have nothing as yet in the 'Iraq earlier than historic times (4000 BC downwards, roughly) but I'm going to get the oil geologists to find the oldest river terraces and see if we can't pick up palaeolithic flints {there} on them. If you could send me any short and handy treatise on flints I should be much obliged. I gather that, as a mineral, they are not very old, not what geologists call old. Ever, dearest, your very affectionate daughter Gertrude.