Baghdad. June 23. Dearest Father. Thank you very much for sending me your letters to Lord Grey and Sir Herbert, both of which I thought excellent. Meantime, it would appear from the Reuters that Govt is going to intervene, which I fear is just what you don't want. The repealing of the 7 hours' bill must be a step in the right direction, but as to other legislation we have not had any details. I always feel that I have to wait 10 days till I get your letter in order to understand what the telegrams mean. We are labouring under the difficulties presented by the 4 days' holiday of the big 'Id when all the Arab offices are closed and one can't get anything through. A holiday at this time of year is no good as far as holiday making goes, for it is too hot to go out on any expedition. By luck - and the vagaries of the moon - it didn't begin till Monday, so that I had Sunday morning in the Museum. I have to give my staff a holiday and I shall not be able to work there again till Saturday which is a bore. However, I brought back some cases of cylinder seals, at which I have been working of an evening. Tonight S/L Harnett and Mr Cooke are coming to dine and go through some of them with me. Mrs Cooke has gone which makes Mr Cooke again available when wanted! We had a terrific day on Monday. It began with a levee at the Palace at 6.10. I was in an ace of going without orders, but I discovered their absence as I was waiting for the High Commissioner at the end of the Maude Bridge and despatched a Qawas hot foot to fetch them. H.E. being fortunately late, they arrived in the nick of time. I then came home, breakfasted and did an hour's work after which I set out again on visits, First the Naqib, then the Ministers, then selected notables and finally the Queen and 'Ali and his family. I found Faisal with 'Ali and we all went together to see the old grandmother who being 90 or so is moribund from the effects of her motor journey from 'Amman. She was lying on a mattress on the floor, almost incapable of speech, poor thing. 'Ali's wife is a nice woman but as she was brought up in C'ple [Istanbul (Constantinople)] she scarcely talks any Arabic. There are two girls of about 17 and 18, quite pretty, and a pleasant looking boy of 16, and two other little girls of 4 or 5. 'Ali seems to be very fond of them all and delighted to have them. He had not seen them for nearly two years. I could wish that they had anything to live on but Faisal's civil list. I got back to the office at about 10 to find a lot of despatches come in by the last mail which gave me a busy morning. After tea, Ken and I went down to pay Haji Naji an 'Id visit. You should have seen the pride with which he produced his new secator [sic] and cut us a bunch of roses. It was a great success that present. Lionel is not very well. He is going to stay with Sir Henry which I think will be a good plan. The house is very cool and he will be properly fed and looked after. It has been extremely mild for Baghdad, rarely over a hundred and the nights quite cold; but after dinner my house is stuffy and I am glad when it is time to go to bed on the roof. We are going to begin swimming which is the only agreeable form of excercise [sic] at this time of year. H.M. is off next week to make a cure at "Wichy" - Arabs can't pronounce a V. He may come over to England but I think it's more likely that he will have his boy out to Vichy. He looks very well and is much elated at the solution of the Turkish difficulties, but there is little for him to do in the summer and his Ministers are just as glad that he should be away. With the rising temperature, Mr Vernon has discovered that he must go on deputation to London on important financial business! The Minister of Finance is going with him, Sabih Beg. Do you remember we called on his family at C'ple. I shall tell him to go and see you, if you don't mind. He talks English and French of a kind. He is a good soul; I like him very much. Percy Loraine will be here next week, on his way home. He is very unhappy at leaving Tehran [(Teheran)] where he has done extremely well. I hope his successor will follow in his footsteps. Ever your very loving daughter Gertrude. Did I tell you how I had persuaded the Cabinet to let me treat Babylon as an excavation, have one of the German excavators out to arrange and classify all the objects left behind and then divide them between the excavators and the Museum? No sooner had I got this through, than we had terrific despatches form the F.O. saying could not we do anything about Babylon, to which we responded blandly that it was all done. Wasn't it luck.