October 31 [1913]
Ersek
Colonia
31 October
My dear Gertrude.

Last night we got our first post for many days and there were two letters from you, el Landolillah! Long delightful interesting letters full of many things and people – and even of the fashion for wearing your watch on your left knee – it would look well riding a camel – So I find this paper & no other. It’s a survival of some Abyssinian journey, when I used to carry paper to write to chiefs stamped in advance with the legation seal which they would know. Now where to begin – with your journey of course and date of departure – Is it to be Nov. 14 or later – but I must write quick to catch you if it is the 14th, the which I do not think – you sound too tied to the Clarendon Press – and your brother – and this way and that dividing the swift mind – I think it will be the later boat – But please don’t go and do anything really too dangerous – go and drink the desert & see what is written for you to see – but something makes me rather afraid when I hear of Asir – those far countries & new dangers though if you go, you go my dear and God keep you –

Then of all the interesting absorbing things you tell me – I love your letters - I won’t talk for ever and not for paper and a half hour – No – I’ll tell you of our own little adventures and where we stand – Roughly I am aggregating to myself with huge pretension functions which I have not. We came to a deadlock – Austria & Italy, if they tell me true, are threatening to occupy the country. It is necessary to make some arrangement and some such I have after endless discussions and concessions proposed – a political and general frontier line such as we were indeed sent to make, but without seeing much of the country and by trenching on the Vlack question which is not ours – But if no arrangement be made and no frontier Austria and Italy threaten to take the whole country – there are incalculable riches in a thing like that – so I have proposed an arrangement to their Excellencies in London with which all have so far fallen in, except the French & Russian – But they too came in, le cas ècliant – Anything is better than blood even ink to spill – As for seeing the country that we can do afterwards – The Austrians & Italians will not move from here without some arrangement. As for “determining nationality by examination of the language spoken in the families” that we cannot do. We have made efforts and been defeated – but I believe I told you all about these amazing scenes. So now in fear of worse things I am throwing considerations to be considered by Sir E Grey – who will probably reply that I am an impertinent idiot – and had better mind my own business – We are in the hands of God –

But the things is really very interesting – too long to tell - & longer still much longer to talk about – I fancy you would have liked it – So now we wait – if they approve then we go in procession round the country to examine it for nothing in particular, except that people shall not fight because they have not been considered to their thinking in the settlement – and then we declare a frontier – and then the next adventure –

No – I can’t be back before you go – not as far as I can see – but I miss you very much.

There are so many amazing things in the world at which one clutches, which one hugs greedily for a time – but they don’t any of them matter – they are only “Philip drunk” – sober he or she is always alone and apart.

I started out to write with lots of things in what I am pleased to call my head – but now there is nothing but the desert, and the serenity of it – the high mountains sit all round us – and I wonder what right I have to deal with so many people’s lives – certainly none - & yet I do it & would do it again –

In the desert these things don’t weigh more than they ought to weigh –

For there will be many people killed here – only fewer if they take my scheme than if they don’t.
Yrs.
Dick