Page 198 - Gertrude Bell (H.V.F.Winstone)

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GERTRUDE BELL
Shortly after my arrival he received a rather testy telega ram
from India referring to Us visit and expressing some bewilder­
ment as to the status of the bureau ... He hinted that I should
become the bureau’s correspondent here but I said at once
that I was not a good enough Arabic scholar ... He agreed to
this and I suggested that Gertrude Bell, who appears to be
determined to stay out here, should be the correspondent with
Blaker the nominal correspondent providing the necessary male
and military attributes ... Gertrude Bell seems to be the perfect
person for the job ... Sir Percy Cox agreed but said that the
correspondent... if he had access to his information and
worked from his office would have to come under his control
to a certain extent. That is just the difficulty ... These fears all
seem to date from Mark’s visit [Mark Sykes] who seems to
have been amazingly tactless, and not only to have rather
blustered everyone but also to have decried openly everything
Indian in a manner which was bound to cause some resent­
ment ... I think G.B. may be relied upon not to create difficul­
ties. I have written to Deedes who will tell you of how my own
plans are shaping ...

On May 27th also, Gertrude wrote to her mother to tell her of the
excitement caused in Basra by news of the Russian advance into
Persia, and the fall of Erzerum. ‘We have had in Basra 3 of the
Cossack officers who rode over the hills to A1 Gharbi. They had
the time of their lives here.’
At Nasiriyah she stayed with Major Hamilton, the Political
Agent from Kuwait and heir to the barony of Belhaven and
Stenton. But she spent most of her time at the Euphrates town
with Captain G. F. Eadie ‘who knows more about the tribes than
any man in Mesopotamia’. They worked every day from breakfast
to tea, riding together before they started work, often in the com­
pany of General Brooking. She wrote to Chirol: ‘You don’t know
how difficult my job is here; but I continue to be very glad to be
here. As for all the part that doesn’t concern me, it is still out­
rageously bad. Insufficient ice, insufficient mosquito nets, in­
sufficient rations at the front, a colossal, far-reaching insufficiency
and incompetence. Since the Crimea I don’t think there has been
such a campaign.’ She went on to Suq al Shuyakh, where she met
another ‘charming’ young Political Officer, C. J. Edmonds, ‘as
clever as can be’.