Page 223 - Life of Gertrude Bell

The Mandate

The armistice of November 1918 found her recuperating from her
last bout of malaria, which came on in October. Meanwhile the
world’s politicians buzzed around the hotels of Paris and prepared
for the Peace Conferences at Versailles and Sevres.
Much of her time was spent with the G.O.C., General MacMunn
— the successor of General Maude who died from cholera in the
previous year—and the C.-in-C., General Sir William Marshall.
T spend most of my mornings in talk. The C.-in-C. has been a
great help. He is very wise and moderate and I take his counsel
not having Sir Percy. I am quite the politician at present!’
At the end of the year she had even gone so far as to tell her
father, ‘I’m second choice for High Commissioner here, so I’m
told! what would all the Permanent Officials say if we suggested
it?’ She added: ‘Had a delicious day out with Evelyn Howell
(sent over from India to look into the country’s finances) and
Frank Balfour.’ Gertrude had been instrumental in arranging
a series of lectures by Professor George Margoliouth, the
Oxford Arabist, to which all the Political Officers in the Baghdad
vicinity were expected to go. ‘It was an extraordinary tour de force’
she wrote, ‘he lectured for fifty minutes on the ancient splendours
of Baghdad, in classical Arabic and without a note.’ Some of the
young ‘Politicals’ were not so impressed. They mixed with the
local Arabs who spoke a far from classical version of the tongue
and they learnt to converse in the dialects of their own neighbour­
hoods. In such places life was still primitive and language had not
caught up with the terms of the twentieth century. At one lecture
an intrepid spirit interrupted the learned professor to ask, ‘How
do you say in Arabic—Do you drive a motor car?’ Margoliouth
was not amused.