Page 228 - Life of Gertrude Bell

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GERTRUDE BELL
in a country under military occupation. She also said they had
sent for Hogarth to help form a solid block with Lawrence, so as
to present a united opinion of ‘Near Easterns’. ‘I’m filling up my
time by getting into touch with the French ... The Mesopotamian
settlement is so closely linked with the Syrian that we can’t con­
sider one without the other, and in the ease of Syria it’s the French
attitude that counts.’
By the end of March Wilson had arrived and Gertrude was
preparing to leave for a well-earned holiday with her father. They
had dinner with Wickham Steed, the editor of The Tims, ‘I don’t
like him but he was very useful’, and they were taken by Domnul
and Lawrence to see French political journalists. ‘After dinner
TEL explained exactly the existing situations between Faisal and
his Syrians on the one hand and France on the other ... He did
it quite admirably. His charm, simplicity and sincerity made a
deep personal impression and convinced his listeners ... ’ Wilson
was not so enchanted. In April, after Gertrude had gone on a
motoring holiday through Europe with her father, he had lunched
with Lloyd George and met Chaim Weizmann, and had tea with
Balfour and Lord Robert Cecil, the ‘moving spirit in the League
of Nations movement’. Fie left Paris in May, ‘having done all I
could’. Before returning to Baghdad he wrote:

Miss Bell, who was in Paris when I arrived, left before I did and
passed through Paris on April 22nd on her way to Algiers ...
I saw a good deal of Colonel T E Lawrence whilst in Paris; he
originally came with Sharif Faisal, but stayed on after the
latter had left Paris and returned to Syria. He is about to retire
into private life; he seems to have done immense harm and our
difficulties with the French in Syria seem to me to be mainly due
to his actions and advice. I also saw Sharif Faisal twice—at his
house —a florid Louis XVI mansion, and once at the Majestic
where he had tea with Miss Bell and I. He was the centre of a
net of French intrigue ... as the self constituted champion of
Syria ... The conflict of the ideals of Zionism with the hard facts
of Muhammedan predominance in Palestine is another matter
with which the proposed International Commission will have to
deal and for which there is no obvious solution ... Curzon was
enormously overworked, rather depressed and pessimistic...
Lord Hardinge is at Paris but is now a nonentity ... I saw a
good deal of Sir Arthur Hirtzel who is as good as ever, but