Page 257 - Life of Gertrude Bell

faisal’s kingdom 233
asking me to come and speak to him in his house, which is next
door ... [he] handed me a telegram from Winston Churchill saying
that HMG had placed the decisions as to their policy in Meso­
potamia in the hands of the Secretary of State for War and he
therefore informed the High Commissioner and the Commander
in Chief that he could not burden the British public with the ex­
penditure necessary to carry out the programme suggested i.e. Sir
Percy Cox’s recent suggestion that he should bring about the
selection of Faisal as Amir of Iraq, that being, in his view, the only
way of establishing speedily a stable Arab Government and reduc­
ing the British army of occupation ... ’ British troops were to
evacuate the Mosul area as soon as General Ironside could safely
get his men out of Persia (by June 1921) and the mandate should
be retained and imposed by a strong police force. Meanwhile,
they, the British administrators, would clear out of Baghdad and
establish their headquarters in Basra. ‘Sir Percy and I agreed that
this scheme had no sense or meaning,’ she wrote. Indeed, it was
an impossible plan, and wiser counsels prevailed in Whitehall, for
Churchill was soon in the throes of planning his Cairo Conference.
A mere two months before Sir Percy and Lady Cox, with Gertrude,
Captain Clayton (Iltyd, the General’s brother) and Sayid Talib and
the notables of Baghdad jostling around him, had stood on die
station platform at Baghdad to the strains of ‘God Save die King’
and the cheers of the multitude. ‘I thought as he [Cox] stood there
in his white and gold lace, with his air of fine and simple dignity,
that there had never been an arrival more momentous - never any­
one on whom more conflicting emotions were centred, hopes and
doubts and fears, but above all confidence in his personal integrity
and wisdom. It was all I could do not to cry.’ Now, it looked as
though Sir Percy was playing at the very least an oblique game
with the Iraqis. Even as they prepared to form an elected Assembly,
he had in mind the imposition of Faisal by Britain, presumably in
the fairly certain knowledge that the French would eject him
from Syria the moment they received the mandate, which they
did.
The important role of Gertrude in the negotiations taking place
at this time is suggested by the fact that Councils of State were
often held at her home. She entertained there a great deal in the
latter part of 1920 and in 1921, trying to bring together the dispar­
ate forces from which Britain hoped to produce a provisional
government and an elected assembly. She and Philby laboured