Page 278 - Life of Gertrude Bell

*5* GERTRUDE DELL
though he ardently desires (and so do we all) to sec Ibn Saud
frustrated in his attempt to capture Hail/ It is hard to sec any­
thing more than a pathetic attempt to wriggle out of the conse­
quences of their own folly in the attitudes of Britain and Faisal at
this time, and there is a quality of sadness in Gertrude’s acceptance
of their dishonour. At the last they tried to bring about a compact
between Ibn Rashid and the Sharif to bolster Husain’s implausible
regime. Now they refused protection to the unfortunate tribes­
men who fled for their lives in the face of Ibn Saud’s fanatical
Ikhwan warriors.
While these military events unfolded, one government after
another came and went in the turmoil of Iraqi politics, the Kurdish
problem grew in complexity and insolubility, the religious leaders
of Najaf and Karbala continued to preach hatred of the infidel
intruders. Order of a kind was maintained in the country by the
R.A.F. which found that bombing from the air was a cheaper and
easier way than the sending of land troops to deal with recalcitrant
tribes.
On May 3rd, 1922 Churchill had written a note to Hubert Young,
then gravitated to the Colonial Office, which needed no signature
to prove its authorship:
I cannot understand why it is not possible to come to an
agreement. What is the outstanding clash on the Treaty? Be
ready to show it to me tomorrow morning ... The Mandate
does not depend on the preamble of the Treaty but has a wholly
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different and persisting authority. Nor do I see any reason why
we should not say that when Iraq is ready to stand by itself we
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shall have discharged the condition of our Mandate.
Under the sleepy stewardship of the Duke of Devonshire, things
took a little longer to happen. But a treaty was eventually signed
at Baghdad between Britain and Faisal’s Government, on October
10th 1922. Its protocol was signed on April 30th, 1923, just before
Sir Percy Cox retired (in May) and Sir Henry Dobbs, to Gertrude s
great pleasure, took over as High Commissioner. She could not
have asked for a better succession, for next to Cox among the men
around her she admired most the intelligent, sophisticated Dobbs,
though she found her mental stimulus at this time, and the last of
those intellectual attachments which for her amounted almost to
passions, in a new arrival, Vyvyan Holland, who rivalled her as a
linguist and shared her Spartan qualities of mind. It was said of