Gertrude Bell (54 page)

Accumulated British defeats led to further troubles. British installations were being wrecked and communities isolated. By February 1920 she was writing to Florence:

We are now in the middle of a full-blown Jihad, that is to say we have against us the fiercest prejudices of a people in a primeval state of civilization. Which means that it's no longer a question of reason . . . We're near to the collapse of society—the end of the Roman empire is a very close historical parallel . . . The credit of European civilization is gone . . . How can we, who have managed our own affairs so badly, claim to teach others to manage theirs better?

With the collapse of Arab society seemingly imminent, Gertrude wanted more than ever what she had always wanted: a prosperous and peaceful Arab nation. Even now, she was determined to stay put:

It's touch and go—another episode like that of the Manchesters would bring the Tigris tribes out immediately below Bagdad. We are living from hand to mouth . . . We may at any moment be cut off from the universe if the Tigris tribes rise. It doesn't seem to matter. In fact I don't mind at all . . .

Well, if the British evacuate Mesopotamia, I shall stay peacefully here and see what happens.

Off-the-cuff remarks like this could have aroused A.T.'s suspicions about his political officer's priorities and allegiances. During the past couple of years, the two of them had engendered an escalating crisis of their own. With A.T. carrying the whole weight of the administration on his admittedly broad shoulders, and “cross as a bear” in consequence,
they were bound to clash, particularly in Cox's absence. Wilson was, after all, doing an impossible job. Implementing government while waiting for the mandate to be declared was a juggling act, and he was trying to run the administration of an entire country with a central staff of five plus fifty-five assistants, in addition to the seventy British officers monitoring the outlying regions. The tribal attacks on roads and railways hampered the movement of troops around the country to where they were needed: principally, to guard the essential installations—the oil terminal, docks, warehouses, and government offices. Moreover, at any one time a high proportion of the sixty thousand troops supposedly at his disposal were on leave deferred from wartime, or in army hospitals suffering from heat exhaustion or malaria. Meanwhile London was constantly reminding him that the insurrection was costing the British taxpayer £2 million a month in military expenditure.

“Rather a trying week,” was Gertrude's understatement of events during this period, “for A.T. has been over-worked—a chronic state—and in a condition when he ought not to be working, which results in making him savagely cross and all our lives rather a burden in consequence.”

Both so rigorous and dynamic, Gertrude and A.T. were poles apart in almost every other respect. He was thirty-four in 1920, and eccentric in a peculiarly British stoical tradition. His father had been headmaster of the empire-oriented Clifton College near Bristol, where he had been educated, so his background was reactionary and chauvinistic. His favourite reading was the Bible, his favourite poet Kipling, his preferred epithets Latin ones. He was built in heroic mould, but his views placed him firmly in the past. Despite the fact that she was all of eighteen years older than him, Gertrude, with her particular intelligence and her whole-hearted dedication to the Arab cause, belonged to the future.

Nevertheless the conflict between them was not so much personal as professional. A.T. was becoming deeply suspicious of Gertrude's relations with her numerous important acquaintances both in the West and in the East, and especially of her rapport with the Arab nationalists who opposed his government. She looked among the powerful Iraqi leaders for future representatives and used their own aspirations to forward the constitutional changes she envisaged. He had written to a friend at the
India Office, “She will take some handling . . . she is undoubtedly popular in Baghdad among the natives, with whom she keeps in close touch, to her advantage, though it is sometimes dangerous.” He was even, perhaps, jealous of her influence and intimacy with Arabs in general, for she did not pursue her enquiries only among the VIPs: she continually went out into the countryside, by horse or car, making acquaintance with boat-builders, marsh farmers, fishermen, and villagers, listening and taking in their views. A.T. came to suspect that her work was undermining his. He was constitutionally unable to carry out the day-to-day running of the country while preparing to dismantle British government in favour of an uncertain future. She, by contrast, worked tirelessly outside the conventional limits of her job in her effort to show what needed to be done in readiness for a British-assisted Arab administration. She did not care whether or not it was British imperial practice for political officers to entertain the locals in their own houses, or go to places where women were not supposed to go, or enter into one-on-one conversations with extremists. Against a background of procrastination and its disastrous results, an impasse was reached. “My own feeling is that if, when we set up civil government, we do it on really liberal lines, and
not be
afraid, we shall have the country with us” . . . “I wish I carried more weight. But the truth is I'm in a minority of one in the Mesopotamian political service—or nearly—and yet I'm sure that I'm right.”

When A.T. was made a KCIE in May 1920, Gertrude thought he deserved it and was genuinely glad, but commented: “I confess I wish that in giving him a knighthood they could also endow him with the manners knights are traditionally credited with!” Both of them were writing to their absent chief, Sir Percy Cox, during this time. Gertrude kept him in touch with every turn and twist of Iraqi events, fretting at his absence and trusting that he would return before it was too late. “Sir P.C. is a very great personal asset and I wish the Government would let him come back at once. The job here is far more important than Persia.”

A.T. had begun to complain of Gertrude to Cox, in an attempt to get rid of her. Lest she should discover this correspondence, he employed coded references to his political officer, referring to her as “the individual” or “him,” and their troubled relationship as “the problem.” Six months after Cox's departure, A.T. had disbanded the Baghdad branch of the Arab Bureau, under whose auspices she had technically been appointed,
and had intimated to Cox that he did not know what there would be for her to do if she returned after the Paris Peace Conference and her protracted leave. Cox played the diplomat: he wanted to get back to Baghdad and he needed Gertrude.

Meanwhile, A.T.'s rages dominated the Secretariat. There was much shouting and slamming of doors, and his brooding presence put a dampener on the office lunches, where Gertrude made a point of talking to other officers in order to avoid his heavy silences. But there was no going back after mid-June, when they had a worse row than usual. She confided in a letter to Hugh:

. . . my own path has been very difficult. I had an appalling scene last week with A.T. We had been having a sort of honeymoon and then most unfortunately I gave one of our Arab friends here a bit of information I ought not, technically, to have given. It wasn't of much importance and it didn't occur to me I had done wrong till I mentioned it casually to A.T. He was in a black rage that morning and he vented it on me. He told me my indiscretions were intolerable, and that I should never see another paper in the office. I apologized for that particular indiscretion, but he continued: “You've done more harm than anyone here. If I hadn't been going away myself I should have asked for your dismissal months ago—you and your Amir!” At this point he choked with anger.

The underlying differences between them had been brought to the boil by their disagreement over a draft of a Mesopotamian constitution suggested by the nationalist Yasin Pasha, destined to become a future prime minister of Iraq. Gertrude found it quite reasonable and said so. A.T. replied with the now customary blast: anything of the kind was entirely incompatible with British control, he said, and he would never accept it. Obliged, nevertheless, to follow the guidelines from London, he shortly made a speech to a deputation in which he conceded the possibility of an Amir of Iraq. Gertrude wrote:

Of course we can't prevent it, nor have we any interest in doing so. But I know well that if this attitude had been adopted 8 months ago, we should not now be in the very delicate position in which we find ourselves. And I expect A.T. knows it too. I think myself that he ought to go now, because he
never can be in real sympathy with the policy which was laid down from home in 1918 . . . Meantime it may be I who goes. But I shall not send in my resignation. I shall only go if I am ordered.

There was, however, light at the end of the tunnel. Sir Percy Cox was at last requested to return from Teheran. He passed through Baghdad on his way to London in June, stopping off for a long discussion with Gertrude and leaving her to look after his parrot until his return to Iraq in the autumn. A few days previously, A.T. had received a deputation from a committee of Baghdadis, asking that a constituent assembly be formed to decide the future form of government. Cox concurred, in an announcement that Mesopotamia be constituted an independent state under the guarantee of the League of Nations and subject to the British mandate—by which Britain was obliged to govern Iraq until the country qualified for independence and for joining the League of Nations. He announced that he would return to Baghdad in the autumn to establish a provisional Arab government.

When Cox left for London, he took the first half of a paper that would prove to be Gertrude's
magnum opus
. It was a book-length report she had been writing for months that would show the spadework that had been done and convince the British government that, in spite of the insurrection, Mesopotamia had been enough of a success to justify the British staying on. The rest of
Review of the Civil Administration of Mesopotamia
by Miss Gertrude Bell, CBE, was dispatched in the diplomatic bag. It had taken her nine months, writing mostly in her spare time, and when the whole document was presented as a White Paper to both Houses of Parliament, Gertrude—in her absence—received a standing ovation, an exceptional accolade. Florence wrote immediately, sending newspaper cuttings with the family's heartfelt congratulations and her own question as to whether Gertrude had written it at Wilson's instigation. She replied in unequivocal fashion:

I've just got Mother's letter saying there's a fandango about my report. The general line taken by the press seems to be that it's most remarkable that a dog should be able to stand up on its hind legs—i.e. a female write a white paper. I hope they'll drop that source of wonder and pay attention to the report itself . . . By the way, Mother need not think it was A.T. who asked me
to write it—it was the India Office, and I insisted, very much against his will, on doing it my own way.

There would be four more difficult months before Cox returned, but they would be the last four months of having to work with A.T., who was now anxious to move on. There had been warnings from London that the state of affairs in Iraq could not be allowed to continue. A.T. had proved incapable of departing from his high-handed colonial methods when dealing with opposition, usually instigated and funded by the Turks, and early demands for Arab control. He would allow the situation to get out of hand, then react over-harshly, provoking yet more defiance. Nor could he bring himself to use Gertrude as Cox had used her, to bargain, persuade, and cajole the tribesmen into collaboration. There was so much that she could have done, but A.T. had sidelined her from the start. He intended to resign, but he also knew that he would not be pressed to stay once Cox was back in the saddle. And there would be one final devastating row between him and Gertrude.

Gertrude had always maintained a vigorous political correspondence with the influential people she knew in London, Cairo, Jerusalem, and Delhi. Cox had not objected, because he agreed with her aims and knew that her persuasive if maverick style increased understanding and brought beneficial results. It was something that a man, perhaps, would not have done, but Gertrude considered that she had earned the right to speak out, and she was highly respected in social milieux long before she had become a government employee. Her ambitions went far beyond any official promotions she might receive; in fact, there was no post possible for her, although she had been amused when colleagues had voted her second choice for High Commissioner after Cox. After that, when she wrote to Florence, she had signed herself “High Commissioner.”

To Florence in early 1920:

I've just written a long letter to Lord Robert [Cecil] giving an exhaustive criticism of the dealings of the [Paris Peace] Conference with Western Asia . . . For from first to last it's radically bad and there can't be any stability in existing arrangements . . .

I have written to Edwin Montagu an immense letter about the sort of government we ought to set up here and even sent him the rough draft of a
constitution . . . At any rate I've done my best both to find out what should be done and to lay it before him. I sometimes feel that it's the only thing I really care for, to see this country go right . . .

She could hardly have chosen a more prestigious correspondent. Montagu was Secretary of State for India, with ultimate responsibility for Mesopotamia. Did he enquire of A.T. whether the letter was endorsed by him as Acting Civil Commissioner, or did he assume that Gertrude was stepping out of line? In any event, her letter drew a stinging rebuke in the form of a long telegram:

From Mr. Montagu for Miss Bell. Private and Personal.

I hope you will understand from me that in the present critical state of affairs of Mesopotamia when the future of the country hangs in the balance we should all pull together. If you have views which you wish us to consider, I should be glad if you would either ask the Civil Commissioner to communicate them or apply for leave and come home and represent them. You may always be sure of consideration of your views but Political Officers should be very careful of their private correspondence with those not at present in control of affairs. Apart from all questions of usual practice and convention it may increase rather than diminish difficulties, a result which I know you would deplore.