Her father understood her feelings completely, and hatched a plan that would neatly avoid the social obligations of London. Much of her time there, he knew, would be taken up with clothes shopping. When they had spent the few days in Paris, why didn’t the two of them then go off by themselves for a motor tour through Belgium and France, and by sea to Algiers? She was immensely relieved and began to look forward to the trip. But what she wanted most, she wrote, was to see the family; and after that, a Yorkshire leg of mutton.
From Paris in March 1919, she wrote to Florence what it meant to her to be with Hugh again: “I can’t tell you what it has been like to have him for these last two days. He has been more wonderfully dear than words can say, and in such good spirits, looking so well. I can scarcely believe that three years of war have passed over his head since I saw him.”
Father and daughter were always able to pick up where they left off, and time had done nothing to diminish their affection for each other. They had an ecstatic reunion, after which they joined up with Domnul and lunched with Lord Robert Cecil—her former chief at the Wounded and Missing Office. After a few days, Hugh departed and Gertrude got down to work.
In March 1918 revolutionary Russia, under the new Bolshevik government, had signed a treaty with Germany leaving the Allies—France, Britain, Italy, and America—to continue the war on the front in Western Europe. The British had continued to push the Turks northwards out of Arabia, hoping again to start a new front moving north-west through Austria, to strike Germany at its undefended southern border—a hope that had been abandoned after the Dardanelles disaster of 1915. At first freed from the conflict with Russia, Germany was able to concentrate its efforts on these fronts, and launched six months of furious attacks against the Allies’ trenches running all the way from the North Sea coast in Belgium to the Swiss border in the south. The Allies had held on until the German army was exhausted, running out of equipment, boots, and even food. By August, German morale was sinking. The British were assembling a secret army of one hundred thousand fresh infantry, spearheaded by a hundred of Churchill’s newly invented tanks. They punched through the weak centre of the German lines, rooting the troops out of their trenches and following them miles into territory that four years of fighting had failed to gain. Immediately the French in the north and the Americans in the south hammered away at the German trenches while the British advanced in the centre. The German commander-in-chief recognized defeat, and within days the Germans had sued for peace.
Almost within moments of the peace prospect, the Allies began to wrangle amongst themselves; wrangling which would hinder Gertrude for three more years and bring her mission in Arabia almost to disaster. At first the Allies could not agree whether to pursue the Germans all the way to Berlin, which would leave the country devastated but having learnt a lesson never to be forgotten. Marshal Foch, the French overall Allied commander, declared that more death and destruction would benefit nobody. The Allies produced a document of armistice, by which the Germans admitted defeat and would be forced to accept the total demobilization of their army and the handing over of their navy to the British. The Germans signed on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, and the firing stopped. Meanwhile, the British army had reached the Turkish border. The Turks had fled Arabia, but the trouble they caused would continue.
The Armistice ended hostilities, but the Allied armies remained poised to fight again if Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey would not submit to terms for a permanent peace treaty. What were the terms to be? America wanted repayment of the money it had lent to England and to France, and Britain wanted repayment of its loans to France, but both the European countries were bankrupt. France wanted security for evermore from German attack, and it wanted the return of its German-held territory in Alsace Lorraine. Italy, after grim battles fought on behalf of the Allies, demanded more territory carved from the defeated nations. Britain wanted a secure empire, with a navy once more in control of the oceans. Everyone wanted a Germany humbled, disarmed, and paying through the nose, although nobody could reach an acceptable figure.
These problems were enough in themselves to fully occupy the exhausted leaders arriving in Paris in the New Year of 1919. The three major contenders at the Conference were President Wilson for America, the British Prime Minister Lloyd George, and the elderly but tough-minded Prime Minister Clemenceau of France. Beyond the grasp of these men, but part of their responsibilities, were the futures of all those peoples who now had no government, no defined boundaries, and no recognized identity as nations. With the collapse of such immense empires as the German, Russian, Austrian, and Turkish, hundreds of their subject tribes and races in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East were left with no administration, no police, army, or money.
The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 was assembled to resolve all of these issues, even if the problems began with the resolution of a language in which to conduct the discussions. Twenty-seven Allied countries were invited. Every nation affected by the war was offered the chance to stake its case against the defeated enemy, and for its own place in the postwar world. Powerful nations like Britain and America arrived early, before the end of 1918, taking over enormous hotels for their representatives. Small ones from the other side of the world took months to arrive. Amongst them were peoples of which the great Allied powers had hardly heard, including several from Arabia and the now-abandoned Turkish Empire for whose future Gertrude would battle.
President Wilson arrived in Paris to declare his fourteen points of principle for the future relations between nations, including the right of every nation to choose its own form of government. Colonial rule was to be consigned to history. A new model was needed to enable powers such as Great Britain and France to teach the new nations to establish good government, with financial aid and trained administrators preparing the way for independence. The answer would be the “mandate,” a legal document binding the chosen established country to govern and assist the fledgling nation until it was ready to stand alone, perhaps twenty years hence. In return, the supervising power gained immediate trading opportunities and strong diplomatic influence in the region of its protectorate.
Believing that the First World War must be the war to end all wars, President Wilson also came determined to create a new forum where the nations could resolve their disputes by discussion, and even impose sanctions on a country showing aggressive intentions. He proposed the League of Nations, to which all independent countries would belong and through which their legal rights relative to other nations would be laid down. Whereas the Paris Peace Conference was meeting to resolve the terms of the treaties to be drawn up between the Allies and their enemies, the League of Nations would approve the boundaries of the new nations, arrange for them to choose their form of government, and, by the issue of mandates, appoint a supervising power over the weaker ones. The idea of an umbrella authority to govern the relationships between countries was ambitious almost beyond belief. There followed a year of work to establish the League of Nations’ constitution and to assemble the member states into a body of representatives. Only then could the League begin to examine the state of each of the new nations, and decide whether the country was ready to govern itself or whether a mandate should be imposed. It would also be the body that approved treaties designed to settle border disputes.
Meanwhile, border disputes continued to descend into outright conflict, weak governments continued to collapse into civil strife, and uncertainty about the future exacerbated incipient revolutionary tendencies. Turkey was refusing to sign a peace treaty with the Allies, and still fomenting insurrection among the people of its former colonies. Now too, Arabia had learnt of the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916, which parcelled up the Middle East between Britain, France, and Russia. The news broke just as the Arabs thought they had won an independent future by backing Britain against the Turks. The end of the war brought the Franco-British Declaration on Iraq and Syria, drafted by the tireless Mark Sykes to pro
ve to the United States that the Allies were carrying out President Wilson’s intentions regarding self-determination for previously colonized peoples. The statement contained the promise that with British and French support “indigenous populations should exercise the right of self-determination regarding the form of national government under which they should live.”
But what did the indigenous peoples of Iraq really want? Shortly before leaving Baghdad, Gertrude had written a paper on behalf of A.T. entitled “Self-Determination in Mesopotamia,” largely prompted by Whitehall’s demand for a consultation with Arab leaders. This seemingly disingenuous move, apparently ignoring the tangled issues involved, queried whether the population was in favour of a single Arab state, whether it should be headed by an Arab amir, and whether Iraqis had anyone in mind. A.T. had made a half-hearted and rather bad-tempered attempt to respond to the demand: and the answers, as both predicted, were ludicrously inconclusive and unrepresentative, succeeding only in provoking trouble and undermining the government.
The Intrusives had won the day by default. Self-determination was going to come about: America insisted on it, Churchill was intent on minimizing British financial commitments in the Middle East as elsewhere, and the will to expand empires had evaporated. A.T., on the other hand, thought that Iraq could only be run colonially, as India had been, and was outraged by the Franco-British Declaration. He asked Gertrude to write a paper on the prospects for self-government, explaining the insuperable difficulties involved, for the imminent Conference in Paris. The key question in Gertrude’s sensitive analysis of the current situation and its prospects was this: “If we wish to apply the valuable principle of self-determination to the Occupied Territories, how is this to be done?”
The paper sets out to demonstrate the problems so that, whatever policies might be decided upon in far-away capitals for the future of Iraq, they might have some basis in the reality on the ground. Beginning with the impossibility of establishing any pan-Arab government, she progressed to the impossibility of a democratic republic. With 90 per cent of the population innocent of any political views whatsoever, and most of them illiterate, there was practically nothing resembling an Arab national movement. The notion of self-determination aroused more bewilderment than interest. Every family and every tribe was fighting for its own interests in an essentially individualistic society. Gertrude was daily besieged by anxious Arabs coming to her office to demand an explanation of the Franco-British Declaration. Fears were growing that the British would now walk out, lawlessness and even civil war would erupt, and the Turks would return to wreak vengeance on those who had collaborated with the British.
With no sense of nationhood, no figurehead, and no understanding of democracy, how could a constitution be formed, or a leader found who could hold the country together in the name of the Arabs? Effectively there were only two families in Arabia from the ruling traditions, the Sauds and the Hashemites. Ibn Saud was already too powerful for the liking of the West, and his Wahabi puritanism had no foothold in Mesopotamia. Most Iraqis were ignorant of the Hashemites, who had no history east of the Hejaz. If the Peace Conference were to settle on a Hashemite, there would be a lot of groundwork to do.
Despite all the difficulties, Gertrude believed that the time had come. For Iraq, self-government would have to be a British decision, organized by the British, and supported by the British. The other members of the old Arab Bureau had been equally captivated by the Arabs, and by the civilization they had created and enjoyed before the five hundred years of Turkish misrule. The ambition to restore to them their ancient culture was heartfelt, but pragmatic too. There was no prospect of any outside nation now having the will or the resources to colonize all or even parts of Arabia.
Lord Kitchener had written: “If the Arab Nation assist England in this war that has been forced on us . . . England will guarantee that no internal intervention takes place in Arabia and will give the Arabs every assistance against external forcing or aggression.” The promise had been made, and as far as Gertrude was concerned, it must be honoured. Suggestions of less worthy political agendas or imperialist intentions in the West roused her to a passionate and majestic anger:
I propose to assume . . . that the welfare and prosperity of Iraq is not incompatible with the welfare and prosperity of any other portion of the world. I assume therefore as an axiom that if, in disposing of the question of the future administration of Iraq, we allow ourselves to be influenced by any consideration whatsoever other than the well being of the country itself and its people we shall be guilty of a shameless act of deliberate dishonesty rendered the more heinous and contemptible by our reiterated declarations of disinterested solicitude for the peoples concerned.
Her protective fury was directed not only at the politicians, but at the military. Soon after their occupation of Baghdad in 1917, British troops had come into contact with the southernmost Kurdish tribes. These had risen in revolt against the impositions of the Turks, partly in response to the cynical dealings of the Young Turks, and partly because of a yearning for racial autonomy in an area that had historically been such a melting-pot of conflicting interests. There were two Kurdish tribes, the Hamawand around Sulaimaniyah on the mountainous Persian border north-east of Baghdad, and the nomadic Jaf, further north and distributed along the western side of the Diyalah river. There was a third Kurdish area concentrated around Kirkuk, roughly halfway between Sulaimaniyah and the Diyalah. These tribes had refused the Turkish demand to preach Jihad against the Allies. Indeed, the Hamawand had welcomed the British army, believing they would become the benevolent occupiers of the important city of Khanikin, south of Sulaimaniyah. The chief of Khanikin was one Mustafa Bajlan.
In describing the dreadful fate that befell Khanikin and the Kurdish tribes, Gertrude’s anger is manifest. Also evident is the reason for her contempt for the late commander-in-chief, General Maude. Cox had urged the importance of the army occupying Khanikin, even nominally, in order to maintain British interests and influence. Maude had refused to do so for lack of troops. Meanwhile, a regiment of Cossacks were drawing close to the city. The Russians were allies of the British and, coming with British consent, were not opposed by the Kurds. However, as they drew near, accounts of the excesses they had committed in other areas caused dismay and panic. They occupied Khanikin in April 1917, and almost immediately reports began to circulate that they were laying it waste, raping, and looting. Mustafa Bajlan, having retreated to Sulaimaniyah, begged that at the very least a British political officer might be sent to observe and deter the Russians, but General Maude had once again refused. In her Review of the Civil Administration of Mesopotamia, Gertrude commented: “[Maude] did not see his way to comply fearing that friction with our allies might result from the inherent difference in our methods of treating the natives of the country.”
Their treatment at the hands of the Cossacks sent the Kurds fleeing back to Turkish occupation, bad as this had been. Mustafa Pasha, the chief of Khanikin, now came to Baghdad in person to report on the devastation there, which included the murder of both women and men and the stealing of herds and flocks. Cox went for the third time to the military command and asked them to reconsider their position. They replied that they “doubted the accuracy of the Khanikin reports” and refused to create complications between the Allies. They even referred Mustafa Pasha’s complaint to the Russian commander, who—not surprisingly—responded that no British interference was needed or required. As soon as the Russians left, the Turks reoccupied Khanikin and took over the canal heads, blocking the flow of water south, where it was vital for crops. Not until December did the British beat the Turks out of the region. Gertrude wrote: “In no part of Mesopotamia had we encountered anything comparable to the misery which greeted us at Khanikin. The country harvested by the Russians had been sedulously gleaned by the Turks, who, when they retired, left it in the joint possession of starvation and disease.”
Hearing that there was aid to be had, the Kurds po
ured down the mountains and back into the town, starving and typhus-ridden, to die or recover in British camps and hospitals. The British army distributed its surplus rations and paid in cash for what it took for itself, but Kurdish goodwill had evaporated. As the road to the north-east, the Persian road, was opened up, the deep hostility to the Allies aroused by the conduct of the Cossacks became evident. One village that constituted a continual threat to lines of communication was bombed by British planes. Meanwhile, revolution had overtaken the Russian army, which was no longer under control or fighting alongside the Allies.
The Kurdish tragedy was far from over. A meeting of chiefs and nobles was held at Sulaimaniyah and a provisional Kurdish government set up, but the necessary diversion of British troops from the principal city, Kirkuk, to open the Persian road, had allowed the Turks to reoccupy the territory once again. Fleeing refugees from every district became the objects of revenge, defenceless against any tribe or army that came across them. Gertrude wrote to Chirol in December 1917: “We have taken on Khanikin . . . The tribes coming down from the North bring quantities of Armenian girls with them—tattooed like Bedouin women; I’ve seen some of them in Baghdad. Oh, Domnul, the awfulness of it! The rivers of tears, the floods of human misery that these waifs represent.”
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