The Foreign Service Journal, January 2005

the victorious British army into the city where she would remain until her death less than 10 years later, she became the right-hand “man” for the High Commissioner, Sir Percy Cox, and was named Oriental Secretary, her first paid position with the British government. She was given a house and an office, and had virtual carte blanche to deal with the local political, tribal, ethnic and religious leaders to promote the interests of the British government. And since she believed that the British mandate was the best thing that could have happened to Mesopotamia, especially after what she perceived as the misrule of the Turks, she had no problem trying to persuade her clients that what was good for Britain was good for them. Many of them, but not all, agreed. In a 1920 letter home, she described her method of collecting information. She and a male col- league were invited by a leading fig- ure in Baghdad to meet merchants and caravan drivers in a coffee house. “I do them a good turn whenever I can and they respond by coming in to see me whenever they return from Syria or Arabia and telling me what they’ve heard and seen. The tea party was delightful. The walls of the diwan are mellow with decades of tobacco smoke, the furniture, benches around the room and one table for us at the upper end. ... We talked Arab politics with great gusto for an hour and a half. ... I do like them so much. They are to me an endless romance. They come and go through the wilderness as if it were a high road, and they all, most politely, treat me as a colleague, because I, too, have been in Arcadia. When they talk of tribes or sheiks or watering places, I don’t need to ask who and where they are. I know; and as they talk I see again the wide Arabian horizon.” Ever the realist, in another letter she refers with disdain to the English newspapers that expected Cox to bring about a stable, modern state instantly. “He has only to say 50 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 5 In another letter she refers with disdain to the English newspapers that expected [High Commissioner Percy] Cox to bring about a stable, modern state instantly.