February 27, 1919

Today Lawrence and Gertrude Bell (the “Desert Queen”) lunched with me. It was not a gay affair, for we each had a tale of woe to tell. Lawrence, like all paladins, is high strung and has his moments of deep discouragement, and this was one of them. But, even so, in this his hour of depression he did not break out with the angry recriminations against those responsible for the mess in the Arab world, so frequently reported in the press as his views.

“As for myself,” he said, “I would like to retire to a little cottage, say in Somerset, and write a book about the rise and fall of the Abbasid Caliphate. It would abound in topical references and I would probably starve to death while doing it, just as so many other more deserving men are starving today.”

I admitted that I too wished to retire from the splendor of the Crillon, turn my back on the living world, and, under the guidance of Boissier, confer with Cicero and his friends and, with the charming Gaston as cicerone, explore the ruins of what was once the “glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome.”

Miss Bell was disgusted with the French and also, for the moment at least, with her faint-hearted countrymen. Nothing was being done for the Arabs. Even the visiting commission was hanging fire.

“Of course, these people are shortsighted and almost incredibly stupid,” she insisted, “but I shall fight on.”

She certainly did, and a few days later she wrote me the letter of thanks and encouragement which I am glad to insert. It reads:

Monday

Dear Major Bonsai:

I send you a brief note on the Commission [to Syria].

I think it much to be regretted that the Question cannot be settled here without such prolonged delay & I am inclined to believe that with the threat of a Commission hanging over them, the French might prove less intransigeant & that a satisfactory accommodation between them and the Syrian Nationalists could be reached.

As you know it would be possible to give them a free hand in Beyrout & the Lebanon.

I am sending you also an account of our self-determination enquiries in Mesopotamia. If you have time to glance through it you will notice that the salient characteristic of my people is that they have no settled conviction as to what they want. Their one wish is that they should be given time to make up their minds. No Commission, I feel convinced, will be in a better, or indeed in as advantageous a position for finding out their real opinion as we were, for the Oriental does not speak freely to people whom he does not know. And the net result is that there is no real opinion.

Thank you so much for your help and sympathy.

Yours sincerely,
Gertrude Bell

Major Bonsai,
American Delegation.

The above letter is part of the official correspondence of the Paris Peace Conference.