The New York herald., 1921-07-24


Now York Herald Bureau.
London. July lH.
lei Sitt," 1.-THE Woman" every Arab
"A in the peninsula knows her. When
you speak of Gertrude" every Eng
lshman from Cairo to Teheran knows whom
you mean. And If he knows that middle
eastern land, too. that cradle of the race, he
calls fervent blessing on the name.
For in the Colonial Office in London, and
in Bagdad where Sir Percy Cox is trying
to impose that newest tangled of Occidental
governmental devices, the mandate, upon the
Oldest of all lands, she is the uncrowned
Queen of Mesopotamia. She is Miss Ger
trude Bell
Bedouin sheiks and Bedouin beggars bless
her-and call her WISE Learned univer-
sity gentlemen who delve in the glories that
were Sidon and the pon1ps that were Tyre
admire her-and call her wise. People who
design and sell the loveliest and the smart
est of frocks in Hanover Square and the
Rue de la Paix gladly give her of their best
and call her WISE But when the tangled
skeins of middle eastern affairs become in
extricable at the nerve centre Of the British
Empire in Downing Street, they call in Ger
Daughter of Ironmaster,
Lover and Explorer of the East
For, nearly thirty years ago, this SLIM
clever girl, daughter of fabulously rich
Yorkshire ronmaster, with all the scholastic
honors that oxford could then bestow upon a
woman, struck out Into the blue" And ever
since there has been hardly year that has
not seen her at the head Of one of her
splendid caravans digging out the ruins of an
ancient city measuring, surveying, photo
graphing taking notes, deciphering inscrip-
tions and unearthing those secrets of other
and older civilizations which the desert has
swallowed up.
Thus the war found her. She knew the
desert and all it contained as but two or
three other Europeans-men-knew it; she
spoke fluently Arabic, Persian, Turkish and
a dozen other dialects of the waste places
and, more important than ALL the desert and
the Arabs and the Persians and the tribes
knew her, liked her and trusted her. So
naturally she was gathered into that galaxy
OF Eastern experts which scintiated about
Mcmahon, the British High Commissioner
in Egypt. She went there from Red Cross
work in England And with Mcmahon, DIR.
Hogarth Gen. Clayton, Sir George Lloyd,
names to conjure with in the Near East,
with Aubrey Herbert, the ex-officio Emperor
of the Balkans, and Col. Lawrence who con-
solidated and held almost single handed the
most mercurial domain, the widest nomad
people in all the world-the Arabs-solid
for the Allies and against the German and
the Turk. Gertrude" held her own and then
some.
1T is not true" the commander-in-chief
was heard to observe at a recent dinner
party, "that Gertrude wore uniform In
Mesopotamia. Uniform was a spine pad and
a pair of shorts"
But Gertrude nevertheless was the only
woman allowed on the far flung Near East
firing line. She rated as a staff major on
the books. But on the desert she could have
cared for whole shoals of staff majors as
nursemaid might steer her charges through
Kensington Gardens.
All of which seems to shadow forth the
sort of forcible female the cartoonist used
to draw with "Woman's Rights" tag at
tached along about the year of enlighten-
ment and grace 1893. which is wrong. en-
tirely wrong. Remember that the Arabs
call her "The Woman and remember as