Miss Bell

Miss Gertrude Bell died last week. When Death entered her low, rambling, exquisitely luxurious home in Bagdad, Great Britain lost the most remarkable and certainly the most charming woman who has served the Empire in a century. Middleaged, but slender and quick as a girl, she was by title only Oriental secretary to Sir Henry Dobbs, British High Commissioner to Irak. Actually Sir Henry, King Faisal of Irak, and Premier Abdul Mushsin Beg al Ga'dun, deferred consistently to her as the most brilliant and profound feminine apostle of Anglo-Mesopotamian concord who ever lived. The kingdom of Irak was in sober truth her realm.

The War brought Miss Bell to Arabia in the service of the Empire. As a girl and woman, she, the incorrigible daughter of Sir Hugh Bell, "the richest iron master in England," had explored Arabia because, literally, she loved the sometimes childish and sometimes sublime Arabian race. Without Occidental companions, but traveling with a retinue of native servants and dining every evening in a Paris gown, Miss Bell was the first woman to cross the great Arabian Desert, and later tossed off two books* on the Near East, which Field Marshal Allenby confessed to poring over, both before and during his compaigns in the Near East.

Naturally Miss Bell offered her services and proved invaluable to the Empire when the World War made it necessary for Britain to save Suez and the route to India from possible Mohammedan encroachment. Miss Bell became, to use an ugly word, a spy. She disguised herself as an Arabian, several times penetrated into Turkey, succeeded in bringing many an Arab chief, suspicious of Occidentals, into alliance with Great Britain.

The importance of this work was paramount. Only one other Briton eclipsed her achievements-- Colonel Thomas Lawrence. They worked by similar means, both possessing an uncanny power of winning the confidence and loyalty of Arabians. The cash value of their services was set at $750,000 by the Turkish Empire which publicly offered that sum for their heads.

Colonel Lawrence personally dynamited 70 Turkish bridges, and a score of Turkish railway trains. It was he who drove the Turks from Damascus with a Pan-Arab army, in the name of King Hussein of the Hejaz and Arabia, a few hours before Field Marshal Allenby's columns arrived to make the victory secure. It was Colonel Lawrence whom Marshal Allenby had fetched by airplane that the Colonel and the Field Marshal might enter Jerusalem together. It was Colonel Lawrence who represented the Pan-Arabs at the Peace Conference. It was he, moody, mystical, perverse, who was driven by his eccentric soul to retire from the Near East, seek solitude at Oxford, and finally assume, incognito, the rank and style of "Private Ross of his Majesty's Tank Corps."

Miss Bell, no less an inspired genius, retained her grip. Though she blew up no bridges, conquered no cities, she was ready to take up the task of putting on its feet the revamped kingdom of Irak-- Irak, key to the Transjordanian route to India.

The mass of kingdom-building detail which she handled successfully did not prevent her from assisting rustic Arabian King Faisal and his Queen to pick out the proper furnishings for their palace, suitable kingly cravats, chic queenly gowns. Nor can it be disputed that until last week most Irak nobles, bigwigs, commoners, went first to Miss Bell, and later, if necessary, to the High Commissioner about matters affecting the British mandate over Irak.

Miss Bell is dead. Lawrence, reserved, incorrigible, skulks about England, trying to decide whether or not to give the world his 120,000-word Seven Pillars of Wisdom, the staggering chronicle of his secret audacities and triumphs. At present five copies of the book, printed on a hand press, exist; one is in the Bodleian library. Its author would seem to have burnt out the flame which gave him power to kindle Arabia. King Hussein, Lawrence's protege, and the kingdom of the Hejaz have been conquered and subjected by the warlike Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, Sultan of Nejd, and now King of the Hejaz. Per contra the kingdom of Irak, ruled by the unfortunate ex-King Hussein's third son, is flourishing, due very largely to the work of Miss Bell.

For Britain looms the task of finding the like of Thomas Edward Lawrence and Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell.