"My Meat is to Do the Will of Him that Sent Me"
(Gertrude Bell Visited Japan Twice)
Gertrude Bell, born in a wealthy British clan, could not find a man who proposed to her in her three years in society.
It is probably due to her higher educational background of having learnt in Oxford.
So, she travelled to Iran where her uncle was stationed as British envoy in 1892. There she got a boyfriend who worked under her uncle, but he died suddenly.
So, she started to concentrate on mountain climbing, travelling, and writing books. She even visited Japan twice in 1899 and 1903.
In 1905, she travelled Syria to the Euphrates river region, her book on which became a best seller among European diplomats and intelligence circles.
In 1911, she again travelled Syria to Mesopotamia accompanied by a young British guide named Thomas Edward Lawrence.
In 1921, she was invited by Churchill to come and join a conference held in Cairo for deciding the future of Iraq.
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Gertrude Bell attends a meeting of the Mesopotamia Commission at the Cairo Conference of 1921. Other members of the commission include Winston Churchill and T.E. Lawrence (visible in enlargement).
http://www.npr.org/templates/common/image_enlargement.php?imageResId=5553529&imageStoryId=5552563
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5552563
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The Cairo conference was regarded as big success for Churchill at the time:
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Much of Churchill's work was accomplished at a conference in Cairo in March 1921. Catherwood writes that "Churchill's scheme was, in effect, to establish a series of pro-British client monarchies, all of whose rulers would owe Britain a debt of considerable gratitude simply for the fact that they were in power at all." After a few decades some of the monarchs disappeared but the states remain. (Jordan, for example, was even more of an artificial creation than was Iraq.) In the end even Lloyd George congratulated Churchill for having turned "a mere collection of tribes into a nation" in Iraq.
http://hnn.us/roundup/comments/7526.html
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But, Gertrude Bell’s role might have been more important:
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Examining Britain's occupation of Iraq for clues to the future of America's is a murky prospect. One interesting detail, though, is that a couple of years after Britain's occupation began, the British public rebelled against the cost of the war. Officials started looking for ways to cut costs quickly. Churchill (again Churchill) called a conference in Cairo, inviting 40 experts on Mesopotamia: 39 men and Gertrude Bell.
Many officials wanted to pull out of Mesopotamia altogether, except for the Persian Gulf. Bell and a few others, like T.E. Lawrence, argued for making and backing an Arab kingdom in Iraq. Bell's party eventually persuaded Churchill that Arab monarchies with British power behind them would make for a more stable region, cheaper in the long run as a provider of oil.
After the Cairo Conference, according to Wallach, "almost everything (Bell) had wished for now had a chance of coming true. The country would consist of all three vilayets — Baghdad, Basra and Mosul; the Sunnis, Shiites, Jews, Christians and Kurds would be united under a Sharifian king; and Iraq, rich, prosperous and led by Faisal, would be a loyal protégé of Britain. If Gertrude could bring it all off, it would be more than interesting, it would be a model for the entire Middle East."
http://www.theava.com/04/0526-gertrude-bell.html
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But, she did not live long after this conference:
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Bell briefly returned to Britain in 1925, and found herself facing family problems and ill health. Her family's fortune had begun to decline due to the onset of post-WWI worker strikes in the UK and economic depression in Europe. She returned to Baghdad and soon developed pleurisy. When she recovered, she heard that her younger brother Hugo had died of typhoid.
On 12 July 1926, Bell was discovered to have overdosed on sleeping pills. It is unknown whether the overdose was an intentional suicide or accidental. She had never married or had children. She was buried at the British cemetery in Baghdad's Bab al-Sharji district. Her funeral was a major event, attended by large numbers of people. It has been suggested that she was diagnosed with a terminal illness during her last visit to England in 1925 — given her heavy smoking, perhaps lung cancer — and with the logic with which she had always applied to her life, chose an overdose rather than experience the unpleasant closing stages of cancer which may have started to appear.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_Bell
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Yet she left many pictures of the Middle East, especially of Iraq in 1900’s and 1910’s.
http://www.gerty.ncl.ac.uk/photos/photos/W_055.jpg
http://www.gerty.ncl.ac.uk/
No matter how much Churchill wanted crude oil fields in Iraq, he alone could not manage the situation.
He needed help from Gertrude Bell. And, consequently, even after WWII and in the era of the War on Terror, the strong British influence in the Middle East has continued.
My interest is on how much her experiences of travel to Japan influenced Gertrude Bell, since she travelled Japan twice.
As for Churchill, he did not visit Japan but his American mother visited Japan with her sick husband. She enjoyed traveling Japan of the Meiji Era so as to become a friend of Japan. Accordingly, her son, Winston Churchill, is believed to be pro-Japan at least to some extent.
(http://sankei.jp.msn.com/culture/books/080427/bks0804270917004-n1.htm)
So, I wonder if Gertrude Bell’s experiences in Japan might have contributed to Churchill’s decision on Iraq in 1921 and thus the fate of present-day Iraq.
I may be allowed to assume that the present situation in Iraq is indirectly influenced by Japan, since Gertrude Bell was much asked about Japan by Syrian people when she was travelling there, since they knew she had been to Japan just before the Japanese-Russo War from 1904 to 1905.
(http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%AC%E3%83%BC%E3%83%88%E3%83%AB%E3%83%BC%E3%83%89%E3%83%BB%E3%83%99%E3%83%AB
This is one of miracles I have found in history very recently.
*** *** *** ***
You will not suffer ordinary influenza, since death is an incident of one to 1,000.
You will not suffer the worst-case Asian influenza, since death is an incident of two to 1,000.
But, for the Spanish flu, it was 20 to 1,000.
Yet, you may be under rule of one to 100,000, or 0.01 to 1,000.
(Ainsi, toute femme engagée dans un historique de l'incident est un espion. And spyies love Japan. Listen to the music.
http://players.music-eclub.com/?action=player&sid[]=146884
Source:http://players.music-eclub.com/index.php?action=search_song_detail_do&backto=&keyword=%E3%83%91%E3%83%AA&pageID=3)
Joh 4:31 In the mean while his disciples prayed him, saying, Master, eat.
Joh 4:32 But he said unto them, I have meat to eat that ye know not of.
Joh 4:33 Therefore said the disciples one to another, Hath any man brought him ought to eat?
Joh 4:34 Jesus saith unto them, My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.
Joh 4:35 Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest.
Joh 4:36 And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal: that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together.