However, the Civil Commission went on its way mapping out a programme of peaceful pacification and carrying it into effect as promptly as possible, while its activities engaged universal attention and formed the chief topic of conversation wherever two or more people were met together. Society became frivolous enough, but nobody ever got very far away from the questions of absorbing interest with which many of us were so closely associated.

Our first Christmas surely would have saddened us in our peculiar exile had we been able to realise its approach, but this was not possible. The “Christmas spirit” does not thrive in a temperature of eighty-odd degrees, and I think I would have taken little interest in preparations for the holidays had not my children been there to remind me that Christmas is Christmas no matter what the thermometer may say about it. It was still the most important day in the year for them and it was almost pathetic to see them trying to defeat the climate through sheer force of their imaginations. It was a “green Christmas” with a vengeance, and very hot.