Christmas
in the Works of
Stanley Weintraub
Shaw's People: Victoria to Churchill
University Park: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 1996
p. 19
...December 1899....the war (South African War) was going
badly....For Christmas 1899 the Queen had sought a symbolic present to
send to her troops in the field as something special from her. Soon, ships
were bringing every soldier in the field a flat tin box of chocolates with
the Queen´s head embossed on the lid. Every soldier in South Africa and
in transports on the high seas was to receive such a box, bound in red
and white ribbon. Some soldiers would not touch a morsel, determined to
take the sacred gifts home. More than one box was reputed to have stopped
a bullet....Shaw´s Arms and the Man, later musicalized by Oscar Straus as
The Chocolate Soldier, includes an early scene in which Captain
Bluntschli confides that where other troops have kept their cartridges,
he had secreted supplies more valuable to a soldier--chocolate.
Return to Exhibit Introduction