exhibited in the arrival of these chocolate boxes was amazing. Men continually discussed them, and a stranger would have thought that chocolate was some essential factor in a soldier's life, from which we had, by the exigencies of camp life, been long deprived! As a matter of fact, portable forms of cocoa are extremely valuable in cases where normal supplies of food are cut off. Every soldier on a campaign carries in his haversack a small tin labelled "emergency rations". This cannot be opened unless by order from a commanding officer and any infraction of the rule is severely punished. At one end of the oblong tin are "beef rations," at the other "chocolate rations," enough to sustain a man amid hard and exhausting work for thirty-six hours. The chocolate rations consist of three cubes and can be eaten in the dry state; once, however, I came across a spare emergency tin, and found that with boiling water a single cube made enough liquid chocolate for ten men, a cup each. People make a great fuss in England if they don't get three or four meals a day, but a healthy man can easily fight with much less nourishment than this. I have seen Turkish troops during the Cretan insurrection live on practically nothing else than a few beans and a little bread, and on this meagre and precarious diet they fought like heroes. In the Sudan a few bunches of raisins will keep one going all day. At the same time, these things are to some extent relative to the individual. I have known huge athletic men curl up in no time because they couldn't get three meals a day on a campaign, whereas others, of half their build and muscle, may bear privations infinitely better. It is annoying to find here and there in the newspapers querulous letters from men at the front complaining that plum puddings and sweetmeats haven't reached them, and that their Christmas fare was only a bit of bully beef and a pint of beer. These men don't represent the rank and file of the army a bit. The English soldier is better fed and clothed and looked after than any other fighting man in the world, except possibly the American, and the manly soldier is not in the habit of whining after the fashion of these letters because he doesn't get quite as good a dinner on the veldt as he does in the depot at home.