05/21/2022
Chin chin! In celebration of , here’s the tea on the world’s most consumed beverage 🐸☕:
During WWI, tea was rationed to soldiers in the British military. A hot cuppa was such a morale booster for British soldiers, it was known as “the cup that cheers our fighting men.” In his 1919 book, Experiences of the Great War: Artois, St. Mihiel, Meuse-Argonne, American soldier Ashby Williams writes:
“I must not fail to record also that it was at Calais that we first came in contact with the British custom of having ‘tea’ at four thirty in the afternoon. No matter what a British officer is doing he must have his ‘tea’ at half-past four. To most of the American officers it seemed an utter waste of time to have tea and toast in the middle of the afternoon, but the Britisher has his dinner late in the day, between seven and eight o'clock, and the tea was not an unpleasant way for him to bridge over the long afternoon. And then, too, the British officers have very efficient, highly trained domestic servants, and the tea was always very tempting and very delicious. While we were in Rome, therefore, we did as the Romans, and had our ‘tea’ at ‘harf-parst’ four in the afternoon.”
The United Kingdom continues to be among the world’s top consumers of tea, with a little over 4lbs drunk per person. The country with the highest consumption is Turkey, with an average of 7lbs drunk per person. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/01/map-the-countries-that-drink-the-most-tea/283231/
From the Collection: three German soldiers sit around a table, set with tea, in a trench.
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