Still one feels that Sir Cohn's decision is a necessary one.

It would never do to have six or seven thousand men shut up there, when there is urgent work to be done in a score of other places.

Besides, it would need a vast magazine of provisions to maintain them.

Our force, even when joined by the garrison, would be wholly inadequate for so tremendous a task as reducing to submission a city containing at least half-a-million inhabitants, together with thirty or forty thousand mutineers and a host of Oude's best men, with the advantage of the possession of a score or two of buildings, all of which are positive fortresses." "No, there is nothing for it but to fall back again till we have a force sufficient to capture the whole city, and utterly defeat its defenders.

With us away, this place will become the focus of the mutiny.