In the good old days I could have sat in my bungalow in Buxa Duar and watched my sepoys drilling in the narrow limits of our small parade ground. But nowadays too high a standard of efficiency is required from the troops for this method of commanding to pass muster. So, for the first month after our arrival, we scrambled up and down the steep mountains, scaled precipices and fought our way through thorny jungle practising hill warfare. Then I determined to take the detachment farther afield, where the men could have more varied ground to work over and learn something of jungle life. So I mapped out a ten days' march, under war conditions, through the forest below. We should go out as a self-contained force, like the little columns that are sent against the savage tribes along our North-East Frontier. We should carry our own supplies with us, find our own transport, move by day and bivouac at night exactly as we should do in an enemy's country. As the route selected would emerge into open country for a couple of days, the men would have a change from jungle work. I was influenced in my decision to march through the surrounding; country and "show the flag" by private representations made to me by civil officers of the district. They pointed out the advisability of letting the natives of the neighbourhood see soldiers, probably for the first time in the lives of many of them. Asiatics have short memories; and the inhabitants of the Bengals, who rarely see troops, are inclined to forget that the British Army still exists. At that time sedition was supposed to be spreading among them. For it is a curious fact that it chiefly makes headway among the unwarlike races of India, probably for the very reason that they have never learned in the field the respect that the brave man feels for the still braver antagonist who has conquered him. And British rule is more popular among the races that we have only vanquished after a hard struggle than it is among those whose ancestors never dared to meet us in battle. In all history the Bengali never was, never could be, a fighting-man. He was the easy prey of every invader; and, like the cowardly Corean, only the extreme suppleness of his back saved him from extermination. If the British left India the cities and rich lands of Bengal would be scrambled for by every warrior race in India; and her sons would not venture to lift a hand to defend themselves. But cowards are ingrates. Forgetful of all this the so-called educated Bengali whispers of the day to come when the English tyrants will be driven into the sea. He does not suggest that he and his kind will do it themselves. The young Calcutta student, crammed with undigested, ill-understood European knowledge, will talk treason glibly. Insulting women, hurling bombs, assassinating in secret or, gun in hand, plundering unarmed villagers even more timorous than himself, he is a hero in his own eyes. But even in the wildest frenzy of his ill-balanced