_À propos_ of dum-dum bullets, man-stopping bullets, _et hoc genus omne_, a good deal of false sentiment has been evoked in England and France. The main object of a soldier in battle is to put his opponent out of action, and it is found by experience that the ordinary bullet does not adequately secure this result when employed against barbarous or semi-barbarous enemies. A civilised combatant, when he is struck by a bullet--even if the wound be a comparatively slight one, say through the shoulder--almost invariably sits down on the ground; but the nervous system of the savage is a far less delicate organism, and nothing short of a crushing blow will check his wild onset. Even in the Martini-Henry days scores of Dervishes rushed upon the British troops at Abu Klea and elsewhere, with the blood spurting from seven or eight bullet wounds, and then cut and thrust with deadly effect until loss of blood told, and they fell dead in or about the square. One of the two British officers who lost their lives at the Atbara fight was killed by a large elephant bullet, the hollow base of which had been filled with a fulminate. This was an _explosive_ bullet, quite a distinct species from the missile described above. The fire from our zeriba, which mowed the Dervishes down in rows and heaps, must have been simply appalling. The ordinary metaphors of "rain" and "hail" are scarcely adequate to describe the awful effect of modern rifles and machine guns when their fire is steady and concentrated. It is rather a wall of lead than a rain, which, as it advances, sweeps everything instantly from its track. There must be a limit to human endurance, one would think, even in the excitement of battle, and the time may well come when human art will prove superior to human courage and discipline, and civilised troops will refuse to expose themselves to what may have become practically the certainty of death or wounds, or, at anyrate, of enormous risk. The educational and social forces at work in modern life certainly do not tend to foster the old-fashioned virtue of unquestioning obedience, or the consolations to be derived from religious faith. Yet it is precisely these two things which alone have often enabled a leader to count with confidence upon a response to his call when he summons his followers to almost certain destruction--the surrender of life and all that life holds dear.