NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE new movement of the Dervishes has become alarming. Their numbers have evidently been underrated, and pro- bably considerably exceed six thousand men. Though they lost five hundred in killed and wounded at Arguin, and have since been abandoned by a thousand deserters, they are still moving northwards, and intend a serious attack on Assouan. Sir F. Grenfell, in command in Egypt, has accordingly telegraphed for reinforcements, and the 2nd Essex Battalion and another regiment, two thousand men in all, have been ordered from Malta to Egypt. All available force is being concentrated at Assouan, where the struggle is likely to be desperate, as the invaders cannot retreat across the desert again. The weak among them already suffer cruelly from exhaustion and thirst, and Colonel Wodehouse, commanding at Wady Haifa, is accused of cruelty for driving them away from water. That is nonsense. Every besieging force cuts off food and water from the beleaguered town, and that from non-combatants. The besieged have only to yield to be safe, and so have the Dervishes, who in Egypt are merely armed invaders given to wholesale massacre.
