NEWS OF THE WEEK.
BY the end of the coming week the fate of the Kbalifa will probably have been decided. Our troops have already left their first place of concentration, Wad-Hamed, and by Sunday they will be reconcentrated at El Hajir, a place not forty miles from Omdurman, situated on the left or Omdurman side of the river and at the south or Dervish end of the sixth and last cataract. On Monday the final advance will begin, and by Tuesday, August 30th, the Sirdar's force should be within sixteen miles of Omdurman. If, then, the Khalifa decides to issue forth from his entrenchments and give us battle in the open, the decisive action will prob- ably take place on Wednesday, August 31st. If not, and the Khalifa clings to his mud walls, our soldiers should be before Omdurman by Friday, September 2nd. Then the Sirdar will have to decide whether to attack at once, or to allow the forces of panic, hunger, thirst, revolt, and desertion to operate for a few days, as they did at the Atbara. Fortunately, he is a General who is never in a hurry, as well as never behind. hand, and he may be relied on to do the wise thing, and not to give way to the soldiers' natural impatience to get at the enemy and have done with him. The Sirdar has some 40-pounders, and a battery of howitzers which fire LWite shells, and these will enable him to breach the great Dervish wall of mud and stone (from 11 ft. to 30 ft. high and from 7 ft. to 12 ft. thick) which is the innermost defence of Omdurman. Remember, too, that the Sirdar has fourteen steamboats on the river. A day's bombardment from the water as well as the land side could not but make short work of the Dervish forts. Our loss may be heavy, but, as the correspondent of the Daily Mail notes, the ruin of the Dervishes, when it once begins, will be complete. The friendly Arabs, the English and Egyptian cavalry, the Camel Corps, and the mounted infantry will all be in leash, ready to be let loose the moment the Dervishes are driven from their entrenchments.
