Scores, hundreds of times in the last century and a half, in matters great and small, English officers have acted on these principles as a matter of course; and equally as a matter of course their native soldiers have done under English leadership what they never would have dreamed of doing if left to themselves. Courage, most of the races which furnished sepoys possessed in abundance; and that courage they placed at the disposal of the foreigners in whom they recognised fertility of resource, power of combination, so far above their own level, that they seemed to belong to a superior order of beings. Nor can there be any doubt that the fact of their being so regarded helped to raise the English above their natural level.[90] They must live up to their position, both to the traditions of the service and to the idea entertained of them. When they cease to do this, the hold of England on India will be precarious. Whether they are tending to do so may be judged from the history of any and every little war, such for instance as the Kanjut expedition in 1891, the most notable feature of which was the storming of Thol, and which is fully and picturesquely described in Mr. E. F. Knight's book, _Where Three Empires Meet_. Even more characteristic of the needs, and the achievements, of British rule in India, is a narrative of an incident on a very small scale, done in the way of everyday business, which is given in a tolerably recent newspaper (the _Spectator_ of April 23, 1892) from a letter of the chief actor.