Any further cylinders that fell, it was hoped, could be destroyed
at once by high explosives, which were being rapidly manufactured and
distributed.  No doubt, ran the report, the situation was of the
strangest and gravest description, but the public was exhorted to
avoid and discourage panic.  No doubt the Martians were strange and
terrible in the extreme, but at the outside there could not be more
than twenty of them against our millions.