Lord Lytton has prohibited special correspondents from joining the columns
about to invade Afghanistan, though the papers are to be allowed to employ Staff officers. The motive of that order, we fear, is to conceal the severities which are too often perpetrated when an " army of vengeance " is on the march, and the troops are excited by treachery ; and its effect will be that everything of the kind will be described in the private soldiers' letters, and exaggerated to the last degree. General Roberts cannot seize the mail-bags, or punish soldiers for writing to their relatives, nor really control the scores of scientific officers who must accompany him. Such attempts at secrecy rarely succeed, and when they do, the total result is that the public discounts every narrative, disbelieves the tale of the enemy's dead—which is, no doubt, usually an invention—and magnifies every check into a huge disaster. The journals should put the Horse Guards under gentle, but continuous pressure, until the order is rescinded.
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