The activity served by this maga­zine, high though we rate its value, plays no significant part in the affairs of kings. Over the happenings which have deeply moved the British people and their friends we can but echo feebly the paean of mingled sorrow, thankfulness and pride that has gone up from a thousand abler voices. Printing schedules, inevitable with a monthly of fairly large circulation, allows us to speak only after the high moments have passed and History has turned the page. What can we say that others have not said ?
In the infinite variety of our national life each has his appointed place. When the death of the King has led the British people, as rarely before, to draw for comfort on their ancient traditions and dynamic unity, and caused them, too, on entering a new reign under a beloved young Queen, to think of the future and examine their hearts, is there any fragment of the eternal truths which caravanners from their own experience can offer their fellow men?
We believe that the beauty of this land is a sacred trust, and that loyalty to those national ideals and values symbolised by the Crown and its wearer requires us to protect it; not as some dessicated specimen, glass-cased by officials, but as a living thing to be enjoyed by our generation and handed on improved. As wayfarers in the countryside let us resolve that as far as lies with us we will anger or grieve no man who sees us pass, or who arrives at any place where we are staying or have stayed.
We believe that the spirit of the British people springs from, among other things, its native soil and must be regularly refreshed; and that for the jaded townsman a pilgrimage through the country in humble and receptive mood brings a joyous re-creating of physical and spiritual well-being. And that appreciation of the qualities of another of our race, whether a plough­man on a lonely farm or a holidaymaker next to us at a seaside camp, adds something to the unity incarnate in out King or Queen. A power greater than we think may move mysteriously through our way of life.