THE PETERITE Vol.
LXIX
No. 395
OCTOBER, 1978 Edited by
D. G. Cummin,
J.P., M.A.
EDITORIAL Whoever said that travel broadens the mind said it long before the package tour and supersonic flight changed travel from an adventure in itself to a means of being somewhere else as quickly as possible. If you cross the Atlantic in the morning you can be home again by bedtime. Speed is vital; the tourist can "do" York in an afternoon: and a fit young man, wearing gymshoes, has broken the "four minute Louvre" barrier, by visiting the Venus, the Winged Victory and the Mona Lisa within that time limit. When this magazine was started, one hundred years ago, the pace was slower, but there were signs that it was quickening. In the Cambridge letter to the very first Peterite, Vol. I, No. 1, published in December, 1878, we read that "some persons of an enterprising turn of mind wish to introduce that admirable invention, the tram, into the streets of this venerable seat of learning. . ." In the same volume is an Old Peterite's account of "A trip to Germany", travelling from Hull in S.S. Fairy, an unfortunate name for a ship, as he discovered when he asked a blunt passer-by where he could find "the Fairy". But the writer's pleasure is in the journey, in his fellow travellers, and in the excitement of approaching the moonlit banks of the Elbe. In this edition of the Peterite we publish an account of a journey made this year by a school party: "Sahara expedition". As it was for the writer a hundred years ago, so the interest in this trip is in the journey itself: the time taken to sleep by the roadside, to haggle in strange markets, to see "the true poverty of Morocco", to catch a scorpion, and to establish "a bond of self-reliant comradeship". In short this was travel, and it will certainly have broadened the minds of those who enjoyed it. The preface to the first Peterite, reproduced in part as our frontispiece, said "the chief interest of our columns . . . will be derived from the news that they contain, news of the School for Old Peterites, and news of Old Peterites for the School". We hope we have kept faith with the founders of the Peterite; we hope that Old Peterites will continue to read with satisfaction of the progress of their School, and we know that present Peterites can face the uncertainties of the future with more confidence when they read of the enterprise and successes of those who have been here before them. The journey goes on. The hundred years has seen our nation rise to a peak of political power and lose political influence at a rate characteristic of the pace of the twentieth century. In two world wars we learnt, in concentrated crises, to find ourselves; and now the task is to adjust to life probably without cataclysm, although there will be no lack of attempts to create conflict from obscurely contrived causes. It is not easy; but it is a supreme challenge to an ancient nation wise 1
