Without justice and charity there can be no England. That is the historic and eternal English vision. - Arthur Bryant

Before the British regiment of the line is sacrificed to logistics—if sacrificed it is to be—I should like to put on record a historian's conviction that the greatness of our infantry soldier in the past, as in the present, has been due primarily to the fact that in the regiment, with its personal pride, loyalties, and traditions, the individualistic and liberty-loving qualities of the Briton have found their natural medium in war.

The chairman of the Cromwell Association <nowiki>[</nowiki>Maurice Ashley<nowiki>]</nowiki> asks why Charles II's escape from the Battle of Worcester 300 years ago deserves commemoration. It is because in the days that followed Cromwell's victory poor and humble men, in the face of overwhelming power and in extreme peril, out of their faith in God and their loyalty to the Crown dared everything to save their King. Whatever may be our opinions of the characters of Cromwell and Charles, most of us are agreed that the hereditary Crown was infinitely worth saving. The symbolic faith and courage of that little woodland community around Boscobel belong to the proud annals of our history as much as Cromwell's genius, and after the lapse of three centuries there is room in our pride and gratitude for both.

In weaning pagan man from his primitive and bloodstained creeds of terror and human sacrifice the Church's supreme achievement was to domesticate and humanise the conception of Eternity. Everywhere he was confronted, in church and wayside shrine, with homely and familiar reminders of the Heaven he was enjoined to earn through the virtues of love, faith, compassion, humility, truthfulness, chastity, courtesy—virtues that came so hard and were so much needed by a passionate, hot-tempered, primitive people.