“Keep calm and carry on.”

Remember that? The well-worn phrase was firstly and most famously deployed on a government-issued poster produced in 1939 in preparation for World War II.

I can only imagine how terrifying those days must have been, but the campaign encouraged a reliance on Victorian-era stiff-upper-lipped British stoicism. Panic is not for the likes of us, it seemed to convey, with just five starkly printed words on a red background. Nor useless speculation or asking a whole bunch of anxious questions. There’s no sense in worrying yourself to death, so you might as well just keep your head down and get on with it.

As motivational posters go, it is somewhat absurd and uniquely British – a combination which perhaps inevitably caused it to re-enter the public consciousness in the new millennium as a half-way ironic mantra for coping with our troubled times, suddenly splashed across mugs, cushions, fridge magnets and chopping boards across the country.

It sprang to my mind when news broke that Ips typographus had been found on Sitka spruce in the UK for the first time, revealed in an email from the Forestry Commission which was the epitome of stoicism, emphasising swift action had been taken and there was “no evidence of spread”, while urging all in the forestry industry to “remain vigilant”.

Don’t panic. Keep calm and carry on.

It is not quite the same as the looming threat of world war, but you could forgive many a forester for turning pale with dread on being confronted with such news.

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Plenty has been written in FJ about the devastation that could be wrought to UK forestry if Ips ever got its eight teeth into Sitka. And we’ve watched, increment by increment, as the threat has become ever more real.

We are not prone to hysteria. Rest assured, we will ‘keep the heid’ and knuckle down. We will do our bit for king and country. We will keep calm and carry on. And we most certainly will not panic.

But for how much longer?

This article originally appeared as John McNee's Letter from the Editor in August 2024's edition of Forestry Journal.