THIS time last week I had just returned from an enjoyable few days in one of Europe's most beautiful cities.

Less than 48 hours later my fond memories of Paris had been replaced by sick-making scenes of carnage on its streets.

As we walked its cold streets, we saw soldiers patrolling near tourists sites like the Eiffel Tower after attacks by Islamists before Christmas.

This scared my eight-year-old daughter, but my wife and I tried to calm her fears, telling her the soldiers (and armed police) were there to protect us and that it shouldn't stop us from enjoying our holiday.

That message has become even more important in the wake of the killings at the Paris magazine Charlie Hebdo and elsewhere in Paris since.

Just as we must not be cowed by this attack on press freedom, an older message of the need to keep travelling should also be heard.

Travel has long been in the firing line of terrorists. From the airliner hijackings of the 70s to 9/11 and more, the world of the traveller has been changed.

Some countries, sadly have become more difficult to travel to.

But for the bulk of travellers, the main effect has seen our journeys taking longer as we have tolerated increasing levels of security. We’ve sorted our liquids into 100ml bottles, had our bags x-rayed, taken our shoes off. We have put up with a growing burden of inconveniences, but they are just that - minor irritants.

There are many more things to make the traveller more anxious – the possibility of random attacks now joining a long list of risks.

But just as surely as we need to keep drawing scurrilous cartoons or writing probing news stories - so we need to keep travelling - keep wandering the streets of Paris and other cities of the world.

This is a habit of freedom which we must continue to exercise. Because to do otherwise would mean they had won and that would be unthinkable.