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bearing a red flag! We should be sorry for that man today. A speed of twenty to thirty miles
on open roads is quite common; while on the Continent high speeds rivalling the fastest
expresses have been attained. It is doubtful whether such speeds will be used in the
ordinary way; indeed, special roads like railways and regulated traffic would be required if
such speeds were at all common. In provision for the ordinary traveller by motor-car France
is far ahead of Great Britain. Long ago it was possible to obtain relays of stored electricity
for the electric motor car, which is said to be the most easily worked of all where it is
possible to obtain the supplies of electricity. Most cars, however, are worked by some
adaptation or another of the oil engine. With an enormous number of people now interested
in motor-cars, we must suppose that manufacturers will bend themselves to the task of
simplification, which in its turn will, of course, mean cheapening of production. The
principal difficulty, we believe, at present in the way is that in order to stand the inevitable
vibration the machine has to be of very good quality throughout and of very great strength,
and these requirements mean expense. It is, however, only reasonable to assume that a
lately invented vehicle will be greatly modified by future improvements.
We can scarcely think that the automobile is destined to mark any such revolution
as the locomotive or the mechanical inventions of the beginning of the last century. Now
that we can see these changes in perspective, we know that they were amongst the very
greatest in human history. The automobile has the disadvantage in this respect of being
merely a development of a change already brought about - namely, improved facility of
locomotion. The difference between the wagon, or even coach, and the train was so vast
that it might be regarded as a difference in kind; the automobile will mark but a difference
in degree. Nevertheless, as the principle comes to be applied, as it doubtless will, to all
kinds of locomotion, even for farm work, there will be great changes in the face of the
country. The restoration of the old roadways to the life and usefulness of which they were
despoiled by railways has already been brought about in part by the bicycle; with the
automobile it will go on apace. In time we may expect that country repairing shops will
take the place on the roadside of the onetime farrier. The late Mr.Bellamy, with curious
prevision, anticipated a system of agriculture in which the automobile would take the place
of the horse. This country is so raw that there is not much to change. Everything has to be
created. There is, however, one respect in which the automobile is specially suited to this
country. It will cover great distances in a land in which distance is always the thing that fills
the eye. For penetrating the wilds where it will not pay to build railways, the motor-car may
enable the people, so far as postal and light traffic is concerned, to be placed on as
favourable a footing as if they had a railway. As the car can be taken anywhere where an
ox-wagon can go, it may yet become a vehicle of the civilization which someday we hope
to extend to the remotest corners of this vast country.

Two months later the new Club organized its first outing in the form of “a merry spin to

Kalk Bay” starting from Greenmarket Square. About a dozen members took part, most with