THE CHARM OF THE MOTOR-CAR.
THE thousand-mile race organised by the Automobile Club began on Monday. In reality, however, it is not a race, but rather a procession or pageant of cars throughout the chief towns and along the principal roads of England and Scotland, intended to popularise the use of horseless vehicles, and to make the public realise that a motor-car, when properly designed and built and also properly driven, is not the Car of Juggernaut, but a means of transport and pleasure quite as safe and trustworthy as an ordinary carriage. The people who live on the thousand miles of road to be travelled will no doubt see some very strange and very inefficient vehicles, vehicles which will fulfil half Aristotle's definition of tragedy and evoke the emotions of pity and terror ; but they will also see plenty that will convince them of what French people became convinced fully four or five years ago, —namely, that the motor-car has come to stay, that it is the mode of road transport, not of the distant, but of a compare- :ively near, future, and also that its rise will greatly increase the interest, pleasure, and convenience of country life.
The motor-car unquestionably exercises an extraordinary charm upon those who come within its " sphere of influence." It is worth while, then, to say a word or two in explanation of that charm, and to make the public realise that the motor-car enthusiast is not a mere crank swayed merely by fashion and novelty, but has reason for the faith that is in him. The essential and controlling charm of the horseless carriage is that it increases one's freedom of action and reduces the friction of life. A metaphysician might describe it as forming part of a reaction towards individualism and simplicity of action engendered by the temporary triumph of collectivism as applied to transport. The railway train is necessarily collec- tivist. A passenger train starts and reaches its destination owing to the combined volition of a large number of people who want to travel from, let us say, Bath to London, or between places along the Great Western Railway. Bet in order to satisfy those volitions and make them executive they have to be marshalled and organised, and so in a sense shackled. A railway train, with its guards and drivers, and fixed places of stoppage, is a creature of strict rules, and those who travel in it must temporarily surrender their private wishes, or a part of them, in order to co-operate with others. The man who takes out his motor-car and drives it along the road is, as it were, a freeholder, with all the freeholder's freedom,—though, doubtless, also with some of the freeholder's limitations and weakness and isolation. Still, the charm of freedom remains, and allows him to start when he likes, stop when he likes, and be independent of his fellows. This charm of course belongs also in theory to any carriage from a donkey-cart to a landau, but in practice it does not operate in such cases except over very short distances. The lust of time-saving is too powerful and gives the advantage to the train. No horse can go at the rate of twelve miles an hour for three consecutive hours, and at the end of the three hours be ready and able to go on for another three or eight or ten hours. It is its tirelessness which makes the motor-car quite a different mode of trans- port from a horse and gives it its superiority. In the case of a motor-car you have a method of moving from place to place as tireless as a train, one which for short journeys and cross journeys is as quick as the train and yet one which is individualistic and independent. In the abstract, this ex- planation of the charm of the motor-car may sound fantastic and unreal, but put a concrete case of a person living either iu the town or in the country and it can easily be proved. Let us suppose A to live in the country and to be anxious to make a cross-country journey to a place some thirty miles off. Unless he is very exceptionally placed he will, to accomplish that journey, have first to drive to his local station, and then to take his ticket and go a journey which will very likely take him an hour and a half's travelling, and half an hour's waiting at junctions, and then another drive from the railway station of arrival to the house he wants to visit. In all probability the whole cross journey by train will take him at least three boars, and will require to be taken at one time, and one time only, in the day, and must, therefore, cause him a good deal of trouble, friction, and annoyance. He could not possibly avoid this worry by using a horse-carriage, for no horse could go sixty miles in a day without injury. If, however, he has a motor-car he can do the journey in two hours and a half, and be able to start when he pleases and return when he pleases. Who can deny that such freedom has a charm ? The reason for this charm may be explained in yet another way. Though the country is covered by a network of railways, we do not, unless we are station-masters, live on the railways. The road is, as it were, the first wife of man, and though some sixty years ago he took a new wife home, he never discarded the first, and she has inreality always re mained nearest to him, and has always held his home. Nothing can take that away from her. We live on the roads, and they are part and parcel of our daily lives. We look down the road for the home-comer or the new-comer. Our gates open on the road. The road is always with us. But the motor-car belongs to the road, and makes us free of it and able to use it for our pleasure, or our convenience, or our profit in a way which we could not attain before. Or, to be more correct, the motor-car has restored the road to us. While railway travelling was so immeasurably quicker and easier than road travelling, we were forced to give up the pleasure our fathers had taken in the road, for mankind in general cannot or will not lose time. Now, however, the road has been revived. To go back to our metaphor, the motor-car has given the road a crown of price that has once again made her find favour in the eyes of her lord and master. The second wife has come to look old-fashioned and dull, and the first wife, never really rejected, renews her charms. Especially is this the case in a country like England, where the roads are veritable storehouses of emotional force. The English roads are like wood-fringed rivers that run twisting and turning through their villages and towns. No one can travel down fifty miles of an English road without coming upon a hundred beautiful and unexpected things, and seeing those things in the best possible way and as they ought to be seen. When we see scenery from the railways, or, at any rate, the near-at-hand scenery, we are, as it were, looking at the brocade of the landscape on the wrong side. We see the pattern awry and upside down. We cut across the roads, not wind down them. We see the old church or the old manor house not in a picture composed by centuries of usage and of kindly human courtesies. Things as seen from the railway are for the most part set on wrong, face the wrong way, and, as it were, " grate on the sensitive ear with a slightly mercantile accent', The coalahed or the chimney of the heating apparatus is turned towards us in the train, and not the best line of gables or the old lych gate. Of course, these things have always been seen by the users of the road, but not in the same profusion as they will now be owing to the use of motor- cars. To put it plainly, the dweller in a country district, even when he uses a bicycle, does not really know the roads for more than a radius of fifteen miles from his home. With a motor-car he will have a knowledgable road radius of at
least thirty miles. The person who does not bicycle has, of course, an even smaller radius. Ten miles there and ten miles back is generally the driving limit.
But we must not be content to deal only with the charm of the motor-car by reason of the freedom of movement which it confers. The " motor-carist "—to use a hideous but con- venient word—has to consider which form of car, both as regards shape and method of propulsion, confers the charm in the greatest perfection, and on this we would say a word or two. Opinions will, of course, differ, but we believe that the most useful shape is that of the victoria. A victoria with a good hood, a little seat that can be put up, and a regular box-seat for two, gives almost all that can be desired of comfort and practical convenience. The owner can when he likes sit on the box and drive himself. When he is tired of that or too busy he can sit inside at his ease, and is able to get in and out with the rapidity only possible in a victoria. But granted the victoria ie the best all-round shape, what is the beat method of propulsion ? He would be a bold man who would venture to try to decide such a question off-hand; but this much may be said. If the storage of electricity could be made easier and quicker and generally improved, electricity would without question be the ideal driving force. A car charged with electricity can be driven by a child. There is practically nothing to get out of order or to go wrong. A hard-working goblin has been imprisoned in the accumulators, and for the number of miles which he is condemned to serve the car is bound to run. Nothing is easier than to drive a properly made electric motor-car. Unfortunately, however, the accumulators can as a rule only be charged to run some fifty miles, and when that period is reached the car must rest five or six hours while the electricity is being resupplied. But this means that the car is not tireless, but capable of exhaustion and requiring rest,—defects which go to break the charm of freedom which is specially delightful in a motor- car. Some day, no doubt, electricity will be properly broken in to the work, but as yet man has not mastered the lightning. The other forms of force are the steam-engine and the gas- engine. Very possibly the steam-engine will triumph, but as yet, although there are some good steam-cars, the best results do not belong to the steam but to the gas engines. Propulsion obtained by utilising a series of explosions of "petrol " at present holds the field. The motor-car driven by "petrol" produces not only the highest speed, but is the most practicable and the most trustworthy. The " petrol "-driven car does not want to rest like the electric, but will run as long as it is wanted, provided only that the tanks of " petrol " can be filled up from time to time. For the present, then, "petrol" is the best source of power, and will be generally em- ployed by those who wish to be able to make long journeys at a quick pace, and to he independent of external help, other than the purchase of oil. But, as we have said above, the in- genuity of the inventor will, no doubt, very soon greatly im- prove both electric and steam propulsion. Probably in the end all three forms will prevail, and will be employed each for the purpose to which it is best adapted,—just as we have traction by horses, donkeys, mules, and ponies. No one method will have a monopoly. In the same way, no doubt, horse traction will still go on for very many years, though it cannot but dwindle in amount. The motor-car has, as we have said, come to stay, and we may be certain that it will gradually become the normal method of transport for dis- tances up to, say, fifty miles, for the very good reason that it so greatly increases individual mobility. The motor-car will, in fact, do more fully what the bicycle began,—i.e., give the nation back its roads.
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