The year 1905 had almost run out when this volume was finally decided upon, and then a good many things happened, according to expectation and otherwise. Christmas came, surprising the railway companies as usual, but not the public, and the resignation of Mr. Balfour's Government. The resignation of Mr. Balfour, with its corollary of a General Election, involved some unavoidable delay in opening this campaign of pilgrimages in East Anglia. For during that General Election almost everybody who owned a motor-car and could drive it, or thought he could drive it, was stirred to lend his car and his energies to the service of his party by motives of double cogency. He desired, more or less keenly at the outset, but always vehemently, and even passionately after he had tasted the joy of battle, to lend his aid to the political party of his choice; and he knew further that the General Election of 1906 had provided motorists with a priceless opportunity of doing missionary work among the electorate at a critical moment in the history of Automobilism. He felt that the Motor Act of 1903, of limited duration in any event, needed to be supplanted by a measure treating him as a reasoning and responsible being, rather than as a dangerous beast, and, having some hope that the Royal Commission then sitting would report in his favour (as, on the whole, it has reported), he recognized that enlightened self-interest made it desirable to educate public opinion into the frame of mind suitable for the reception of an enabling measure. For these reasons, and some that are immaterial, it was not convenient to make the first raid into East Anglia until nearly the end of January, 1906, and that was a period calculated to try the reality of man's or woman's sincerity as a devotee of motoring by a somewhat severe test. How that test was applied it shall be my endeavour to tell in a narrative form, and to that form a preference will be given throughout the book, digressions being made, as occasion serves or fancy calls, to mention matters of practical utility or of intelligent interest.