BOTTOMLY AS ORACLE.

Franklin Times, Volume 9, Issue 785, 17 November 1922, Page 3

BOTTOMLY AS ORACLE.

Mr Henry J. Houston, “confident and secretary” to Horatio Bottomley, now undergoing seven years’ penal servitu.de for fraud, tells sev_ era! good stories of his employer in the London “News o t f the World.” Bottomley’s method of adapjting his lectures to the value of the “house” may create some amazement. He had a series o-f stock perorations, graduted into degrees of eloquence and loftiness of thought. These pex’orations were his great stock-in-trade, They were always decided on first in the prepartion of any speech he made, and the “Ifoftiness” of the peroration depended solely on the receipts. For an audience that had only £SO as his shariei of the receipts his stock peroration was an appeal to the public to raijy round the throne of the Empire, to regard their Majesties as the personification of the national unity ; and, whether they believe in a monarchy or not, to realise that the King was the hereditary President of the British Empire. “Forget politics and politicians,” were the concluding phrases. “Remember the words of that grand old anthem which, says “Confound their politics, God save the King” That was the signal for the nianist or organist to burst forth-, amid a din of cheering and patriotic enthusiasm, with the National, Anthem. For £75 the prescribed! peroration concluded something - Jike this:— from its period of trial—as please God it will —we shall' stand erect shoulder to shoulder before the world and decLare with one voice that Britain is the ‘'‘land of hope and glory, mother of the free” —and so on-—“until God,, who made us mighty, shall make us mightier yet,” A slightly higher degree of eloquence was prescribed in the scale of perorations for audiences that produced from £75 to £IOO. “When this tragedy is over,”it ran, “we shall be able to" Look the whole worXd in the face and sa.y jthat the country, this England, has, come out of this ghastly conflict with its name unsullied, 'its escutcheon clean, an example and precept for all mankind! to follow,” (The grand peroration was reserved for audiences that produced anything' oveij £IOO. When thait new swas conveyed to him he would say, “Right ! I will trot out the Prince to-night.” That was a reference to the fact that the peroration con_ cluldied with, an allusion -o the Prince of .Peace.