Amazing Horatio Bottomley

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 230, 17 December 1927, Page 24 (Supplement)

Amazing Horatio Bottomley

“The Squire” Comes Back to His Country Village

■ ERO, scoundrel, patrio:, the worst crook of the last fifty years, saviour of the British nation, robber of widows and orand more have been

phans—-all these epithets applied to Horatio Bottomley since he was sent to Maidstone Prison five years ago. And now he is free again, irrepressible as ever, and looking ten years younger, we are told by a Loudon correspondent of the St. Louis “Post Dispatch.” In a blue Rolls-Royce limousine, Bottomley recently rode away to his great estate in Sussex, with his five years o£ penal servitude behind him and a new career of sensational journalism ahead of him—perhaps. The correspondent gives us this picture of his return. His homecoming was like that of a conquering hero, not a convict. It was a surprise, too. He had "gotten a parole” for the last two years of his seven-year term. The shiny big car glided up to the heavy oak doors, the solitary passenger dressed in a grey lounge suit and a soft grey hat. He sprang out and walked swiftly toward the entrance, pausing to greet an old employee in the grounds. Then the door was swung open, and Mrs. Cohn, his daughter, flung her arms around her father’s neck. Just behind was Mrs. Bottomley, tears streaming down her cheeks. The old employee rushed into the village—the village that is really Bottomley’s village, for it is attached to his estate—shouting, “The Guvnor’s come home.” A sheep dog from one of his tenants’ farms, a favourite of Bottomley’s, recognised him, and with a joyful bark bounded up. Over the portico of the great house there soon floated the Union Jack, and in little cottage gardens down a leafy lane nearby were flags and bunting. Children from the village paraded up and down the roadway in front of the house, waving flags. At the farm opposite were displayed Bottomley’s racing colours.

They planned a torchlight procession for the evening. Bottomley had come home. To the masses of England, we are told, Bottomley is “John Bull.” He was the editor of a weekly periodical of that name, and he looks strikingly like the cartoons of “John Bull” that appear in American papers. The “PostDispatch” correspondent continues: Massive, solid, short, slightly bandylegged, whenever he is photographed he gives the appearance of being firmly planted on the little island that succeeded in spreading its rule over an empire. There is something immensely shrewd about the look of his face, about the quizzical expression of his eyes. He gives the impression of knowing just what he is about. He certainly knew what he was about when he edited “John Bull.” His were the methods of popular journalism, magnified several hundred times. He outdid Lord Northcliffe, and the circulation of “John Bull” and of his illustrated Sunday paper mounted accordingly. In “John Bull,” Bottomley, as “defender of the people,” attacked nearly everybody and everything. He was the thorn in the side of the Church, the Government, the nobility—in short of almost every one who was at all sensitive to thorns. Libel and slander suits worried him not in the least. Being a skilful lawyer, he was his own defender. These suits were wonderful circulation-builders for "John Bull.” “Criticism Without Rant or Cant, Fear or Favour,” ran the caption on the front page, coupled with verse in the right-hand corner: “The world is a bundle of hay, Mankind are the asses that puli. Each pulls in a different way. The greatest of all is John Bull.” One occasion that brought Bottomley into court was at a time when the Church was making a nation-wide temperance campaign. Many prominent divines had been decrying the liquor traffic. Bottomley got busy. He obtained lists from a Government department of the names of the stockholders of numerous breweries, distilleries and saloons. He culled from these lists the names of the clergymen who had been loudest in their demand to abolish the liquor traffic. Bottomley then devoted the columns of "John Bull” to long lists in heavy type of the names of these

I clergymen, followed by the names of ! the breweries, distilleries and saloons in which they held stock. The Ministerial Alliance sued him for subjecting its members to public ridicule. When the case, came to trial, Bottomley, in his own defence, asked the court whether it was a question of "apparent intent.” The court ruled that it was. He then confined himself to.the unique defence, "If your Honour please, it was not my intent to speak in derogation of the cloth, but merely to show how respectable the brewing, distilling, and saloon business really is.” Bottomley won out.

One of the favourite sports of the editor of “John Bull” was that of calling high ecclesiastics to account for faults or inconsistencies.

The Bishop of St. Asaph's was quoted by Botomley as having visited a certain Welsh parish for the purpose of dedicating a new schoolhouse. When the Bishop arrived at the place, according to Bottomley’s account, he learned that in the company assembled was a woman, a schoolteacher, an earnest parochial worker, beloved by all for her work, but who had a "past.” It was said that this woman had had a love affair with a married man, a friend of her girlhood, but realising the error of her ways she sought to redeem herself. Bottomley asserted that the Bishop, on hearing of her presence in the assembly, said if the woman did not leave, he would. The editor of "John Bull” wound up his tirade with a recital of Christ and the woman taken in adultery at the Feast of the Tabernacle. Slyly Bottomley hinted that possibly the Bishop had not read this part of the Scripture. This sort of thing won him a great popular following. He succeeded in getting himself elected to Parliament. But the war was Bottomley’s great opportunity, says the London correspondent, continuing: He was the loudest patriot in England. He enunciated the “pull together, boys” policy, and he gave fren-

zied patriotic addresses—at so much per. The war accentuated, too, his anti-American view. He had always held a fundamental belief that Yankees were the real dollar chasers.

America’s neutrality, according to Bottomley, was a calculated policy to “scoop the pool” while old England and the rest of Europe weltered in blood. Uncle Sam, in the eyes of the editor of "John Bull,” was, if anything, pro-German. He viciously lampooned President Wilson.

And, above all, lie championed the Tommies in the trenches. He came to have an enormous influence with the ilien at the front. He was for hanging the Kaiser early in the war, and he favoured a collection of a 10,000,000,000 dollars indemnity when peace was made at Berlin. So strong did his influence with the soldiers become that the Government was at last forced to send him to the front and later to Scapa Flow, the naval base, to preach “sticking it” until the Germans had been conquered and peace made in Berlin. Meanwhile, toward the close of the war, Bottomley began the promotion, through his newspapers, of Victory Bond Thrift Clubs, urging the poor to put their pittances into war bonds, purchased through his clubs. The response was immediate. Hundreds of thousands of pounds began to flow through Bottomley’s hands. To give the investment an added attraction lotteries were also run in connection with the clubs. With the close of the war, we are told, Bottomley began to display an unprecedented prosperity. He bought two newspapers; he acquired country estates and a racing stable. People began to wonder, but— Finally the Public Prosecutor issued a summons charging Bottomley with converting to his own use £5,000, part of the property of one Victory Bond Club. At the trial that followed, the elaborate structure that he had created came toppling down. It was charged that he had dictated who was to win the lottery prizes. Several thousand pounds of the money that had gone into the bond clubs could not be accounted for. And Bottomley was given a seven-year sentence, persisting in his plea of innocence, claiming that he was a martyr at the hands of his persecutors.