“BOTTOMLEYITIS”

Dominion, Volume 15, Issue 262, 1 August 1922, Page 6

“BOTTOMLEYITIS”

A DISEASE OF THE AGE. (By Brigadier-General C. B. Thomson, in the “Westminster Gazette.”) Bottomloyitis is not a new disease: it has afflicted humanity throughout the ages; a new name for it has been suggested by its latest manifestations. Those who suffer from this disease aro drawn from all classes of society, and yet it is nearly always easy to recognise a person, man or woman, who has got it. Five minutes’ conversation on any current topic will reveal tho symptoms: a superficial optimism, resentment against change, or _ progress of any kind, but more especially intellectual developments, a sporting outlook, combined with a quite special choice in hero-worship, a strong and indeed almost violent herd-instinct, professions of patriotism and a coarse sort of good nature.

Bottomleyitis patients, like other sick people, need a doctor, but they prefer a quack, and having found one, look up to him as a leader. The qualifications for leadership are a quick eye for drifts and tendencies, an instinct for publicity, imagination, courage, the arts of a mob orator, and a copious vocabulary, including biblical quotations, for purposes of abuse. Any clover and unscrupulous man can become a hero to these people, but, if possessed of real ability, he would be with them and not of them. In such company it is impossible to bo both clover and honest; the leader saves his followers the trouble of thinking for themselves, plays up to their ignorance and prejudices, plies them with cant and clap-trap, appeals alternately to what passes with them for patriotism and love of sport, and takes their money for his pains. Periodically the leader is put in prison but that does not remedy the evil; tho trickster is less pitiable than his dupes; it is they who are sick, and, being numerous, they are more dangerous than he is to the community as a whole. They will always find a pew deceiver, for, as Renan said, they wish to be deceived. Bottomleyitis has invaded most branches of public life. At the end of 1918, it made havoc of politics. It is said that Horatio Bqttomley has never ceased to regret not having taken to the law as a profession. The wonder is he did not take up politics more seriously; he .has all th? gifts and qualities which, in the recent paM, have achieved . supreme Pohtmal success Alone in his cell, ho must think wistfully of what might have b0 To betray those who put their trust in him to break innumerable promises and tho most solemn pledges, to sign a document and then wriggle HJjceastaglv to evade its . most elementary commitments, to avoid frank explanation and cloud issues, to make misleadinu statements uncorroborated by a shred of evidence, to deny accusations based on undeniable facts, to meet criticisms with vulgar recriminations nnd iibes— all these are practices and methods of which the convict in Wormwood Scrubs was a paft master- and yet they could not saie him from the clutches of_the law.