Story of "Billy" Hughes

Part I

WILLIAM Morris (“Billy”) Hughes was the most picturesque figure to appear on the Australian Commonwealth’s political stage. No one ever accused him of statesman ship, but he was the outstanding vitriolic political fighter of his time, an able but unpredictable Prime Minister, and a wartime leader who was greatly honoured by the Aus tralian nation and loved by Aus tralia’s fighting men.

The life of “Billy” Hughes has been described many times and from :ountless angles, but none told the full story. The writing of his

biography by Mr. L. F. Fitzhardinge, a professional historian of the Aus tralian National University, was arranged before Mr. Hughes died in 1952; and the production of Part I has taken 12 years. This will not surprise those who knew “Billy”— his failure to keep records or express himself on paper, and the usually incredible confusion of his desk drove a whole succession of private secretaries up the wall, and frequently embarrassed his friends and as sociates. Mr. Fitzhardinge tells how he received “a number of trunks and tea-chests of papers” and how “the papers were in great confusion”.

This is the first volume, and it ends before the outbreak of World War I, in 1914. Research has been done under great difficulties, but with thoroughness, and the book is well written. It has much historical value, because the story of W. M. Hughes is necessarily a history of Australian political activities, to which he devoted his life after he graduated from trade union organiser to mem ber of Parliament.

However, there is nothing exciting here—the really lively stuff, pre sumably, will come in volume II.

There we should learn how “Billy” broke with the Labour Party, be came Australia’s famous orator and patriot and wartime leader, and took a prominent part in the post-World War I conferences which gave New Guinea into Australia’s care, framed the Versailles Treaty and created the ill-starred League of Nations.—

Rwr.

(William Morris Hughes — A

Political Biography—Vol. I. Angus and Robertson Ltd. 63/-.)