The Cordova daily times., 1916-07-22

that they should have a larger voice in the direction of affairs than the old machinery gave them. Hughes did not regard himself as in any way a visitor. nor an outsider, or a colon ial." In his first speech he took the position of a member of the family. This is the British empire; my people are a part of it. I am one of you with all the rights and privileges of a mem- Der of the firm. This was the tone of his first speech, and the same tone has permeated all of them. He advo- cated policies, and he denounced poll cies. He scattered admonition and ad- vice with a liberal hand. While he did not directly attack the government he was soon acclaimed as the chief "Gingerer." He asserted that he had driven German trade from Australia, and he proposed a plan for keeping the key of industry of smelting, which is of equal importance to Australian mining industry and the British con sumer, in the hands of British com panies.
 Naturally the people who think as Mir. Hughes thinks crowded around hipo The nawono narS whinb ara for ginger" and the protectionist jour nals, took him up and played him for all he was worth. When the Conner cial Conference of the entente pow CTS held in Paris was being arranged the Hughes press insisted that the Australian should go as a British dele gate, and he was sent Now that he is about to return home enthusiasts declare that the government should ask him to remain in England as a sort of free lance adviser. No bloom in fear" the Cockney would say. The departure of MT. Hughes will be cele- brated with some signs of relief His campaign has not proceeded without exciting criticism and antagonism, al though uttered in very considerate ac- cents. This has come from two sources, those who dissent from the measures which Hughes proclaimed, and a certain few irritated that a CO., lonial statesman should offer advice so freely to the Mother country One indictment was for approaching great and complex questions loosely and grandiloquently." Hints have been dropped that he was neglecting his own work in Australia.
 "The Australian Abraham Lincoln" as Hughes has been called, whose life spans only fifty-two years, and who has risen in thirty-two years from the status of an humble emigrant to sit around the council table as a privy councillor, is anything but a strong man physically He is thin, and pale, with a face resembling Robert Louis Stevenson's, but with a fire and en- ergy which often glow in a frail body. His career has been hard working one. An old Australian friend in Lon kanniu-~ Iffla umbrella mending shop in Sydney, and always with a book before him - some work of economies or philosophy something in the line of Henry George or Herbert Spencer. His first note worthy political enterprise was the organization of the unskilled workers on the Sydney docks. He advocated compulsory military service as early as 1901, and made 1t a plank of the Labor party platform. As the head of the great state which has most nearly approached Socialism, his views on that system are interesting. His belief is that the growth of private monopolies narrows the issue to "co- operation for the benefit of the few versus cooperation for the benefit of the many"
 With Hughes orations are more af- ter the American than the British mo- del. Compared with the classic, OK ford, nurtured and precise, diction of an Asquith, his style is as Welsh chapel exhorters to the Church of England ritual. It was because much of the country was in mood for some prophet who would cut loose from the rituaiistic atmosphere and let him. self go that Hughes has been wei comed and acclaimed. He may be a | portent of the leadership the nation will demand after the war.
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