page_title: Billy Hughes
section_title: Paris Peace Conference
hierarchical_section_title: Billy Hughes / Nationalist Party Prime Minister 1916–23 / Paris Peace Conference
caption_attribution_description: The Australian delegation to the Paris Peace Conference at the end of World War I. From left to right: Lieutenant P E Deane (secretary to Billy Hughes), Miss Wood (typist), Sir Robert Garran (Solicitor-General of Australia), W E Corrigan (messenger), Captain H S Gullett (press officer), Billy Hughes (Prime Minister of Australia), R Mungovan (secretary to Sir Joseph Cook), Sir Joseph Cook (Minister for the Navy), Miss Carter (typist), Lieutenant Commander John Latham (Commander, Naval Intelligence), Lieutenant F W Eggleston (assistant to Sir Robert Garran)
context_page_description: William Morris Hughes, CH, KC, was an Australian politician who served as the 7th Prime Minister of Australia, in office from 1915 to 1923. He is best known for leading the country during World War I, but his influence on national politics spanned several decades. Hughes was a member of federal parliament from Federation in 1901 until his death, the only person to have served for more than 50 years. He represented six political parties during his career, leading five, outlasting four, and being expelled from three.
  Hughes was born in London to Welsh parents. He emigrated to Australia at the age of 22, and became involved in the fledgling labour movement. He was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly in 1894, as a member of the New South Wales Labor Party, and then transferred to the new federal parliament in 1901. Hughes combined his early political career with part-time legal studies, and was called to the bar in 1903. He first entered cabinet in 1904, in the short-lived Watson Government, and was later Attorney-General in each of Andrew Fisher's governments. He was elected deputy leader of the Australian Labor Party in 1914.
context_section_description: In 1919 Hughes, with former Prime Minister Joseph Cook, travelled to Paris to attend the Versailles Peace Conference. He remained away for 16 months, and signed the Treaty of Versailles on behalf of Australia – the first time Australia had signed an international treaty.
  At a meeting of the Imperial War Cabinet on 30 December 1918, Hughes warned that if they "were not very careful, we should find ourselves dragged quite unnecessarily behind the wheels of President Wilson's chariot". He added that it was intolerable for Wilson "to dictate to us how the world was to be governed. If the saving of civilisation had depended on the United States, it would have been in tears and chains to-day". He also said that Wilson had no practical scheme for a League of Nations and added: "The League of Nations was to him what a toy was to a child—he would not be happy till he got it". At the Paris Peace Conference, Hughes clashed with Wilson. When Wilson reminded him that he spoke for only a few million people, Hughes replied: "I speak for 60,000 dead. How many do you speak for?"
  The British Dominions of New Zealand, South Africa and Australia argued their case to keep their occupied German possessions of German Samoa, German South West Africa, and German New Guinea respectively; these territories were given as "Class C Mandates" to the respective Dominions. In a same-same deal Japan obtained control over its occupied German possessions north of the equator. At the meeting of 30 January, Hughes clashed with Wilson on the question of mandates, as Hughes preferred formal sovereignty over the islands. According to the British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, Wilson was dictatorial and arrogant in his approach to Hughes, adding that "Hughes was the last man I would have chosen to handle in that way". Lloyd George described how, after Hughes stated his case against subjecting to a mandate the islands conquered by Australia:
  President Wilson pulled him up sharply and proceeded to address him personally in what I would describe as a heated allocution rather than an appeal. He dwelt on the seriousness of defying world opinion on this subject. Mr. Hughes, who listened intently, with his hand cupped around his ear so as not to miss a word, indicated at the end that he was still of the same opinion. Whereupon the President asked him slowly and solemnly: "Mr. Hughes, am I to understand that if the whole civilised world asks Australia to agree to a mandate in respect of these islands, Australia is prepared still to defy the appeal of the whole civilised world?” Mr. Hughes answered: "That's about the size of it, President Wilson". Mr. Massey grunted his assent of this abrupt defiance.
  However, South Africa's Louis Botha intervened on Wilson's side, and the mandates scheme went through. Hughes' frequent clashes with Wilson led to Wilson labelling him a "pestiferous varmint".
  Hughes, unlike Wilson or South African Prime Minister Jan Smuts, demanded heavy reparations from Germany, suggesting the sum of £24,000,000,000 of which Australia would claim many millions to off-set its own war debt. Hughes was a member of the British delegation on the Reparations Committee, with Lord Cunliffe and Lord Sumner. When the Imperial Cabinet met to discuss the Hughes Report, Winston Churchill asked Hughes if he had considered the effects that reparations would have on working-class German households. Hughes replied that "the Committee had been more concerned in considering the effects upon the working-class households in Great Britain, or in Australia, if the Germans did not pay an indemnity".
  At the Treaty negotiations, Hughes was the most prominent opponent of the inclusion of Japan's Racial Equality Proposal, which as a result of lobbying by him and others was not included in the final Treaty. His position on this issue reflected the dominant racist attitudes of the White Australia policy. He told David Lloyd George that he would leave the conference if the clause was adopted. Hughes offered to accept the clause so long as it did not effect immigration policy but t
caption: Paris 1919 Australian delegation
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