Part 30

For years the synonym for Australian Labour was strike. When the unions were merged into a national body Hughes was the unanimous choice of the husky stevedores for leader. He became the Great Restrainer. Never was influence of lip and brain over muscle and temper better demonstrated. The wild men of the wharves--the roughest crowd in all labour--were under his spell. This nimble-footed shopkeeper flouted them with his wit: ruled with his mind.

On a certain occasion five hundred of them were crowded into a building at Sydney yelling bloody murder and clamouring for violence. Suddenly the tiny figure of Hughes appeared on the platform before them. At first they yelled him down, but he stood smiling, resolute, undaunted. He began to talk: the tumult subsided: he stepped forward, stamped his foot and said in a voice that reached to every corner:

"You shall not strike." And they did not. David had defied the Goliaths.

From that time on Hughes was the Brains of Australian Labour. He organised his industrial rough riders into a powerful and constructive union. With it he drove a wedge into the New South Wales Legislature and gave industry, for the first time, a seat in its Councils. He became its Parliamentary Voice. He was only thirty.

Having got his foot in the doorway of public life, he now jammed the portal wide open. As trade union official he forged ahead. He became the Father Confessor of the Worker. His advice always was: "Avoid violence: put your faith in the ballot box." With this creed he tamed the Labour Jungle: through it he built up an industrial legislative group that acknowledged him as chief.

Though he was rising to fame the struggle for existence was hard. No matter how late he toiled in legislative hall or union assembly, he read law when he got home. He was admitted to the bar, and despite his deafness he became an able advocate. When he had to appear in court he used a special apparatus with wire attachments that ran to the witness box and the bench and enabled him to hear everything that was going on.

He became a journalist and contributed a weekly article to the Sydney Telegraph. An amusing thing happened. He noticed that remarkable statements began to creep into his articles when published. When he complained to the editor he discovered that the linotype operator who set up his almost indecipherable copy injected his own ideas when he could not make out the stuff.

The limitation of a State Legislature irked Hughes. He beheld the vision of an Australian Commonwealth that would federate all those Overseas States. When the far-away dominions had been welded under his eloquent appeal into a close-knit Union, the fragile, deaf little man emerged as Attorney General. At last he had elbow room.

It was due to his efforts that Australia got National Service, an Officers' School, ammunition factories, military training for schoolboys. They were all part of the kindling campaign that he waged to the stirring slogan of "Defence, not Defiance."

Always the friend and champion of Labour, he was in the thick of incessant controversy. His enemies feared him: his friends adored him. He got a variety of names that ranged all the way from "Bush Robespierre" to the "Australian Abraham Lincoln."

The Great War found Hughes the Strong Man of Australia, soon to be bound up in the larger Destiny of the Empire.

Even before the Mother Country sent her call for help to the Children beyond the seas, Hughes had offered the gallant contingent that made history at the Dardanelles. Thanks to him, they were prepared. It was Hughes who sped the Anzacs on to Gallipoli: it was Hughes who, on his own responsibility, offered fifty thousand men more. These men were not in sight at the moment, but the intrepid statesman went forth that very day and started the crusade that rallied them at once.

Hughes was moving fast, but faster moved the relentless course of the war. Gallipoli's splendid failure had been recorded, the Australians stood shoulder to shoulder with their British brothers in the French trenches when the opportunity which was to make him a world citizen knocked at his door.

In October, 1915, Andrew Fisher resigned the Premiership of Australia to become High Commissioner in London, and Hughes was named as his successor. The puny lad who had landed at Brisbane thirty years before with half a crown in his pocket sat enthroned. The reins of power were his and he lost no time in lashing them.

How he divorced the German from Australian trade: how he broke the Teutonic monopoly of the Antipodean metal fields and established the Australian Metal Exchange and made of it an Imperial institution for Imperial revenue only: how he swept England with a torrent of fervid oratory rousing the whole nation to its post-war commercial responsibilities, are all part of very recent history already woven into the fabric of this little volume.

"Reconstruct or decay" was his admonition. Reluctantly the great mass of English people saw him leave their shores last summer. Already the demand for his recall as unofficial Speeder-up of Patriotism is simmering.

What of the man behind this drama of almost unparalleled performance?

To see Hughes in action is to get the impression of a human dynamo suddenly let loose. His face is keen and sharp: his mouth thin: his cheeks are shrunken: his arms and legs are long and he has a curious way of stuffing his clenched fists into his trousers pockets. Some one has called him the Mirabeau of the Australian Proletariat. Certainly he looks it. He has a nervous energy almost beyond belief. By birth, temperament, experience and point of view he is a firebrand, but with this difference: he is a Human Flame that reasons.

Only Lloyd George surpasses him in force and fervour of eloquence. He has a marvellous trick of expression that never fails to make a winning appeal. His speeches are the Bible of the Australian worker, and they are fast becoming part of the Gospel of the wide-awake and progressive British wage-earner.

Since he was the first Statesman of the Empire to appreciate the grave business responsibilities that will come with peace, it is interesting to get his ideas on the relation between Trade and Government. In one of his impassioned speeches in England he declared:

"The relations between modern trade interests and national welfare are so intimate and complex that they cannot be treated as though they were not parts of one organic whole. No sane person now suggests that the foreign policy of the country should be dealt with by the laissez-faire policy. No one would dare openly to contend that the national policy should be one of 'drift,' although I admit that there are many most excellent persons who by their attitude seem to resent any attempt to steer the ship of State along a definite course as being an impious attempt to usurp the functions of Providence, whose special business they conceive this to be.

"I want to make one thing quite clear, that what I am advocating is not merely a change of fiscal policy, not merely or even necessarily what is called Tariff Reform--although this may, probably will, incidentally follow--but a fundamental change in our ideas of government as applied to economic and national matters. The fact is that the whole concept of modern statesmanship needs revision. But England has been, and is, the chief of sinners. Quite apart from the idea of a self-contained Empire there is the idea of Britain as an organized nation. And the British Empire as an organized Empire, organised for trade, for industry, for economic justice, for national defence, for the preservation of the world's peace, for the protection of the weak against the strong. That is a noble ideal. It ought to be--it must be--ours."

An extract from another notable address will reveal his gift of words. Commenting on the frightful price in human life and treasure that the Empire was paying, he said:

"Let us take this solemn lesson to heart. Let us, resolutely putting aside all considerations of party, class, and doctrine, without delay, proceed to devise a policy for the British Empire, a policy which shall cover every phase of our national, economic, and social life; which shall develop our tremendous resources, and yet be compatible with those ideals of liberty and justice for which our ancestors fought and died, and for which the men of our race now, in this, the greatest of all wars, are fighting and dying in a fashion worthy of their breeding.

"Let us set sail upon a definite course as becomes a mighty nation to whom has been entrusted the destiny of one-fourth of the whole human race."

Hughes is the most accessible of men. The humblest wharf-rustler in Australia hails him by his first name. A characteristic incident will show the comradeship that exists between this leader and his constituency.

On his last visit to England he crossed over to France to visit the Australian troops at the front. He was walking through a trench accompanied by General Birdwood, who is Commander-in-Chief of the overseas contingent, and stopped to chat with a group of soldiers who had fought at Gallipoli. Suddenly a shell shrieked overhead. A Tommy from Sydney yelled to the Premier:

"Duck, Billy, duck!"