International relations, 1915-1923

Component identifier:

Subseries 16-2

Content Summary:

This subseries is devoted to international relations, particularly imperial relations, and is arranged as follows: correspondence and cables; subject files; reports and British Cabinet papers; newscuttings and printed material; and petition.

The correspondence and cables subgrouping contains, in date order, letters and cables Hughes received, mostly from London, while in Australia. Correspondents refer to the war situation, proposals and arrangements for imperial conferences, the Chanak crisis of October 1922, the Imperial Wire Chain, the Hague Conference of June 1922, the Washington Disarmament Conference of December 1921, recommendations for British honours, the Lausanne Conference of 1922, and the sale of such products as copper, wolfram, tungsten, whole oil, and glycerine to Great Britain. Most of the cables are copies of decyphered communications Hughes received, often with a covering note, through the Governor-General or his Secretary, or from the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Walter Long. Other correspondents are Sir Ronald Munro-Ferguson, Sir Joseph Cook, George Pearce, M. Clemenceau, Ben Morgan, W. S. Robinson, Mark Sheldon, Malcolm Shepherd, Andrew Fisher, Keith Murdoch and G. J. Hogben. The subject files subgrouping includes other cables, letters, reports and British cabinet papers on aspects of international relations.

The reports and British Cabinet papers subgrouping includes most of the copies of reports, memoranda and Foreign Office Confidential Prints presented to the British Cabinet and sent to Hughes as a Dominion Prime Minister are filed here. Those sent while Hughes was in England or France in 1918-1919, and 1921 are in the appropriate series. Roneoed copies of reports of the Political Intelligence Department of the Foreign Office, and records of the proceedings of the 1917 Imperial War Conference and March-May 1917 meetings of the British War Cabinet are here also. The conferences covered by this section of the subseries are the International Financial Conference, Brussels (October 1920), the Air Navigation Conference (October 1919), the International Economic Conference, Genoa (May 1922), and the Conference on the Limitation of Armaments, Washington (1921-1922). The newscuttings and printed material subgrouping consists mainly of cuttings on international affairs from British newspapers sent to Hughes from the High Commissioner in London. The petition subgrouping includes an illuminated address and three large rolls of signatures of British women placed beneath the petition 'Women's Memorial to the Rt Hon. W. M. Hughes Prime Minister of Australia urging his immediate return to London, that he may share in the management of the War, as a member of the inner and supreme War Council of the Empire' (October 1916).

Immediate source of acquisition:

The W. M. Hughes Papers were presented to the National Library of Australia by Dame Mary Hughes in 1953. The collection was received in two consignments. One consisted of papers taken from the Perpetual Trustee Company comprising material from Hughes' Lindfield home and from his office rooms at the Commonwealth Offices, Sydney; the other came directly from Lindfield. Lists of the contents of both consignments are held in the Library's Manuscript Branch. With the agreement of the executors and the Library, much of the collection, was for a time, held at the Australian National University by Fitzhardinge. He was permitted sole access to the collection while writing the biography Hughes commissioned in 1951. Fitzhardinge's own papers documenting the writing of the biography are also held by the Library (MS 5400). The papers transferred to the Library in 1953 are by no means the total collection of Hughes' personal papers, although it is impossible to say what proportion has survived. (see Fitzhardinge, p.936).

Names:

Hughes, W. M. (1862-1952)

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