1918 Imperial War Conference, 1900-1919

Component identifier:

Series 23

Content Summary:

In April 1918 Hughes, his wife, Sir Joseph Cook and their secretaries and advisers left Sydney to represent Australia at the Imperial War Conference which met in June and July. During the year he also attended meetings of the British War Cabinet and the Supreme War Council of the Allies in Paris, obtained direct representation for Australia in the British Empire Delegation to the 1919 Peace Conference and negotiated the sale of Australia's 1917-1818 surplus wheat crop.

All of the papers in the collection that Hughes received from April 1918 up to his departure for Paris on 11 January 1919 are in this series. There are five subseries.

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)

Contents

Access and use