1919 Paris Peace Conference, 1918-1919

Component identifier:

Series 24

Content Summary:

Hughes and Sir Joseph Cook were Australia's representatives in the British delegation to the Peace Conference in Paris held from January to July 1919. In addition, Hughes was Australia's representative at meetings of the Council of Ten and one of the vice-presidents of one of the committees the Council set up, the Reparations Commission. His two lasting achievements at Paris, acknowledged by most writers on the Peace Conference, were the exclusion of a racial equality clause implying free migration from the preamble to the Covenant of the League of Nations, and the virtual annexation for Australia of New Guinea under a 'C' class mandate.

Some of the evidence of Hughes' presence at the Conference can be traced in the present series which although small contains some excellent source material. It has been grouped into three subseries, and divides into correspondence, British War Cabinet and Supreme War Council and miscellaneous papers.

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

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