1921 Imperial Conference, 1920-1921

Component identifier:

Series 25

Content Summary:

Between May and September 1921 Hughes was absent from Australia, and occupied during June and July at a 'Conference of the Prime Ministers and Representatives of the United Kingdom, the Dominions and India'. With Deane his only adviser, Hughes pressed the Conference to renew the Anglo-Japanese Treaty and urged an airship service and wireless as solutions to the lack of inter-Empire communication and the alternative to regular Imperial Conferences. In London Hughes also supervised Australia House following Fisher's retirement in January 1921 and encouraged the sale of Australian primary products. In France on his way home he visited Paris and war graves at Amiens.

Series 25 contains all of the papers in the collection on this period of Hughes' career.

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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