1932 overseas trip, 1932-1935

Component identifier:

Subseries 35-1

Content Summary:

While in Naples on his way to England with his wife and daughter Helen, Hughes received a cable from Lyons requesting his attendance at Geneva. Between July and September he holidayed in England and Scotland, was in Geneva and Paris in September and October, and by December was back in Australia. Hughes was acting leader of the delegation for most of the proceedings because Bruce was detained in London on business, and a member of three Assembly committees. Sir Donald Cameron, Professor Fred Alexander and Dr Lucy Osborne were also members of the delegation.

All of the letters in the collection that Hughes received between June and December 1932 can be found in this subseries. In addition, there are drafts of speeches, League publications, cuttings, some dinner programs, an engagement diary, and copies of some of Hughes' own letters. The latter includes a long letter to Claude McKay summing up his feelings at the end of the Assembly. There is also a record of a conversation about mandates that Hughes had with the French Prime Minister, Edouard Herriot and some photographs of a wreath-laying ceremony at Port Said (November 1932).

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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