far-away dominions had been welded under his eloquent
appeal into a close-knit Union, the fragile, deaf little man emerged as
Attorney General. At last he had elbow room.

It was due to his efforts that Australia got National Service, an
Officers' School, ammunition factories, military training for
schoolboys. They were all part of the kindling campaign that he waged to
the stirring slogan of "Defence, not Defiance."

Always the friend and champion of Labour, he was in the thick of
incessant controversy. His enemies feared him: his friends adored him.
He got a variety of names that ranged all the way from "Bush
Robespierre" to the "Australian Abraham Lincoln."

The Great War found Hughes the Strong Man of Australia, soon to be bound
up in the larger Destiny of the Empire.

Even before the Mother Country sent her call for help to the Children
beyond the seas, Hughes had offered the gallant contingent that made
history at the Dardanelles. Thanks to him, they were prepared. It was
Hughes who sped the Anzacs on to Gallipoli: it was Hughes who, on his
own responsibility, offered fifty thousand men more. These men were not
in sight at the moment, but the intrepid statesman went forth that very
day and started the crusade that rallied them at once.

Hughes was moving fast, but faster moved the relentless course of the
war. Gallipoli's splendid failure had been recorded, the Australians
stood shoulder to shoulder with their British brothers in the French
trenches when the opportunity which was to make him a world citizen
knocked at his door.

In October, 1915, Andrew Fisher resigned the Premiership of Australia to
become High Commissioner in London, and Hughes was named as his
successor. The puny lad who had landed at Brisbane thirty years before
with half a crown in his pocket sat enthroned. The reins of power were
his and he lost no time in lashing them.

How he divorced the German from Australian trade: how he broke the
Teutonic monopoly of the Antipodean metal fields and established the
Australian Metal Exchange and made of it an Imperial institution for
Imperial revenue only: how he swept England with a torrent of fervid
oratory rousing the whole nation to its post-war commercial
responsibilities, are all part of very recent history already woven into
the fabric of this little volume.

"Reconstruct or decay" was his admonition. Reluctantly the great mass
of English people saw him leave their shores last summer. Al