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. Already the demand for his recall as unofficial Speeder-up of Patriotism is simmering.
What of the man behind this drama of almost unparalleled performance?
To see Hughes in action is to get the impression of a human dynamo suddenly let loose. His face is keen and sharp: his mouth thin: his cheeks are shrunken: his arms and legs are long and he has a curious way of stuffing his clenched fists into his trousers pockets. Some one has called him the Mirabeau of the Australian Proletariat. Certainly he looks it. He has a nervous energy almost beyond belief. By birth, temperament, experience and point of view he is a firebrand, but with this difference: he is a Human Flame that reasons.
Only Lloyd George surpasses him in force and fervour of eloquence. He has a marvellous trick of expression that never fails to make a winning appeal. His speeches are the Bible of the Australian worker, and they are fast becoming part of the Gospel of the wide-awake and progressive British wage-earner.
Since he was the first Statesman of the Empire to appreciate the grave business responsibilities that will come with peace, it is interesting to get his ideas on the relation between Trade and Government. In one of his impassioned speeches in England he declared:
"The relations between modern trade interests and national welfare are so intimate and complex that they cannot be treated as though they were not parts of one organic whole. No sane person now suggests that the foreign policy of the country should be dealt with by the laissez-faire policy. No one would dare openly to contend that the national policy should be one of 'drift,' although I admit that there are many most excellent persons who by their attitude seem to resent any attempt to steer the ship of State along a definite course as being an impious attempt to usurp the functions of Providence, whose special business they conceive this to be.
"I want to make one thing quite clear, that what I am advocating is not merely a change of fiscal policy, not merely or even necessarily what is called Tariff Reform—although this may, probably will, incidentally follow—but a fundamental change in our ideas of government as applied to economic and national matters. The fact is that the whole concept of modern statesmanship needs revision. But England has been, and is, the chief of sinners. Quite apart from the idea of a self-contained Empire there is the idea of Britain as an organized nation. And the British Empire as an organized Empire, organised for trade, for industry, for economic justice, for national defence, for the preservation of the world's peace, for the protection of the weak against the strong. That is a noble ideal. It ought to be—it must be—ours."
An extract from another notable address will reveal his gift of words. Commenting on the frightful price in human life and treasure that the Empire was paying, he said: