The War After the War Part 17

To all this strength and power he brings undeniable charm. In action he is like a man exalted: in repose he becomes tender, dreamy, almost childlike. His whole nature seems to be driven by a vast and volcanic energy. This is why, like Roosevelt, he has been able to crowd the achievements of half a dozen careers into one. He is indeed the Happy Warrior.

Yet Lloyd George knows how to play. I have known him to work incessantly all day and follow the Ministerial game far into the night. Ten o'clock the next morning would find him on the golf links at Walton Heath fresh and full of vim and energy. At fifty-three he is at the very zenith of his strength.

Why has he succeeded? Simply because he was born to leadership. Without being profound he is profoundly moving: without studying life he is an unerring judge of men and moods. Volatile, masterful and above all human he is at once the most consistent and inconsistent of men.

But it is a new Lloyd George who stepped from unofficial to official stewardship of England: a Lloyd George with the firebrand out of his being, purged of bitter revolt, chastened and mellowed by the years of war ordeal. Out of contact with mighty sacrifice has come a kinship with the spirit. He is to-day like a man transformed. "England hath need of him."

There are those who see in the new Lloyd George a Conservative in evolution. But whatever the political product of this change may be, it represents the equipment necessary to meet the shock of peace. For peace will demand a leadership no less vigorous than war.

The lowly lad who dreamed of power amid the Welsh Hills is to-day the Hope of Empire.

VIII--_From Pedlar to Premier_

The great General who once said that war is the graveyard of reputations might have added that in its fiery furnace great careers are welded. Out of the Franco-Prussian conflict emerged the Master Figure of Bismarck: the Soudan brought forth Kitchener and South Africa Lord Roberts. The Great Struggle now rending Europe has given Joffre to French history and up to the time of this writing it has presented to the British Empire no more striking nor unexpected character than William Morris Hughes, the battling Prime Minister of Australia--the Unknown who waked up England.

Even to America where the dramatisation of the Self-made Idea has become a commonplace thing the story of his rise from pedlar to premier has a meaning all its own. Elsewhere in this book you have seen how he stirred Great Britain to the post-war commercial menace of the German. It is peculiarly fitting therefore that this narrative, dedicated as it is to the War after the War, should close with some attempt at interpretation of the personality of the man who sounded its first trumpet call.

Like Lloyd George, Hughes is a Welshman. These two remarkable men, who have done so much to rouse their people, have more than racial kinship in common. They are both undersized: both rose from the humble hearth: both made their way to eminence by way of the bar: both gripped popular imagination as real leaders of democracy. They are to-day the two princ.i.p.al imperial human a.s.sets.

Hughes will tell you that he was born frail and has remained so ever since. This son of a carpenter was a weak, thin, delicate boy, but always a fighter. At school in London he was the only Nonconformist around, and the biggest fellows invariably picked upon him. He could strike back with his fists and protect his narrow chest, but his legs were so thin that he had to stuff exercise books in his stockings to safeguard his shins.

Hughes was trained for teaching, and only the restlessness of the Celt saved him from a life term in the schoolroom. At sixteen he had become a pupil instructor. But the sea always stirred his imagination. He would wander down to the East India Docks and watch the ships load with cargoes for spicy climes. One day as he watched the great freighters a boy joined him. He looked very sad, and when Hughes asked him the reason he said he wanted to go home to visit his people, but lacked the money.

"I'll lend you some," said Hughes impulsively.

He went home and out of the lining of an ancient concertina he produced thirty shillings, all the money he had in the world. He handed this h.o.a.rd over to his new-found friend and promptly forgot all about it. He kept on teaching.

I cite this little episode because it was the turning point in a great man's career. The boy who borrowed the shillings went to Australia.

Several years later he returned the money and with it this message: "This is a great country full of opportunity for a young man. Chuck your teaching and come out here." Hughes went.

Three months later--it was in 1884--and with half a crown in his pocket he walked ash.o.r.e at Brisbane. He looked so frail that the husky dock labourers jeered at his physical weakness. Yet less than ten years from that date he was their militant leader marching on to the Rulership of all Australia.

In those days Australia was a rough land. Beef, bullying and brawn were the things that counted most in that paradise of ticket-of-leave men.

Hughes bucked the sternest game in the world and with it began a series of adventures that read like a romance and give a stirring background to the man's extraordinary public achievements.

Hughes found out at once that all hope of earning a livelihood by teaching in the bush was out of the question. His money was gone: he had to exist, so he took the first job that came his way. A band of timber-cutters about to go for a month's sojourn in the woods needed a cook, so Hughes became their potslinger. Frail as he was, he seemed to thrive on hardship. In succession he became sheep shearer, railway labourer, boundary rider, stock runner, scrub-cleaner, coastal sailor, dishwasher in a bush hotel, itinerant umbrella-mender and sheep drover.

With a small band he once brought fifty thousand sheep down from Queensland into New South Wales. For fifteen weeks he was on the tramp, sleeping at night under the stars, trudging the dusty roads all day. At the end of this trip occurred the incident that made him deaf. Over night he pa.s.sed from the sun-baked plains to a high mountain alt.i.tude.

Wet with perspiration, he slept out with his flocks and caught cold. The result was an infirmity which is only one of many physical handicaps that this amazing little man has had to overcome throughout his tempestuous life.

Yet he has fought them all down. As he once humorously said: "If I had had a const.i.tution I should have been dead long ago."

After all his strenuous bushwhacking the year 1890 found him running a small shop in the suburbs of Sydney. By day he sold books and newspapers: at night he repaired locks and clocks in order to get enough money to buy law books. Into his shop drifted sailors from the wharves with their grievances. Born with a pa.s.sionate love of freedom, these sounds of revolt were as music to his ears. Figuratively he sat at the feet of Henry George, whose "Progress and Poverty" helped to shape the course of his thinking. Lincoln's letters and speeches were among his favourites, too.

One night a big dock bruiser grabbed a package of tobacco off the counter, but before he could move a step Hughes had caught him under the jaw with his fist. His burly a.s.sociates cheered the game little shopkeeper. They now came to him with their troubles and he was soon their friend, philosopher and guide.

For years the synonym for Australian Labour was strike. When the unions were merged into a national body Hughes was the unanimous choice of the husky stevedores for leader. He became the Great Restrainer. Never was influence of lip and brain over muscle and temper better demonstrated.

The wild men of the wharves--the roughest crowd in all labour--were under his spell. This nimble-footed shopkeeper flouted them with his wit: ruled with his mind.

On a certain occasion five hundred of them were crowded into a building at Sydney yelling b.l.o.o.d.y murder and clamouring for violence. Suddenly the tiny figure of Hughes appeared on the platform before them. At first they yelled him down, but he stood smiling, resolute, undaunted.

He began to talk: the tumult subsided: he stepped forward, stamped his foot and said in a voice that reached to every corner:

"You shall not strike." And they did not. David had defied the Goliaths.

From that time on Hughes was the Brains of Australian Labour. He organised his industrial rough riders into a powerful and constructive union. With it he drove a wedge into the New South Wales Legislature and gave industry, for the first time, a seat in its Councils. He became its Parliamentary Voice. He was only thirty.

Having got his foot in the doorway of public life, he now jammed the portal wide open. As trade union official he forged ahead. He became the Father Confessor of the Worker. His advice always was: "Avoid violence: put your faith in the ballot box." With this creed he tamed the Labour Jungle: through it he built up an industrial legislative group that acknowledged him as chief.

Though he was rising to fame the struggle for existence was hard. No matter how late he toiled in legislative hall or union a.s.sembly, he read law when he got home. He was admitted to the bar, and despite his deafness he became an able advocate. When he had to appear in court he used a special apparatus with wire attachments that ran to the witness box and the bench and enabled him to hear everything that was going on.

He became a journalist and contributed a weekly article to the Sydney _Telegraph_. An amusing thing happened. He noticed that remarkable statements began to creep into his articles when published. When he complained to the editor he discovered that the linotype operator who set up his almost indecipherable copy injected his own ideas when he could not make out the stuff.

The limitation of a State Legislature irked Hughes. He beheld the vision of an Australian Commonwealth that would federate all those Overseas States. When the 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 inst.i.tution 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 ma.s.s of English people saw him leave their sh.o.r.es 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 surpa.s.ses 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 impa.s.sioned 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 att.i.tude 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 n.o.ble ideal. It ought to be--it must be--ours."

An extract from another notable address will reveal his gift of words.