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.
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