"Billy" Hughes Speaks Out

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 316, 29 March 1928, Page 1

"Billy" Hughes Speaks Out

PLEA FOR BRITISH AUSTRALIA

Slashes All Round and Talks of Scum

IX a fiery address to Australian Nationalists, Mr. William Morris Hughes, war-time Prime Minister of Australia, condemned the entry of Italians and Muscovites to the Commonwealth, and wanted to know whether British Australia belonged to Australians or to Mussolini or the Soviet agents. He was also bitter in reference to America and her war policy.

Reed. 12.5 p.m. SYDNEY, To-day. Mr. W. M. Hughes, a former Prime Minister of Australia, addressing the Nationalist Association, made a strong attack on the Federal Government immigration policy. He said: “Our ideal for Australia was a democratic country, peopled by men and women of the British race, and of British birth.** The immigration policy was not compatible with that ideal. He condemned the arrangement of allowing in a large number of Italians, and the freedom given to Soviet agents to enter. “The Soviet stands for something definite; so does Mussolini. We seem to stand half-way between the two.” He asked to whom did Australia belong—to Australians, or to Mussolini, or to Soviet agents? He appealed to Australians to make this very definite and certain, and not to take orders from Moscow or Mussolini. The last-named had but to rattle a sword in a scabbard, and weic Ausuttiiaua to allow his grandmothers, his uncles and his aunts to enter Australia? He referred to America refusing to accept Australian musicians, and said: “Yet we allow the scum of America to come here,. and we took those things lying down for many years.” America stood for the policy of making the country the melting-pot of

Europe. She got people there who were the scum of Europe. They did not melt. All her sins had come home to roost.

Dealing with Hinkler's welcome at Canberra. Mr. Hughes said the picture shown that night was of nothing but American airplanes and American big guns. Yet an American never had a big gun while the war lasted. As for her airplanes, you could have packed them under the platform on which he stood.

“Without a definitely patriotic Australian ideal, linked with the Empire, to start to kindle enthusiasm in the young men and women who are entering life, we must perish.” he concluded.—A. and N.Z.