“FIRST-CLASS ROW”

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 488, 18 October 1928, Page 15

“FIRST-CLASS ROW”

(From Kdltion*

SIDELIGHTS ON PEACE CONFERENCE MR. MASSEY INVOLVED (L'.iitcd P..1. —8y Telegraph — Copyright > (Australian and X.Z. Pres* Association i LONDON. Tuesday. Illuminating passages occur in the intimate papers of Colonel House, who accompanied President Wilson to the Peace Cbnfer cnce at Paris in 1919, which are being published in November. Among tho entries dated Mari n. 1919, there is a record ot the visit of Viscount Chinda and Baron Makino. who complained that they were having no end of trouble with Mr. NY. .M. Hughes, then Prime Minister of Australia. who would not consent to anything satisfying Japans desires, ax\d threatened that if anything were passed by the committee he would bring the matter up at the Plenary Conference and raise a storm of protests in the Dominions and Western Unitea States. Colonel House reveals that thero were occasionally sharp clashes of opinion with Mr. Hughes on the subject of the annexation of the German colonies in tho Pacific. The Dominion Premiers insisted that colonies quered by them should be annexed. Mr. Hughes and the late Mr. Massey demanded the colonies south of the Equator as necessary to the protection of Australia and New Zealand. A few days later Colonel House records how “Robert Cecil and myself discussed the colonial question and agreed absolutely—strangely enough. Coincident with this. President Wilson was having a first-class row with Mr. Lloyd George. M. Clemenceau. Mr. Hughes aud Mr. Massey, and it looked as though the whole thing had gone to pot. However, the row may do some good and teach them all a lesson.'* The last reference to Mr. Hughes is on April IS and 19, in which Colonel House says that the fear persisted up to the last moment that Mr. Hughes would make an anti-League speech, but everything passed almost before the conference could catch its breath.