MR HUGHES AS ORATOR
A DEVASTATING INSULT. Recalling some of the great, flights of oratory and the keen retorts .in Parliamentary debates. Mr Campbell Dixon, writing in the "Daily Telegraph,” gives the palm to Mr W. M. Hughes, Australia's war-time Prime Minister. Mr Hughes, he says, has a Welsh fire and a biting sarcasm that more than atone for a voice rasping and nasal, like Abraham Lincoln's. The most devastating insult I ever heard in debate was his. One of his followers crossed the floor of (he House of Representatives. The renegade's vote turned the scale; the Government, fell. In a hush that, was painful, the figures were announced, and still Mr Hughes stood at the table, as if listening. “What is it that the honourable the Prime Minister is waiting for?" asked the Speaker gently. With his rutiled grey hair and curving nose and narrow shoulders bowed, the little fallen leader stood motionless, “like a sick eagle looking at the sky." Then, timed to a second, bis harsh voice cut through the silence. "I was waiting for the cock to crow." _______
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Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 December 1939, Page 6
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182MR HUGHES AS ORATOR Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 December 1939, Page 6
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