World War 1
The Paris Peace Conference in 1919 Paris, brought the winners of World War 1 together to work out the terms of peace. There had been a lot of lives lost and towns destroyed as well as valuable farming land especially in France and Belgium. Many of the nations that had suffered wanted to blame someone which led to Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles which blamed the war on Germany.
The Paris Peace Conference produced the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 and many victors grabbed land. The main leaders at the Paris Peace Conference were the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, American President Woodrow Wilson and Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando. They were known as the big four but become the big three when the Italian prime minister left angry because he hadn’t been given much territory. There were a lot of controversies at the conference and many of the smaller nations left unhappy such as Ireland who failed in it’s attempt to be recognised as independent from Britain. Australia was one of the successful small nations as the Prime Minister Billy Hughes was allowed to continue it’s White Australia Policy and gain control of German New Guinea. Japan had wanted a racist equality clause to be included in the Charter of the League of Nations. Hughes opposed this and won the support of the British Prime Minister. Some historians feel that it was this action that led Japan to a more independent and anti-Western foreign policy. This is also why Japanese went through Asia towards Australia in World War II because Australia didn’t agree with Japan’s racial equality.
Billy Hughes
Billy Hughes was born in London in 1862. He immigrated to Australia in 1884 and began working as a labourer. He entered the New South Wales colonial parliament in 1894 and in 1901. He was a Labor member of the first federal parliament. During his career he represented the LaborParty, the National Labor Party, the Nationalist Party, the United Australia Party and the Liberal Party. He represented four different seats in New South Wales and Victoria. He died in 1952 at the age of 90 and he was the oldest federal parliamentarian in Australian history.
He was the Australian Prime Minister during World War 1. He successfully had any mention of racial equality banned from the charter of the League of Nations. He won the reputation of “little digger” because he was a fierce defender of Australian rights.
He travelled to Paris in 1919 to the Peace Conference to make sure the voice of Australia was heard.
Billy Hughes