Versailles, Chateau de Versailles

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Versailles, Chateau de Versailles

The Galerie des Glaces (Hall of Mirrors)
Australia in Paris, 1919

Australia in Paris, 1919

The Australian delegates to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, Prime Minister William ‘Billy’ Hughes and Deputy Prime Minister Sir Joseph Cook (front row third and fourth from left) and their staff, Paris, France, 1919. The Australian Solicitor General, Robert Garran, is second from left. It was at Garran’s instruction that the British Empire’s first shot of the war was fired on 5 August 1914 at the German ship Pfalz as it tried to leave Port Philip Bay, Victoria. [AWM A02615]

At Paris, ‘Billy’ Hughes led an Australian delegation which included such figures as Sir Joseph Cook, Deputy Prime Minister, and Sir Robert Garran, Solicitor–General. (Garran had been the first public servant in the Commonwealth government in January 1901.)

Hughes had objectives that were specifically Australian: to secure Australian (and British Empire) control over the old German colonies in New Guinea and the islands. Australian armed forces had seized these territories in 1914 and Hughes would have liked to simply annex them under direct Australian rule. In this he was initially opposed by President Wilson who believed that colonies of great empires were really only territories held in trust till the day their peoples would gain independence and rule themselves. Wilson distrusted the old empires and the way in which they seemed to be gathering in Paris to carve up the ex–colonial territories of the defeated powers, especially Germany and Turkey, rather than simply to make a new and more just world order.

Cover of a guide map to the landmarks of Paris, France. This map belonged to Sir Joseph Cook, a member of the Australian delegation to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. [M3633_1_paris cover, Personal Papers of Sir Joseph Cook, National Archives of Australia]

A map of the principal landmarks of Paris, France, in 1919. This map belonged to Sir Joseph Cook, a member of the Australian delegation to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. [M3633_map of Paris, Personal Papers of Sir Joseph Cook, National Archives of Australia]
Download a PDF of this map

On one famous occasion, when the issue was being discussed, Wilson asked Hughes if he was going to oppose the wishes of the twelve hundred million people represented at the conference against the five million Australians represented by Hughes. Hughes’ retort was that he represented 60,000 dead, those Australian service personnel who had given their lives for Australia’s interests in the war. Eventually, the question was resolved by creating a form of colonial administration known as ‘Mandates’ in which countries like Australia, given control of places like New Guinea, were to be held responsible for their progress to the new League. To Hughes, much of this was simply annexation under a new name but he accepted the compromise in order to secure Australia’s borders to the north where he feared the expansion of the Japanese Empire. On other fronts he fought for adequate reparations to Australia from Germany under the Versailles Treaty and to defeat the inclusion of any declaration of racial equality into the Covenant of the League of Nations. On the question of equality he had the tacit support of the Americans who also feared the rise of Japan in the Pacific.

Australian and British soldiers relaxing in a club run by an English lady, Miss Butler, at 19 Place Vendôme, Paris. [MP367_1_552_4_60 365729_0001-2, National Archives of Australia]

The Treaty of Versailles and the Covenant of the League of Nations, signed by Hughes and Cook, were the first such international agreements ever signed by the Commonwealth of Australia in its own right. In as much as the landing at Gallipoli might be interpreted as the so–called ‘birth of the nation’, so the presence of Hughes at Paris and the signing of the German treaty indicated Australia’s real arrival as a player on the stage of international diplomacy. But undoubtedly that place had to a large extent been won for Hughes by the sacrifice of the nation in war and by the contribution of the Australian Imperial Force to victory.

A woman from the New Zealand Volunteer Service relaxing with a group of soldiers, Australians, New Zealanders, Scots, English and French, on leave, Paris, France, 20 August 1918. [AWM H03656]

A drawing by David Low, depicting Australian Prime Minister William ‘Billy’ Hughes in Paris during the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. [nla.pic–an22763769, National Library of Australia]

The influence of the AIF was represented that afternoon of 28 June 1919 in the Galerie des Glaces in a curious way. Two days before the signing ceremony the delegations had been informed that not only would they have to sign but that they must also affix their national seals to the document in wax. Australia had no seal of its own so Hughes and Garran scoured the antique markets of Paris near the Hotel Majestic off the Champs Elysées, where the Australian delegation was staying. Hughes fancied a seal depicting the ancient Greek hero Hercules slaying a lion only to be told by Garran, ‘No, Mr Hughes, you are not in the least like Hercules.’ Garran also reject a seal with three legs reminding Hughes of his Welsh origins (Hughes came from Wales and he and Lloyd George were known, when agitated, to argue in Welsh!). Finally, the seal actually used was fashioned from the tunic button of an AIF soldier’s uniform. Considering the number of Australian graves stretching from Belgium, down through France and across the Mediterranean to Gallipoli it was an appropriate symbol to attach to the nation’s first treaty.

Australian soldiers march across the Place de la Concorde, Paris, during a procession of Allied troops on Bastille Day, 14 July 1918. [AWM E02727]

Place de La Concorde, Paris. [DVA]

The statue on the Place de La Concorde, Paris, representing the French city of Strasbourg. After the Franco–Prussian war of 1870 the statue was draped in black to symbolise France’s loss to the new German Empire of its most easterly provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. When World War I ended in victory the black drapery was removed. [DVA]

Inscription ‘STRASBOURG’ on the statue representing that city in the Place de La Concorde, Paris. [DVA]

Paris [DVA]

The Galerie des Glaces (Hall of Mirrors)
Australia in Paris, 1919

Versailles, Chateau de Versailles

Australia in Paris, 1919

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