Shut up President Wilson…

It was 1918 and the Allies had won the Great War. As one of the main contributing victors, the newly established country of Australia had a place on the world stage and was in a position to influence the coming peace treaty and as Australian Prime Minister, Billy Hughes was the man to do so.

President Wilson from the USA questioned Hughes’s authority to intervene in world affairs because he was ‘speaking for only five million people’. Hughes replied: ‘I speak for sixty thousand dead. For how many do you speak?’