NEW BOOKS.

Timaru Herald, Volume CVIII, Issue 1682, 31 May 1919, Page 9

NEW BOOKS.

MR. HUGHES UNDER- ANALYSISMr Hughes was very politely treated when, before and after his great iailuro to persuade Australian.* to th'-i policy of (•oiiHcription, lie iwnt ILonu: to tell British statesmen h<r.v they should rim Great Britain and t-ljc. British people «v!int fools tlioy liad bean i arid half of them still we'v. If lie iwssj.

forgot that they were his hosts. But his superiority and his hectoring w'ere bound to promote reprisal sooner or later, and it lips come ig. "Mr Hughes, a Study." It is a study which does not lenve much of Mr Hughes, either as politician' or as economist-, before it ends, and it is as entertaining as a lively novel. The author, whoso anonymity caiues admiration for his modesty, takes the speeches in which Mr Hughes during his first visit to England strove to stir the British people up to change their fiscal policy in order to "'win the war," the speeches of which Mr Lloyd George wrote, "their detonating quality is ot' the highest order," and shows,' by a merciless, piece-meal analysis, that detonation was their only quality. No difficulty is found in guessing Mr Hughes's fiscal creed, hut it is never set forth in the speeches, which amount to sound and fury signifying nothing except denunciation -of free trade, contradiction and confusion. When tho visitor seems about 'to state plainly what ho would have the British people do he swings ofc with loos© talk about "our vast, complex problems, bristling with difficulties which cannot 'oe solved by any hard , and fast method," though a hard and fast method, however he may fa.il to define it, is his recipe.., The author is perhaps a little too severe in his dissection of these rhetorical addresses The task of tho popular orator, even the statesman orator, is most generally to point out broad paths, leaving the . experts to j get over detailed difficulties. Not much more can be done in an oration, ! even if the speaker were qualified to ! do more, and we fancy that very many admired speeches subjected to the proj cess Mr Hughes's have to bear, would , show, about the same proportion of practical definjiteness jo their eloquence. But tlie Australian Premier's contradictions : t 0 himself, the confusion ■ which lie shows in quoting statements, rnacfe with one meaning, to advance another, and tlie opposition of his economic preaching in Great Britain to his own performance in Australia, arc not thus excusable. They are {ill dealt with, separately and incisively, and the exhibition is made so diverting that the dissector appears to be lifted above malice. Tlio economic chapters, which form most of the book, would be still more convincing if Mr Joseph "Chamberlain was not ridiculed with Mr Hughes. If MiChamberlain was the "Mad Hatter," in more than the "Westminster's" jestings, an Australian Premier can be content to be "devoid alike of economic knowledge and of political judgment." The author examines what heunderstands. from newspaper endorsements; to be Mr Hughes's actual policy, the commandeering of the Empire's raw materials, for British use and n general tariff on ail manufactured imports'. with a graded preference for Imperial and Allied products, and shows its dangers and its disadvantages, while he makes as strong a case as could'well be made for free trade. Whatever may 'oe defective -in his "Study" we "shall be surprised if -Mr Hughes ever attempts to answer it except "by the'detonations j which are not analysis.. Fisher TTnwin publisher. I*. W. Hutton and Co., I I .local., agents. Gs net.