Australia
Billy Hughes
1862–1952 Prime Minister of Australia, 1915–1923
Born in London, the son of a carpenter from North Wales, Hughes emigrated to Australia in 1884, rose in the labor movement and sat in federal parliament from 1901. He became prime minister in October 1915 when Andrew Fisher resigned. In 1916 his speeches in Britain urging greater economic pressure on Germany were widely reported. Convinced that conscription was needed, he put it to a national vote in October 1916; it was narrowly defeated, and he was expelled from the Labor Party but stayed in office with a new party that merged into the Nationalists. A second vote in December 1917 failed too. At the 1919 Paris Peace Conference he clashed with US President Wilson and signed the Treaty of Versailles for Australia. He died on 28 October 1952.