Series 01 Part 02: Hughes family correspondence, 3 April 1917-22 September 1918 - Page 287
Primary tabs
Transcription
[Page 287]
7.
up, & I don't think either John Meagher or I was interested in his observations on the Irish in Australia. "Go away," I said "You are only an Englishman & not even a Shoneen Irishman like me."
I think old Meagher was glad to find there was no soreness on my part towards him, but whether he liked me to laugh at him as much as I did, I don't know. I disabused his mind of the idea that we had held a conspirators' meeting, & had organised the attack on Mannix. I told him I had attended no meeting, & that I knew of no meeting having been held, & that the published protests were one & all the personal protests of the writers without any private place of attack, but simply from the overflow of indignation felt by each of us. This seemed to surprise him, as he said he was told that we held a meeting which John Mullins declined to attend. I told him that such a story was pure invention.
So you see how John Mullins's great free trip to Melbourne, while the row was on, has gained him a halo of glory among the faithful as the one "educated shoneen" who rose superior to the evil associates by whom he was surrounded!