Series 01 Part 02: Hughes family correspondence, 3 April 1917-22 September 1918 - Page 476
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[Page 476]
3.
uttered. In his last paragraph he quarrels with his own Fellows. He has already fallen out with his students, who elected Andy Watt, the barrister, president of St John's College Union, ignoring the usual courtesy to the Head of the House by electing him. He has quarrelled with the Chancellor (vide correspondence), & with the "rich" Catholics, & even with me, (You remember the St Patrick's Day episode, which was such a fiasco) & one wonders who else is left to quarrel with. It takes no prophet to see that Sydney is a very uncomfortable place for him to continue to live in, & that when the first chance offers, there will be a vacancy at St John's.
Things Irish here haven't settled down yet. Seven men in Melbourne & three in Sydney were arrested & interned yesterday, under the War Precautions Act, for endeavoring to further the cause of an Irish republic. Particulars not published yet. Willie Watt seems to have the courage to act, while Hughes merely screamed & did nothing.
I went to a lecture by a Belgian priest, Fr. Vandamme, at the Sacred Heart Convent Rose Bay last Sunday. He gave an interesting account of the condition of things for the first year until he got through the barbed wire on the frontier & escaped, & he talked perfectly straight. He said he was often asked if the stories, of the German outrages in Belgium were true. He replied "You can gather up every story of every outrage that has been published in the English papers, & accept them – every one – as true, & believe that many others are true also."
He also lectured at Kincoppal a few days later, and