Three generations of Australians have been delighted and appalled by the salty character of a tiny, terrible-tempered politician whose rallying cry, "What the blithering blazes!", once tinkled the glass chandeliers of Versailles, made Lloyd George blanch, Woodrow Wilson freeze, and Clemenceau laugh. William Morris ("Billy") Hughes was born a Welshman, but ten years as a knockabout laborer in Australia had made him as indigenous as a kangaroo. When he became Australia's World War I Prime Minister, the Anzacs draped a big slouch hat around his pint-sized head, dubbed him "Little Digger."...
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