At the close of the Great War a powerful myth of Australian character and realisation had been achieved, at the price of tens of thousands of lives and unprecedented upheaval and division. In addition, ‘Australia’ had new international status – not as a ‘great power’ but as an internationally recognised subject whose claims on Pacific territory and international norms would demand, and find, a hearing. The Anzac tradition was already at work: when his status was challenged by Woodrow Wilson at Versailles, Hughes replied that he spoke for 60 000 dead. Were they to see this moment, they would learn that they had endured the cold and filth of the trenches, the lice and poison gas, thrown their bodies before machine-gun fire and shrapnel until they were stopped, so that the old things could continue: a white Australia, a defensive buffer of Pacific territory, the ‘crimson thread of kinship’. The diggers' sacrifices won Australia independent representation at the peace conference and Hughes much influence within the British delegation.