Hughes's essays reflect his insight into German society, the developments of which he keenly followed during a long time. He spent a year there 1930–1931 when he was preparing a study on the Catholic labour movement (Chapoulie 1996, 14) and returned after the war for visits together with a delegation of U.S. scholars. He was fluent in German. He also had a keen interest in Canadian society, where his fluent knowledge of French language allowed him to develop ties to French-speaking sociology in Canada and support its development (Chapoulie 1996, Helmes-Hayes 2000).