MASTER OF TONGUES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 762, 26 February 1954, Page 19

MASTER OF TONGUES

once asked by Leo Tolstoy how many languages he knew. He admitted to 36. Later he was to add to this score and by the time he died he was master of 58, including Old Irish, Japanese, Tagalog, Egyptian, the Cuneiform inscriptions, Hittite, Albanian, Basque, Chinese, Swahili and Hausa. He was once telephoned by the Prime Minister of Tsarist Russia with the request that he resolve a misunderstanding between some St. Petersburg agents and a group of travelling Papuans. This he did, speaking with equal facility the tongues of both groups. The New Zealander was Harold Williams, an Auckland-born journalist who became foreign: editor of The Times. His grasp of international affairs was such t he became confidante and adviser to’ statesmen and diplomats. Lloyd George,, Austen Chamberlain end M. Herriot consulted him. Litvinov described him as Russia’s greatest enemy. A YOUNG New Zealander was

The latter tribute was won by Williams’s consistent advocacy of western intervention in Russia in the years following the revolution. Russia was, in fact, one of the New Zealander’s chief interests. He spent many years there in Tsarist times, and wrote a history of the country. Born in 1876, Williams was the eldest of seven sons of a Methodist minister. At 20 he followed. his father into the ministry, but found himSelf unsuited to the vocation and travelled to Germany to study languages. After taking his degree, he entered journalism as an assistant foreign correspondent for The Times, From then on the acquisition of langtages became secondary to the task of news-gathering and, to some extent, news making. Williams regarded it as relaxation, a pleasant relief from the strain of reporting Europe’s stormy political scene. When Harold Williams died The Times spoke of his "irreparable loss to the paper," and Sir Robert-later Lord Vansittart-said: "Of his great gifts of

thought. and knowledge I will say nothing. They spoke for themselves to all who ever knew him, and to many who did not. But if ever, during a long and loving friendship, I had been able for one day to believe that I had a character like his, it would have been a happy day for me." The Amazing Harold Williams, a documentary about the famous New Zealander, will be broadcast from Nationa] stations during the next few months. It was written by Oliver A. Gillespie, and produced for the NZBS by Bernard Beeby. William Austin takes the part of Williams, and the narrators are Charles Sinclair and Briton Chadwick. The programme will be heard first from 1XN at 9.30 p.m. on Wednesday, March 3.