HAROLD WILLIAMS

Korero (AEWS), Volume 3, Issue 12, 16 July 1945, Page 22

HAROLD WILLIAMS

A KORERO Report

Harold williams was born in Christchurch in 1877, the eldest son of

the Reverend W. J. Williams, an early leader of the Methodist Church in New Zealand. As the son of a Minister constantly passing from one circuit to another, the boy changed his school every three years. Learning was difficult at first. Arithmetic was a bugbear. Figures were incomprehensible and almost hostile. Many years later he reproached his teachers : “I wasn’t altogether a fool ; why couldn’t they have made mathematics clear to me ? ”

Even grammar was not easy at first but suddenly, when he was seven years old, there came something like an explosion in his brain. Languages, grammar, and all the ramifications of philology opened to him as if by magic. The tortuous paths of foreign languages, so steep and stony for most of us, were full of colour and harmony for him. He always remembered this sudden sense of inner revolution as one of the happiest moments of his life.

His father was his only help in his reading, but he had a real intuition for finding the right things on his father’s bookshelves. With the exception of Russian, languages entered his brain of their own accord. He did not so much learn as assimilate them. At the age of eleven he knew Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, German, Maori, and Italian. The key to his language studies was the New Testament, which he knew almost by heart. His pocket-money was spent on the purchase of the Gospels translated into many languages. In his teens he found a copy of St. Mark’s Gospel translated into Dobuan, a language of New Guinea, by the Rev. Dr. George Brown. Out of that he constructed a Dobuan grammar and vocabulary. His father, finding the loose sheets of the boy’s grammar lying about, sent them to Dr. Brown, whose reply showed that “ There was in the South Pacific no more astonished man ” than the doctor.

It was incredible that a lad who had never seen Dobu and had never even heard the language spoken should have constructed such a vocabulary on so slender a basis.

From the time when he won his first scholarship, his education cost his parents nothing. When he was about to try for a University scholarship, an accident on the playing field of the Timaru Boys’ High School endangered his sight. His parents opposed his taking the examination as his eyes were bandaged. But he took it entirely on languages—English, French, German, Latin, and Greek—and won his scholarship brilliantly.

He never completed his course at the University of New Zealand, and never regretted it. It had always been his father’s wish that he should become a Methodist minister, and in March, 1898, when he was little more than twenty, Harold Williams was accepted as a probationer for the Ministry, and was appointed for two years to the St. Albans circuit, Christchurch. After two years he was moved to Inglewood, in the Waitara circuit. Here he must have been a puzzle to the quiet country people. A Methodist minister, a Tolstoyan, a philosopher, philologist, socialist, vegetarian, dreamer with a stammer. The people liked him, but could not understand a young man with such a torrent of strange ideas flowing through his head. Small wonder, perhaps, that when the probationary period came to an end, his superiors seized upon his stammer as a reason for refusing to give him a parish. This decision both hurt and disheartened him, and it was plain that his career as a Methodist minister was coming to an end.

As a preliminary to finding another opening Harold Williams decided to make his way to a German university to study languages. Hearing of his intention, Mr. William Wilson, one of the proprietors of the New Zealand Herald made a contribution towards

his expenses and early in 1900 the young New-Zealander set out to discover the world. One of his great ambitions was to see Tolstoy, but otherwise his prospects were vague. In his pockets were a few sovereigns, and some letters to German professors. In his brain he carried a knowledge of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, Swedish, Russian, Polish, Maori, Dobuan, Fijian, Samoan, Tongan, the tongue of Niue, some of the Philippine dialects, and some others. He was just twenty-three. In the next few years Williams studied at the Universities of Berlin and Munich, eking out his scanty means by literary work and by teaching English. In his vacations he contrived to travel in many European countries. In 1905 he took his Ph.D. degree at the University of Munich. Williams now took up the study of the Slav languages, and was thus led to interest himself still further in Russian affairs. His letters show that at this time he was also toying with the notion of a possible career in journalism, having already done some correspondent’s work for newspapers.

Harold Williams' first contact with The Times of London was in 1903. In that year D. D. Braham, correspondent of The Times in St Petersburg, was expelled from Russia. The Times decided not to fill his place, but Braham organized a remarkable news service, the threads of which linked the Russian liberals with M. Peter Struve, one of their exiled leaders, who edited a Russian paper at Stuttgart. Braham, who had a high opinion of Williams’ literary abilities, appointed him a special correspondent of The Times to obtain information from the exiled Liberals. This experience led to further journalistic work, first on the foreign staff of the Manchester Guardian, then as special correspondent of the Morning Post in Russia and Turkey in 1911-12, and in 1914 as correspondent of the Daily Chronicle in Russia.

Here Williams’ remarkable knowledge and receptivity speedily established his reputation as an authority on Russian affairs. This reputation was confirmed

by his study, “ Russia of the Russians," published in 1914. His sympathies were with the Constitutional Democrats, " The Cadets,” and he married Madame Ariadna Tyrkova, a well-known political writer, the first woman to be elected to the Duma, and a prominent member of the “ Cadet ’’ party. When the war broke out in 1914 Williams supplied his newspaper with a series of extremely interesting and authoritative messages on military and political conditions, and contrived to accompany the Russian armies, taking part in one of the raids of Cossack cavalry which actually penetrated Hungary by the Wyszkow Pass. His knowledge enabled him to render valuable service to the British Ambassador, Sir George Buchanan, and together with Mr. (later Sir) Hugh Walpole, organized and managed a British bureau of information which co-operated with the Russian press.

In the first stages of the Russian Revolution, Harold Williams, who knew the fanatical strength of the extremist minority, and the weakness of Kerensky, was frequently consulted by M. Rodzianko, the President of the Duma, and gave great assistance to the British Labour delegates, led by Mr. Arthur Henderson, on their visit to Russia in the spring of 1917. The overthrow of the Kerensky regime grieved but did not surprise him.

Williams’ marriage, as well as his criticisms, earned him the hostility of the revolutionaries, to whom his views appeared as dangerously moderate, and he and his wife were at last obliged to leave Russia. With the formation of the White Russian front in Southern Russia Williams returned and followed the civil war for The Times and the Daily Chronicle, with General Denikin’s Army. Here he saw the fatal military and political mistakes at its headquarters, and he left Novorossisk, in March, 1920, just before the town fell. This experience, his last in the service cf the Daily Chronicle, was particularly painful for one who had so many friends on the losing side.

In June, 1921, Williams, who had travelled in the Balkan Peninsula and in the Succession States after his return

from Russia, joined the staff of The Times as a leader-writer. In May, 1922, he was appointed Director of the Foreign Department, where his literary ability and political judgment were abundantly shown in the numerous leading articles he contributed to The Times in the following years. Not only was his knowledge of international affairs both extensive and accurate, but he had a remarkable gift of sympathy which enabled him to write of them definitely but without offence, while his origin as a New-Zealander preserved him from too narrow a regard for the politics of Europe.

As a natural corollary to his character, his travels, and his official position, Williams had many friends in the diplomatic world. In all circles, however, his essential kindliness and modesty won friendship as much as his erudition won respect. His home at Chelsea was constantly thronged with friends and acquaintances of many different nationalities. So far as his work for The Times permitted, Williams kept up an active interest in the work of the School for Slavonic Studies in the University of London. He was also one of the editors of the Slavonic Review. He never abandoned his linguistic studies, and his friends were from time to time surprised to find that he was conversant with the latest theory as to the affinities of Hittite, or had learnt to read and converse fluently in Turkish and Arabic.

Williams was always far too modest to admit how many languages he knew, and always gave an evasive answer if questioned on the matter. His wife’s biography of him says that he knew twenty-six, but that philology by no means exhausted his interests. He was amazingly well and widely read, and his familiarity with current political, national, and social movements was encyclopaedic. Even Lord Northcliff e, at that time proprietor of The

Times, who rarely said anything pleasant to anybody, showed his respect for Williams’ knowledge and ability. When they met, which was not often, Northcliffe was always cordial ; he never attempted to impose his views on Williams, nor did he try to influence his leading articles.

Little by little, also, Continental readers of The Times felt the presence and personality of a new foreign editor : the extent of his erudition, the balance and discretion of his judgment, his intuitive goodwill towards all peoples. Personal meetings with Ministers and diplomats strengthened his authority. He had the gift of inspiring confidence, and deserved it.

By 1928 Williams’ health was beginning to fail. He was examined by Harley Street specialists, but nothing beyond overwork, it was said, was wrong with him. Here the doctors made a mistake, taking the effect for the cause. He was suffering from a gastric ulcer, an exhausting complaint, but one which might have been cured if taken in time. On Monday, November 5, almost on the eve of his departure for a holiday in Egypt, he wrote a leader, spent some time in the office, and wound up all sorts of business. Next day he collapsed. An operation was performed which failed to save his life, and he died on Sunday, November 18, 1928. The day after the funeral a close friend, Robert Vansittart, wrote in The Times : “We have to-day returned from seeing, but not from feeling, our last of Harold Williams. Of his gifts of thought and knowledge I will say nothing ; they spoke for themselves to all who knew him and to many who did not. But if ever in a long and loving friendship I had been able for a day to believe that I had a character like his, it would have been a happy day for me ; and if many of us could have or had that illusion, even for a day, the world would be a happier place.”