Harold Williams

Williams next undertook the study of Slavic languages and as a result became interested in Russian affairs and Tolstoy's Christian socialism. He toyed with becoming an academic, but instead entered journalism. The Times correspondent in Saint Petersburg, D.D. Braham, had been expelled and was organising a news service from adjacent countries. He appointed Williams as a special correspondent to work with Petr Struve an exiled Russian liberal in Stuttgart. The city had become the centre of organised political opposition by Russian political refugees working towards reform in their own country. Here Williams met Ariadna Tyrkova, the ‘Madame Roland’ of Russia. In October 1904 he had moved from Paris, in December to St Petersburg and Williams began to send by post dispatches to Reuters. Williams corresponded with the Dutch Frederik van Eeden about translations of his work.

His remarkable knowledge of Russia soon established him as an authority on Russian affairs. He had freely travelled into every part of the country accumulating an immense amount of knowledge about Russia—its people, history, art and politics—augmented no doubt by his acquisition of Finnish, Latvian, Estonian, Georgian and Tatar. He also acquired a grasp of Russian grammar that was better than that of most of his Russian friends. His dispatches were thus more than disinterested journalism—they were the personal accounts of an observer living intimately in a society. His book, Russia and the Russians, reflected not only Williams' knowledge, but his astute mind, as H. G. Wells appreciated in a glowing 1914 review for the New York Daily News:

He was an actor, known for Gilbert and Sullivan (1953) and Jimmy Boy (1935).

Typically, he used his knowledge as a tool of diplomacy and was able to talk to every delegate of the League of Nations in their own language. Williams held the position of foreign editor for six years before his untimely death in 1928. He had been unwell, but was about to go to Egypt on an assignment for The Times, when he collapsed. He had blood transfusions and seemed to rally, but died on 18 November 1928, after taking the sacraments of the Russian Orthodox Church the night before.

In 1921 his luck changed. The editor of The Times, Wickham Steed (who himself spoke several languages), offered Williams a position as a lead writer. In May 1922, he was appointed foreign editor (or as The Times would phrase it, 'Director of the Foreign Department'). Although his interest in Russia never waned, in this influential position he was now responsible for interpreting and passing judgement on political events all over the world for the pre-eminent newspaper of the time. As always, he was outspoken on issues that he believed were morally right, commenting on European affairs, but also those in Asia, China, the United States, Japan, India and the Commonwealth. The impetus of his leader articles always gestured towards a desire to preserve peace through the creation of European security. Aspiring towards "moral disarmament" he did much to promote and bring to a gratifying conclusion the Treaty of Locarno of December 1925. As he wrote to his father in New Zealand,

His "wife" (it is not known they ever married, perhaps in February 1918) was elected to the Russian Duma and was a feminist. At this time events and conditions that he encountered tested some of Williams' early views. He gave up being a vegetarian, and soon afterwards his pacifist ideals, but remained throughout his life a practising Christian, though with a belief guided by a general sense of the spiritual rather than the dogmatic. As he declared in his final sermon in New Zealand: "Whatever ye do, do it heartily as to the Lord, and not unto men."

As the war progressed Williams foresaw the coming Russian Revolution of 1917, insistently reporting to British Ambassador Buchanan that discontent was growing. Williams often acknowledged the romantic quality of his yearning to see international peace realised, and began also to see that the war had obscured vast tears in the fabric of the Russian domestic environment.

In 1916, Walpole and Williams, on the instruction of the Foreign Office, set up a British Propaganda Office in Petrograd. Co-operating with the Russian press, they organised and managed efforts to bring the Allies together, working towards "this quickening interchange of thought and feeling and aspiration" between the British and Russians. Walpole would later refer to Williams' "tact, experience, and kindness" to him during his time in Russia, and would often defer to Williams' "encyclopedic" knowledge. In August 1916, he returned briefly to Britain to give a special lecture at Cambridge University, entitled, "Russian Nationalities".

Williams was always liberal in sharing his knowledge (the title of Tyrkova's biography of him is Cheerful Giver), and it was his many interests, broad and esoteric, that initially led to associations with eminent writers of the time, his friend Wells, Frank Swinnerton, and Hugh Walpole, associations that would develop into enduring friendships. In September 1914 Walpole arrived in Russia, and he met Williams in Petrograd. After the outbreak of war, both accompanied the Russian Army into the Carpathians. Williams was the only foreign correspondent to take part in Cossack raids penetrating over the Hungarian frontier. From there he dispatched to the British public authoritative reports on military, political and social conditions. Williams had changed his view on war; no trace of Tolstoyan belief in non-resistance remained.

In January 1905 Williams obtained positions with the Manchester Guardian in Russia, and worked towards Anglo-Russian rapprochement together with Bernard Pares. As a special correspondent for the Morning Post in 1908 and in the Ottoman Empire in 1911. Williams and his wife settled in Istanbul after their flat was searched by the Okhrana. In August 1914 he was writing for the Daily Chronicle dispatching telegrams and feature articles from all over the Russian Empire. He was in constant pursuit of his avowed quest "to serve the great cause of liberty".

In June 1899 Harold wrote, "I have had rather slavonic crazes lately." One of these crazes would eventually be the compulsion for him to leave New Zealand. In 1900, aged 23, Harold decided to "embark on a pilgrimage" determined to visit the home of Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana. With a grant of £50 to cover the voyage (from a director of the New Zealand Herald who had been informed of his talents), and no scholarships or other assistance, he set off for Europe. He went first to Berlin and by the time he arrived at Berlin University he already knew twenty languages. There, and at Munich University, he studied philology, ethnology, philosophy, history and literature. These years as a student were marked by poverty—Harold's money from New Zealand had quickly run out—and he was forced to sell his books and the prizes he had won at school. He taught English part-time to make some money and he often had only a few hours each day to pursue his studies. There were days when he had nothing to eat, but he persevered and gained his PhD (on a grammar of the Ilocano language) from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in 1903.

Harold Williams was born on September 3, 1893 in Woollhara, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia as Harold John Williams.

Harold Whitmore Williams (6 April 1876 – 18 November 1928) was a New Zealand journalist, foreign editor of The Times and polyglot who is considered to have been one of the most accomplished polyglots in history. He is said to have known over 58 languages, including English. He "proved to know every language of the Austrian Empire", Hungarian, Czech, Albanian, Serbian, Romanian, Swedish, Basque, Turkish, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Tagalog, Coptic, Egyptian, Hittite, Old Irish, and other dialects.