"CHEERFUL GIVER"

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22350, 22 February 1936, Page 27 (Supplement)

"CHEERFUL GIVER"

BY MATANOA

DR. HAROLD WILLIAMS

A book that merits a place on every New Zealaiuler's shelves of exclusive honour is " Cheerful Giver," the lifestory of Dr. Harold Williams, who died some seven years ago in London after reaching proud eminence as Foreign Editor of the Times. Few others born in this country have won so sure a titlo to enduring remembrance, and none among them has equal seal of beauty of soul and character.

Eldest son of the Rev. W. J. Williams, now living in retirement in Auckland, Harold Williams was himself designated for the Methodist ministry, but after a few years of probationary service he followed a gleam that took him to student-life in Germany and afterwards into an amazing career as a journalist, becoming (in the words of Sir Samuel Hoare) " the most brilliant foreign correspondent that our generation has known " and one whose judgment on international affairs was heeded by many in high places. How this came about is told with remarkable felicity by the writer of this book—his widow, Ariadna TyrkovaWilliams, intimate sharer of more than twenty of his most eventful years, herself a distinguished journalist, with a mind and soul akin to his own. The book is a brilliant piece of work, lit by many a passage of skilled craftsmanship, by many a vivid summary of events that moved all Europe before, during and after the days of the Great War —when Russia, the country of her birth and almost of his adoption, was struggling half-blindly toward freedom —and by many a poiseful judgment on men and things of moment. But its brilliance never gets in the way of its deep sincerity and earnestness, for that struggle was the grave care of both of themj and through it all goes the truly great figure of her husband-hero, portrayed clearly as a living part of a changing scene in which nothing is mere backgrounds Only Harold Williams' own " Russia and the Russians " can compare with it for insight into the national character; not even Trotsky's three laborious, illuminating volumes, to say nothing of the- multitude of other such books done in or into English, tells so much that is worth knowing about this long-suffering people. Although his last years were spent in Fleet Street the fourteen lived for Russia gave him a bent that became the expansive arc on which all his thought, about all the world, afterwards surely moved. Gift for Languages The process of this development was well understood by the New Zealanders of the friendly group he left behind when the brave venture of his life was made in 1900, the intimates privileged to be kept in touch with the inmost in him. Others now can read revealingly of it. Studious as a boy, yet reaching no height of general attainment then, he was destined to attain it through the gate of a gift for languages. His bugbear was mathematics, and as this subject was in those days compulsory here for a university degree •> no academic crown seemed within his grasp. In after years he was heard to complain that his teachers, as the rounds of the Methodist itinerancy took him from one school to another, had not been at sufficient pains to make things helpfully plain to him; after all, as he declared, he wasn't such a fool I But he had a hunger for acquiring foreign languages that more than compensated. It did not relieve him of the wrestling with intricacies of syntax, as certain extant relics of his class-exercises remain to prove, but an innate love of words blessed him unusually. Soon he was acquiring knowledge of tongues in the broad Pacific, and from this to a revelling in others was to him an inevitable step. Russian had a special interest, because of the robustly liberal trend of his mental outlook and the consequent spell that Tolstoy's books had cast over him. To see Tolstoy and talk with him became a frequent dream, and out of this came, in part, the venture to Europe. This dream, was not immediately fulfilled, and when it was there was* disappointment, for the idol was found rather aloofly self-absorbed and non-magnetic; but in the course of the interview, when conversation turned to the languages the younger man had learned and about whose number he was modestly reticent, the question was put to him, " Why did you learn Russian?" and the answer, To read 'Anna - Karenina' in the original, brought a glowing benison. An Arduous Path Long before that the arduous path of studv had been taken, at Stuttgart, Berlin, Munich, the university of the last giving him its Ph D. for research in philology. Often he was without money, and therefore without food; he had appreciative friends, but kept from them, as far as he could, the privations that must have been undermining his health and shortening his life. Homesickness, too, was occasionally racking. However, he battled on, always with his comforting zest for philology sustaining him against the lightness of body " that he afterwards confessed was an interesting though chastening experience. . What to make of his learning was not yet clear. Then, in a curious fashion, came the journalistic beginning. On April 23, 190.?, a mob attacked the Jewish residents of Kishinev, in Bessarabia. Europe was unaccustomed then to violence of this kind, and the world wanted to know about it. The Russian Government was suspected of malicious responsibility and hostility to it quickly grew. Dr. Braham, the Times' correspondent at St. Petersburg, was expelled from Russia, and no other could be welcome there. Instead, in the necessary reorganisation of the limes service o foreign news, it was decided to place a special correspondent at Stuttgart, the headquarters of the Russian political reformers. Dr. Braham offered the appointment to Williams, whose acceptance of it turned the potential. professor into a newspaper man. To Serve a Great Cause It suited him because of his ardent eagerness to serve a great cause, that of a people's yearning for freedom, and he had convenient facilities for contact with their efTorts. Into the Stuttgart home where he lived —its head and his close friends were Russian al }d at least sympathetic with tho revolutionary crusade then gathering way there came one day Ariadna Tyrkova, escaped from imprisonment as one or the liberal intelligentsia too active to bo left alone by the Government. -She had thrown in her lot with the Cadet Party, not rabidly revolutionary but seeking constitutional liberty, was on its central committee, and had served it with distinction. Of her it was said that " the Cadet Party had one good man, and he was a woman." Tho young Englishman's warm greeting of the refugee, spoken in Russian, was tho beginning of a wonderful comradeship. When the way opened again to St. Petersburg they were in company, ho for the Manchester Guardian and later for the Morning T> ost and tho Chronicle, she for other work of tho kind and for the party of her allegiance. What followed is the enthralling international story in which this New Zealand Englishman was to play so influential a part.