THE SOUL OF RUSSIA

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22356, 29 February 1936, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE SOUL OF RUSSIA

IN DAYS OF REVOLT

BY MATANCA

To the liberation of the Russian people Dr. Harold Williams, tho New Zealander revealed with such affectionate and discriminating insight m "Cheerful Giver," early gave his heart as to a supreme cause. Just when this ardour began he could not have told. Like all the best things, it grew from a hidden beginning to a vital maturity. The main stem was an innate lovo of justice and mercy as twin principles, a good first tenet in any worthy social creed; upon it< were grafted soulful experiences in Russia itself. His fourteen years there were those of one gifted above many to grasp the spirit of peoples as Well as to converse in their tongues; and these years qualified him to pass judgment in a way that makes the opinion advanced by any gipsy raconteur after a visit of fourteen days, or weeks, or even months, look the ludicrous impertinence it really is. Ariadna TyrkovaWilliams, proud writer of this biography with the aid of Sir Bernard Pares (Professor of Slavonic Languages in London University) and Mr. Philip Graves of the Times' literary staff, suggests that her husband knew Russia better than it knows itself. Tho land of her birth became almost that of his adoption. Together, equally aglow with a deep appreciation of its tragically wayward seeking of social emancipation and order, they could see deeply and serve well. Nothing of the demagogue was in him; of that supremo disqualification for credence he was happily free. Many a heart-ache bruised his trust that at last Russia would come into its own, and of the chequered way to it ho saw too much to bo a blatant optimist; only his sure confidence in eventual good for all men kept the pain in its sentinel place—his invincible longing was to see Russia on the march. Crowded Years

His years wero crowded. The foreign correspondent took his duties with sedulous, punctual seriousness. Journalist technique was soon mastered, and the fact that he already knew his Russia gave him firm touch at once. In February of 190-1 he began—St. Petersburg and Moscow. Soon he was in contact with zemstvo assemblies. The agitation for political reform was afoot. With urban intelligentsia and rural peasantry he was speedily on friendliest terms. The political atmosphere was quiet but tense. Next year came the revolutionary "outbreak. lied Sunday in St. Petersburg saw him in the midst of the sudden bloodshed. He was to see much more. But the first Duma came as a welcome constitutional concession, and civil war was for the time averted. Then the first Soviets arose, and into the new movement he went dangerously, ever on the quest for more than news —the spirit of the smouldering revolt. From the Moscow rising he turned back to the crisis in the State Duma, where a trial of strength between autocracy and the new political forces was enmeshed confusingly with sectional partisanships. Through all the turmoil he walked, doing press duty with skill, insight, spirit, and unscathed until the authorities, thinking every bush a lurking assassin, swept down on him and he deemed it wise to accept the Morning Post's advice to get away to Constantinople through Bulgaria. Back again in St. Petersburg, the Great War turned him into a war correspondent in Poland and Galicia; a hazardous experience within the lines until the next revolution took Russia shamefully out of the fight, and "the inner front" absorbed once more his rapt attention. He saw all at close quarters, and the .sight sickened him with its senseless and inhuman . conflict. "No death," he wrote at that time, "is so terrible as the death of a great nation; Russia is dying, and it is agony and anguish to see it." Zeal lor Truth There was no recourse but to get to England, in the hope of creating sympathy there for the only element in Russia of hopeful service, the constitutionalists. His appeal had varying fortune. Next, at Denikin's request, he was with the White Army in South Russia for the Times, until the Bolshevik onslaught crumpled the southern resistance. And so again to England by way of the Balkans and Switzerland, escaping with difficulty and wondering whether life had any new tasks for him. It had. The rest, after a little recuperating ease, was for a while brave endurance of a workless period, and then —the inner sanctums of Fleet Street, the years as foreign editor of the Times, and the quick collapse in death on a November day in 1928.

Through all the years Russia was written on his heart, all the more indelibly because his zeal for truth took him painfully away from native sympathy with the Left to an abhorrenco of, Bolshevik abominations. They were the shackling of Russia with new and worse oppression.

To this change Sir Samuel Hoare has paid tribute:

With anyone so mentally alert and so morally complete as Harold Williams it is especially difficult to write a worthy epitaph. Should I emphasise his gift of tongues, or his political sense, or his affectionate nature? I nm inclined' to think that I should put in the first line his intellectual honesty, and I should go on to Bay that, being transparently honest with himself and the world, lie was amongst the first of our intellectuals to penetrate the falsities of a new creed, and to see that oppression, even though it be painted by propaganda and strengthened by overpowering force, so far from being a new theory of government or a now philosophy of life, is nothing more than the old despotism, mechanised for modern use ana advertised by modern methods. Bolshevik Evil in May of 1919 he wrote in tho preface to his "Spirit of the Russian Revolution," when this articlo was reprinted as a pamphlet by the Russian Liberation Committee, some emphatic words: The German danger lias been removed for tho time being, but the Bolshevist danger, not clearly recognised in time, has slipped into its place and is threatening to render futile all the labours of the Peace Conference. * . . 1 cannot too strongly insist, i'i the light of tile Russian experience, that Bolshevism is a handmaid of evil reaction, that it is, indeed, itself a reaction, a, relapse from that toilsome liberating achievement which is the essence of true civilisation, into a reign of violence and tho primitive materialistic impulse. It is the wrong way; it is a negation of liberty and spiritual endeavour. Hate is its principle, and in theory and practice it destroys the conception of the intrinsic worth of the individual. It is a revolt against the soul of man. That is why Bolshevism and reactionary Prussianism find it possible from time to time cynically to combine their forces. ] am aware that much of v/hat% 1 am saying may atill seem incredible to British readers. Just as President WUson found it difficult to believe the Germans cut down fruit trees during their retreat, so a number of people in England, who rrgard the cause of humanity as their own particular domain, rifuse to believe in Bolshevik atrocities, and protest much more, violently against those who describe them than against those who commit them. He did not live to see tho milder days, with Bolshevism under restraint anil Russia in the League. Whether he would have rejoiced would depend upon his reading of hearts as well as events. AVho knows the issue of these days? As yet they yield no surety of tho future.