TRIBUTE PAID TO HAROLD WILLIAMS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18785, 14 June 1929, Page 9

TRIBUTE PAID TO HAROLD WILLIAMS.

“ NEW ZEALANDER WAS GENTLE, BRAVE AND KIND.”

Sir Bernard Pares, Professor of Slavonic Languages in the University of Liverpool, has published in the

“Slavonic Review” a colourful article on the work and character of Dr Harold Williams, a son of the Rev W. J. Williams, Christchurch, an old boy of the Christchurch Boys’ High School, a New Zealander by birth, and one of the most distinguished journalists of these times. Sir Bernard Pares states:

“Others have written of the peculiar gentleness of Williams’s nature, and of the perfect simplicity with which he carried his immense learning; but this gentle and kipdly creature had also a certain kind of absolute courage which one rarely sees. Throughout the movement of reform and revolution in Russia in 1904-07, as I believe Gorky said of him, he was always at the most dangerous point and he was fearless in his friendships. Later in the war and revolution I was more than once under fire with him, and the peculiar flavour of his courage was that he simply took no notice whatsoever of the danger, as if it had nothing to do with him. “He very quickly won the complete confidence and affection of the Russian Liberals; he "was as one of themselves, and the services which he rendered to them as correspondent, first of the ‘Manchester Guardian,’ then of the ‘Morning Post,’ later of the ‘Daily Chronicle,’ ‘Daily Telegraph’ and ‘Liverpool Daily Post,’ and finally as director of the Foreign Department of ‘The Times,’ have been simply incalculable. “It was perhaps partly by habit that he became a really great journalist, but behind this always lay the perfect ease of his great scholarship. ‘The Ostyaks, a primitive race beyond the Urals, who are remote kinsfolk of the Magyars’; such were the little incidental parentheses which would in his period catch the eye in a leading article in ‘The Times.’

“Williams’s courage faced him with more than one crisis. During the first Duma, the foreign correspondents, led by the British and Americans, insisted on having the distribution of their own tickets instead of depending on the favours of the Russian officials; and thus was formed a Foregn Press Association, of which David Macgowan was president and Williams secretary. The secret police saw a use in this new organisation and utilised it as cover for some of their agents, who masqueraded as correspondents for foreign papers. Williams thereupon, proposed and carried the dissolution of the association. Shortly afterwards his flat was raided by the police and several documents were taken away. One of these was a narrative of the naval battle of Tsushima by a Russian sailor, entirely unpolitical, but containing some orders of the day. This had been given long after the battle to the celebrated Russian novelist, Remizo.v, and later by him to Williams, who kept it in his desk for a year without making any use of it. On this was based a charge of military espionage against Williams! At this time, he had been temporarily transferred by the ‘Morning Post’ to Constantinople, and an order was issued by the Russian Government closing the frontier to him in future. Several of the most prominent members of the Duma intervened on his behalf, and the order was cancelled; in fact,* Williams received in ‘acquittal’ a most unusual document, stating that he was free to cross the Russian frontier at any time. “The dossier of the case against him had been headed: ‘Case of the Political Untrustworthiness of the British Subject, Harold Williams!’ The attack on him was renewed during the Great War, obviously at the instigation of the German elements in the Russian secret police, and he was excluded from the right of attending the Duma. At this time he was the principal adviser of the British Embassy on Russian political affairs. Sir George Buchanan took the matter up with the greatest energy; the Foreign Minister, Sazonov, backed him up whole-heartedly, and the Ambassador received the assurance he had demanded that ‘Williams should not be worried any more.’

“During the failure of the Provisional Government, Williams sent Home some of the greatest articles in the annals of foreign correspondence. They were alive with colour. I remember that, after the description of the lurid scene when the wine-cellars of the Winter Palace were sacked, Williams, who was present, added: ‘We have come to know that the abyss is not a void, it is full of faces.

“He was for everything that stood for life and character and social consciousness. Always by his whole mind and nature the comrade of the oppressed and afflicted. Harold Williams fills a gap in Russian history, and his name will stand in Russia for all that is best and deepest in English understanding and friendship. “Good-bye, dear, true friend; we go on working together, and I think I know what you would say to me.”