One of his duties was to attend the parliamentary committee of inquiry into the responsibility for the Jameson raid, and he became familiar with Cecil Rhodes, whose biography he later wrote.
[3] Williams came back to the UK briefly, then returned to South Africa as a civilian, in the service of Lord Milner.
During the First World War he served as an education officer in the Royal Field Artillery and in 1919 was awarded the OBE for his services.
[3] Williams had already made an impression as an academic, with a series of articles on Sir Robert Walpole's foreign policy in The English Historical Review (1900–1).
[5] He was the General Editor of The Makers of the Nineteenth Century series published by Constable, London[6] and Henry Holt, New York.