As a diplomat, te Water consistently stressed his belief that the Dominions were only bound to Britain on a voluntary basis, being held together by ties of history and sentiment, and fiercely resented any claim by the British government to speak on behalf of South Africa.

[17] Te Water cut an impressive figure in London, with one person remembering him as: "He was of striking appearance, tall, good-looking, and always immaculately groomed; his suits were tailored, I think, in Conduit Street, shirts and shoes bespoke; he favored a narrow-brimmed Homburg, short black coat, striped trousers, suede gloves and a stick".

[18] By all accounts a man of much charisma and charm, te Water was widely admired by his staff at the South Africa House and was regarded by British decision-makers as the most able and intelligent of all the Dominion High Commissioners in London.

[18] At the same time, the fact that te Water was an active sportsman with an athletic build and had what the British press called a very "masculine appearance" led him to conform enough to the Boer stereotype of a tough and hardy people that there were no fears of him having "gone soft".

[13] An aloof, arrogant man, te Water hated what he called "socialising", regarding the balls and parties he was expected to attend as boring, but was willing to do so in order to make social connections with the British elite.

[22] On 19 April 1932, te Water met with Thomas Wilford, the New Zealand high commissioner in London and Henry Stimson, the American Secretary of State, who was attending the World Disarmament Conference in Geneva.

[23] According to Stimson's account of the meeting, both Wilford and te Water were upset at the passivity of the British government with regard to the Japanese aggression against China, saying Britain should be doing far more to upheld the League's authority.

[24] In March 1933 as president of the General Assembly of the League of Nations, te Water oversaw the stormy session where the Lytton Report was presented, which concluded that Japan had committed aggression against China in 1931 by seizing Manchuria and that Manchukuo was a sham.

[6] As such, te Water, despite his hatred of "socialising", he cultivated Anthony Eden, the British minister responsible for the League of Nations affairs and known as the strongest voice within the cabinet for sanctions against Italy.

[6] In his reports to Pretoria from Geneva, te Water was largely indifferent to Ethiopia as he mostly stressed that Germany would have a much stronger case for the return of South West Africa if the League's moral authority were lost.

[32] In the winter of 1935–36, te Water was opposed to the efforts of other League members to weaken the sanctions that had been applied against Italy, writing with much contempt about how economic self-interest trumped the self-proclaimed vaulted moral principles that the Italian aggression against Ethiopia was unacceptable.

[42] One result of these meetings was a tendency for the Dominion High Commissioners in London was to work together closely to achieve common goals such as pressuring Britain to pursue a policy of appeasement towards Germany.

[43] In September 1936, te Water met the mildly Anglophobic Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King when the latter visited London, and the two bonded over a shared dislike of the Dominions Office.

[46] Accordingly, the Dominion high commissioners saw France with its efforts to maintain the Versailles system as the main trouble-maker in Europe and felt that the Britain should be more aggressive and forceful in trying to make the French "see reason".

[53] For the same reasons, te Water welcomed the Sino-Japanese war, hoping that China and Japan might fight to a stalemate which would weaken the two Asian giants so much as to end any possibility of further challenges to the dominant position of the British Empire in Asia.

[59] The Chanak crisis of 1922 when Canada refused to join Britain when it was on the brink of war with Turkey revealed that Dominion support for the "mother country" could not be automatically taken for granted as it had been assumed in London until then.

B. M. Hertzog instructed te Water to tell the British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax that South Africa had no interest in the affairs of Eastern Europe and under no conditions would go to war in defense of Czechoslovakia.

Undeterred, Halifax took Massey aside after the meeting to ask him how English-Canadians and French-Canadians got along in Canada-which he saw as a model for the Czechs and Sudeten Germans-as he maintained that Canadian style federalism was the best solution he envisioned for Czechoslovakia.

[61] Most of the Dominion high commissioners rejected this linkage, but te Water felt best "to administer the whole does of caster oil" by having Czechoslovakia cede Teschen to Poland and Slovakia and Ruthenia to Hungary.

[61] However, te Water also reported that he had seen evidence from the Foreign Office that Germany was encouraging both Poland and Hungary to make demands against Czechoslovakia, and obliquely admitted in a dispatch to Pretoria on 21 September 1938 that Hitler was only doing so as a "deal-breaker", not because he really cared about the Hungarian and Polish claims.

[73] Te Water admitted that Hitler's Bad Godesburg ultimatum was extreme, all the more so for the insulting language in which it was phrased, but added that he still regretted that the British and French governments had both rejected it.

[76] However, a motion put forward by Bruce calling for an "honorable settlement" that see the Sudetenland go to Germany in exchange for a promise from Hitler to allow the rest of Czechoslovakia to continue as an independent state was accepted by all of the Dominion high commissioners.

[79] Te Water reported to Hertzog: "Bruce, Massey, Dulanty and I left nothing unsaid in explaining again the dangers to the Commonwealth system of Great Britain involving the Dominions in a war with which they were out of sympathy and on grounds which in their opinions did not constitute a direct threat to its security".

[80] On 28 September 1938, te Water reported to Pretoria that there was a breakthrough in the crisis as Mussolini had proposed an emergency summit in Munich, which Hitler, Chamberlain and Daladier had all agreed to attend.

[85] Te Water cast Beneš as the principal problem, saying that he refused to understand the Munich conference would probably "whittle down" Chamberlain's most recent offers instead of expanding them in favor of Czechoslovakia.

[86] Te Water praised the Munich Agreement as a "considerable advance", noting that Hitler had backed down from his more extreme demands made in the Bad Godesberg ultimatum.

[89] Te Water painted a picture to Hertzog of a world dominated by an Anglo-German alliance which would maintain white supremacy around the globe and keep the dreaded Soviet Union at bay.

[93] At a meeting with Sir Thomas Inskip, te Water was more abusive and rude, lecturing him in an angry tone that Hitler should be given "one more chance of saving face", and felt that the "guarantee" was a provocation of Germany that should not have been made.

[95] During a visit to 10 Downing Street, te Water told Chamberlain it was completely unacceptable for both him and his government to have the Soviet Union join the "peace front" and asked him to stop the negotiations with Moscow, warning darkly that any Anglo-Soviet alliance would be highly dangerous.

[125] St. Laurent told te Water "how opposed he was in principle to the philosophy which lay beyond the Union's racial policies", saying that Canada would vote at the UN to condemn South Africa for apartheid.