He "proved to know every language of the Austrian Empire", Hungarian, Czech, Albanian, Serbian, Romanian, Swedish, Basque, Turkish, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Tagalog, Coptic, Egyptian, Hittite, Old Irish, and other dialects.

He sat for his BA at Auckland University, but was failed because of an inability to sufficiently master mathematics, and, on the instruction of his father, entered the Methodist Ministry at the age of 20.

After appointments in St Albans, Christchurch, and Inglewood, Taranaki, he went to the Northern Wairoa district around Dargaville where there were crowds of gumdiggers of diverse nationalities.

Conservative members of the clergy also harboured suspicions, as Eugene Grayland writes in Famous New Zealanders, "His clerical superiors distrusted his views and disapproved of some of the heterodox books in his library, touching on evolution and such matters."

These years as a student were marked by poverty—his money from New Zealand had quickly run out—and he was forced to sell his books and the prizes he had won at school.

He gave up being a vegetarian, and soon afterwards his pacifist ideals, but remained throughout his life a practising Christian, though with a belief guided by a general sense of the spiritual rather than the dogmatic.

He had freely travelled into every part of the country accumulating an immense amount of knowledge about Russia—its people, history, art and politics—augmented no doubt by his acquisition of Finnish, Latvian, Estonian, Georgian and Tatar.

His book, Russia and the Russians,[6] reflected not only Williams' knowledge, but his astute mind, as H. G. Wells appreciated in a glowing 1914 review for the New York Daily News: Williams was always liberal in sharing his knowledge (the title of Tyrkova's biography of him is Cheerful Giver), and it was his many interests, broad and esoteric, that initially led to associations with eminent writers of the time, his friend Wells, Frank Swinnerton, and Hugh Walpole, associations that would develop into enduring friendships.

These reports enhanced Williams' reputation and revealed his prophetic vision, leading to him becoming the chief source of information for the British Embassy.

[7] As the war progressed Williams foresaw the coming Russian Revolution of 1917, insistently reporting to British Ambassador Buchanan that discontent was growing.

Williams often acknowledged the romantic quality of his yearning to see international peace realised, and began also to see that the war had obscured vast tears in the fabric of the Russian domestic environment.

Throughout 1917, as the events of the Bolshevik revolution unfolded, he sent regular dispatches to the Daily Chronicle, up until 18 March 1918, the date of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty by the All-Russian Council of Soviets.

In 1918 increasingly violent events forced Williams and his wife to flee their beloved Russia, and he was immediately recruited as part of the Committee on Russian Affairs, along with Buchanan, Walpole, Bernard Pares and others.

Later in his autobiography Swinnerton would affectionately regard Williams as "the sort of friend who told me his affairs without disguise and received my domestic news as if they had affected himself.

"[citation needed] And wrote of his qualities as a journalist: When Germany surrendered in 1918, Williams was sent by the Daily Chronicle to Switzerland, and the following year was back in Russia, at the request of the British Military Mission, reporting for The Times from the headquarters of the White Russians.

When opposition to the Bolsheviks crumbled, he and Ariadna escaped in a refugee ship, first to Turkey, then to Serbia, where he astounded the local Serbs by speaking their language fluently in just two days.

On his return from Russia he taught himself Japanese, Old Irish, Tagalog, Hungarian, Czech, Coptic, Egyptian, Hittite, Albanian, Basque and Chinese.

Although his interest in Russia never waned, in this influential position he was now responsible for interpreting and passing judgement on political events all over the world for the pre-eminent newspaper of the time.

As always, he was outspoken on issues that he believed were morally right, commenting on European affairs, but also those in Asia, China, the United States, Japan, India and the Commonwealth.

The Times, a newspaper normally careful to project an aura of objectivity through its policy of maintaining staff anonymity, devoted an entire column to Williams' obituary.

Not only was his knowledge of international affairs most extensive and accurate, but he had a remarkable gift of sympathy which enabled him to write of them both definitely and without offence, while his origin as a New Zealander always preserved him from too narrow a regard for the politics of Europe.

Sir Austen Chamberlain, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, described Williams' death as "in a very real sense a national loss.

"[citation needed] He walked with the most prominent figures of his day, yet remained unassuming; The Times' obituary called him, "a very lovable man, modest to a fault.

[11] He originally converted to vegetarianism over political and social ideals, but later became convinced of its ethics, considering it morally wrong to kill for food.