He worked in British intelligence during the two world wars and played a diplomatic role on behalf of Poland at the 1919 Versailles conference.
In 1968, the year before his death, he published The Claim of Scotland, a plea for a greater general understanding of the constitutional position of his own native country.
[5] During the First World War Paton served in the Admiralty's Intelligence Division, 1914–1919, and became an expert on Polish affairs in which capacity he attended the Versailles conference in 1919.
He spent a sabbatical year in the United States of America, 1926–26, where he was Laura Spelman Rockefeller Research Fellow, University of California.
[7] The year after his return to Oxford he resigned his Queen's Fellowship to take up the post of Professor of Logic and Rhetoric at the University of Glasgow, 1927–37.
[7] He returned to Oxford as White's Professor of Moral Philosophy (1937–52), a post which carried with it a Fellowship at Corpus Christi College.