James Erasmus Tracey Phillips

James Erasmus Tracy Philipps (20 November 1888 – 21 July 1959) was a British public servant. Philipps was, in various guises, a soldier, colonial administrator, traveller, journalist, propagandist, conservationist, and secret agent. He served as a British Army intelligence officer in the East African and Middle Eastern theatre of the First World War, which led to brief stints in journalism and relief work in the aftermath of the Greco-Turkish War. Joining the Colonial Office, his reform-minded agenda as a District Commissioner in Colonial Uganda alienated superiors and soon resulted in the termination of his position.

He worked as a foreign correspondent for The Times in Eastern Europe, and spent much of the Second World War in Canada attempting to build support among ethnic minorities for British war objectives. Following a frustrating experience helping to resettle displaced persons as a United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration official, and Cold War propaganda activities with the secretive Information Research Department, Philipps' attention was increasingly taken up by his longstanding interest in conservation.

In the final years of his life he led efforts to create African National Parks as Secretary-General of the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The product of an old, upper-class family, Philipps possessed determination and high self-esteem as well as a great deal of ambition – though his personal eccentricity sometimes undermined his goals.

Early life

Tracy Philipps was the only child of the Rev. John Erasmus Philipps, originally from Haverfordwest in Pembrokeshire, and Margaret Louisa Everard (née ffolkes). The elder Philipps had been vicar of Wiston in Pembrokeshire, and later held curacies in Enstone in Oxfordshire and Staindrop in County Durham, where he was domestic chaplain to the 9th Baron Barnard. From September 1904 he boarded at Marlborough College, and left in December 1906. In February 1907 he was one of a few dozen Old Marlburians accepted for membership of the Marlburian Club alumni association after a meeting of the club committee held in Old Queen Street, Westminster. – an effort that was ultimately unsuccessful. For university he is said to have eventually studied at Oxford for a period of time, although sources on this are unclear. What is known for certain is that he entered Durham University in 1910. Like his father and uncle, he was a member of Hatfield Hall and graduated in 1912 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Classics. He was Secretary of Durham University Boat Club in 1911. He also served as President of the Durham Union for Epiphany term of 1912, and was Editor of The Sphinx – a student magazine with a lighthearted tone – in addition to participating in the Officers' Training Corps.

As the President of the Union during the seventieth anniversary of its foundation, he chaired an inter-varsity debate held on Saturday 16 March 1912 at the Great Hall of University College, which featured teams from Oxford, Cambridge, Trinity College, Dublin, and Edinburgh University.

Early career

First World War Belgian troops march into Tabora after the surrender of the city.

After his time in the Officers' Training Corps at Durham, Philipps made his position in the British Army official. He was gazetted as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Infantry in February 1913. When the First World War broke out he was on attachment to the Kings African Rifles (KAR) and was "one of the first Englishmen in action" when the war in Africa started in August 1914. He was later wounded while serving with the KAR (for which he was mentioned in despatches) and also present as a political officer at the Battle of Bukoba (serving as part of the hastily formed Uganda Intelligence Department) in June 1915. With the newly formed Lake Force he took part in the Tabora Offensive (April – September 1916) and in the aftermath was awarded the Military Cross, gazetted February 1917, which he received for actions in conjunction with an intelligence section of the Belgian Force Publique. From November 1916 to March 1917, Philipps, by now the chief political officer for the Uganda region, was based in Ruanda-Urundi, a part of German East Africa recently captured by the Belgians.

A September 1917 entry in The London Gazette noted that Philipps relinquished his Army commission earlier in the year, with no explanation provided. This decision was due to injury: his entry in the 1951 Who's Who describes being 'invalided', indicating wounds had rendered him unfit for further duty, and is further confirmed by a letter sent by Philipps to Reginald Wingate which suggests he had returned to Britain in March. Philipps quickly recovered and restored his commission: he was employed at the War Office in London with the Intelligence Staff, June–August 1917; then was similarly employed at the Admiralty, August–October 1917. In 1918 he began a posting at the Arab Bureau (a section of the Cairo Intelligence Department), operating as an intelligence officer at their headquarters in Cairo. This was a role generally based in Cairo, with spells in Palestine and Syria, working alongside Lawrence of Arabia in the final campaigns of the Arab Revolt. His work with the Bureau was interrupted by his taking part in a military expedition against the Turkana people (April–June 1918), who lived on the fringes of British East Africa and were notorious for raiding cattle.

At some time either shortly before or shortly after the conclusion of the war, he left the bureau to serve on attachment to the British Embassy in Rome.

Aftermath

Philipps returned to Africa and served as acting district commissioner in Kigezi District in Uganda from 1919 through 1920. One of his challenges was the threat posed by the Nyabinghi cult, popular with the Kiga people of Southern Uganda, and highly resistant to British rule. After cult leader Ntokibiri was killed by a posse, Philipps ordered that the head of Ntokibiri be sent to Entebbe as proof that the threat had been eliminated. Philipps worked to end the use of Baganda agents in areas populated by the Kiga and discouraged the use of the Luganda language in courts, instead introducing the Swahili language, which the Baganda people could not speak. For one month he was joined by Prince Wilhelm of Sweden, whom Philipps helped to obtain photographs of pygmies and specimens of gorilla for the Swedish Museum of Natural History. As reported in The Morning Bulletin, Philipps had a caravan party of approximately 50 men for the seven-month journey, including two tribal chiefs lent to him by colonial authorities, Philippo Lwengoga and Benedikto Daki, who proved to be crucial in the success of the journey.

Detouring into Abyssinia, Philipps stumbled upon a slave market, where he saw a 'half-caste auctioneer' selling young girls to the highest bidder. He was able to buy off the girl in the worst condition, who had been nearly beaten to death, and had her sent to a Christian mission. During this mission he would meet W. E. B. DuBois, the organiser of the Congress and an American sociologist and Pan-Africanism advocate. Du Bois was unable to attend because he left Europe at the start of the month, but requested copies of any future articles that Philipps published, thus establishing a long-term correspondence between the two.

With the Famine in Russia intensifying, Philipps travelled to Constantinople, then Moscow, as part of the International Committee for Russian Relief (ICRR) led by explorer Fridtjof Nansen. While stationed in Turkey he assumed the role of supply commissioner for the famine relief operation organised by the British Red Cross under the auspices of the League of Nations and Nansen's International Committee for Russian Relief (ICRR). Historian Bohdan S. Kordan described this job as being 'deputy director of intelligence' for Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.

In the same letter to Spoor, Philipps reports a journey to Europe that may also be connected to intelligence gathering. He describes being on leave in the Balkans during the Summer of 1923: in Croatia, he stayed with Stjepan Radić, the leader of the Croatian People's Peasant Party, shortly before the latter left on an overseas trip. He spent much of this period back in the Kigezi District of Uganda, where he was known for his energy as an administrator – attempting to develop native industries in iron smelting and using the sisal plant to make rope – and paying for many supplies out of his own pocket.

During his time in Africa he was fond of exploring the tropical forests and writing his observations on the wildlife he encountered. His experiences led him to become an early advocate of the creation of large national parks in Equatorial Africa, believing that human encroachment on gorilla habitats engendered aggressive behaviour. By January 1932, having again fallen unwell the previous year, he was on leave for health reasons at the clinic of Auguste Rollier in Leysin, Switzerland. He noted in a letter to an American friend, Charles Francis de Ganahl, that his temperature had gone down and he had gained in weight, having 'dropped from 13 to 7 stone', or , the previous month. Since he was no longer in an assigned position in Africa, he considered seeking a transfer to somewhere in the Near East. Writing to de Ganahl from Clarens in April 1932, Philipps described being allowed to temporarily 'descend from Léysin's icy mountains into the cities of the plain' but could still only 'hobble about rather painfully' – nevertheless he mentioned plans to visit Corfu and Ithaca, having booked passage on a cargo ship leaving Venice on 1 May.

Despite thoughts about going elsewhere, Philipps returned to Africa. His last assignment was as District Commissioner of the Lango District in Uganda. The verdict of Bernard Bourdillon, then Governor of Uganda, was that Philipps was a "brilliant man" who "did not exactly fit into Colonial administration".

That decade he also married the pianist Lubka Kolessa. A July 1939 notice in The Times reported that the pair had married in Prague on 14 March, the eve of the German occupation of the country. Kolessa gave birth to a son, Igor (John), in Marylebone, London that same year.

In 1938 Philipps travelled to South America with Kolessa, where he acted as manager for his wife's concert tour. The tour traveled to Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay and conducted 178 live performances. While in South America, he investigated the colonies developed by the Jewish Colonization Association to discover if they would be viable places to resettle the increasingly vulnerable Jewish population of Europe. In a 1939 letter to The Times he objected to the argument made by Chaim Weizmann that the "Hirsch Jewish land settlements" were unsuitable places for the "unwanted Jewish Germans and Jewish Poles" and wrote that, based on his own recent observations, they were in a "state of renaissance". A report on Philipps' visit was collected by the Foreign Office.

Visits to Rome By October 1938 Philipps was in Rome, having been invited as one of the British delegates at that year's Volta Conference, where colonial policy was discussed. Recounting his experiences in an article printed in the Journal of the Royal African Society, he revealed that part of the hospitality provided was a trip to Italian Libya (the Governor-General, Marshal Balbo, was participating at the conference), and was impressed by what had been achieved by the mass migration of Italian settlers. Philipps himself spoke during the 16th session, on the afternoon of the final day of the conference, on ways in which shared participation and common goals in Africa could avert the path to war in Europe. He suggested to delegates that if the European powers could develop Africa 'as a field of opportunity, equal guarantee, and equal rights for all the nations of the European family' this could have the effect of 'resolidarising' Europeans in Europe itself. Essentially, Philipps was in favour of 're-admitting Germany as a partner at the table where tropical riches were to be re-distributed' in the hope this would avoid conflict in Europe. in June 1939 to attend a conference held by the International Colonial Institute. He was one of the two British representatives – the other being Henry Gollan. An italophile, Philipps enjoyed the luncheon arranged by Federzoni and Attilio Teruzzi, which was held outside in the shady surroundings of the Villa Borghese gardens, and praised the efforts of the workers involved in the reclamation of the Pontine Marshes:

The Ukrainian Question

During the 1930s Philipps became friendly with the Ukrainian Bureau, a lobbying centre formed in 1931 in London by Ukrainian-American Jacob Makohin to advocate for Ukrainian nationhood, promote the interests of Ukrainian minorities, and provide an outlet for information on Ukrainian issues that stood outside the Soviet sphere of influence. On several occasions in the 1930s he visited Ukraine and Russia (especially the latter) in the guise of a newspaper correspondent and thus kept up-to-date with political developments in these countries, though his motivation for travel may have been intelligence gathering rather than any duties as a journalist.

Officials in the Foreign Office during this period were not as sympathetic as Philipps to the claims of Ukrainian nationalists, owing to a desire to avoid offending Poland and the Soviet Union, and did not think it worthwhile to press the Polish government over its annexation of Eastern Galicia in the aftermath of the Polish-Ukrainian War (1918–1919). Reports of atrocities committed by the Polish government during the Pacification of Ukrainians in Eastern Galicia were collected and noted, but not acted upon. Whitehall civil servants concluded they could not encourage 'a movement of national liberation which we could in no circumstances support in anything but words' – effectively Britain's answer to the 'Ukrainian Question' during the interwar period. This disappointed lobbyists like Arnold Margolin, a Jewish Ukrainian lawyer, who insisted British failure to make promises of assistance to the Ukrainian cause would guarantee Ukrainians falling for the overtures of Nazi Germany in any upcoming war.

While the British government was not motivated to intervene itself, it was still concerned with the designs of other European powers. British officials worried that Germany might strengthen itself by aligning with Ukrainian national aspirations before launching a conflict with the Soviet Union. Towards the end of 1938, Philipps' mentor Lord Halifax, by now Foreign Secretary, was being told that the 'Ukrainian question seems likely to boil up' very soon. Any such German plan would, however, require driving a wedge through Polish-held territory in order to reach Soviet Ukraine, something Poland was very unlikely to agree to. Consequently, some British analysts began to feel war between Germany and Poland was unavoidable, though Lord Halifax was also informed by experts that because the Poles would be unwilling to allow the Germans to move across their territory without a fight, Hitler would probably deploy his forces to the west first – a prediction that would turn out to be inaccurate.

In 1939, in the aftermath of the British guarantee to Poland, Philipps, armed with briefs prepared for him by Vladimir Kysilewsky (Director of the Ukrainian Bureau) and vetted by the historian Robert William Seton-Watson, had lengthy conversations with Lord Halifax. He had been sent to Canada as one of many propagandists, part of a Ministry of Information project to shape North American public opinion in favour of British war objectives. The Fall of France and a series of British reverses, leading to the evacuation of British forces from Dunkirk, made ensuring ongoing Canadian support vital. Philipps was specifically tasked with monitoring the viewpoints of minority groups in Canada, some of which were fascist in nature, and could potentially undermine the British war effort. On this matter Philipps wrote to Lord Halifax in July on the assimilation of British children into Canadian homes; having already provided assistance to his cousin, Elsbeth Dimsdale, on planning the evacuation of her children. While on this tour he was invited by organisers to give lectures to local immigrant groups on current events in Europe, and used this tour to relay information on the views of the European immigrant population in Canada to the British government.

In April 1941, Davis offered Philipps the role of Director of the European Section the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) on a temporary basis, tasked with him helping to build unity behind the war effort amongst Canadian immigrant communities. His first major assignment was a trip to the United States to find out what was being done in that country to promote integration of the immigrant ethnic population, and how these communities regarded the federal authorities. He visited many cities on this tour, including Pittsburgh, Chicago, Atlanta and Washington, D. C.; sending detailed memoranda to his new superior Commissioner Stuart Wood from "virtually every stop" on his route.

On his return journey to Canada he briefly visited New York and met with Michael Huxley at the Inter-Allied Information Committee on the fifth floor of the Rockefeller Center. Huxley was the director of this white propaganda outfit, launched in 1940 to win American support for Britain by casting British war aims in light of a new "internationalism" – intended to counteract American suspicions that Britain's true aim was to preserve its empire. Philipps was there to seek Huxley's views on a proposal of Count Vladislav Radziwill to have Poles trained in Canada for sabotage missions in occupied Poland. Philipps also received intelligence from Bermuda, where his cousin Charles des Graz was Director of Imperial Censorship. Philipps had, by the time of the formation of the UCC, already become known in Canada for his sympathy towards the idea of Ukrainian independence, earning him the permanent distrust of Ukrainian-Canadians with communist leanings. As far as he was concerned, Ukrainian nationhood was not only morally right, but, given the guarantee that the British government had previously made to Poland, politically fair and logical.

For Philipps, the key principle of the Allies was a belief in political self-determination, which made a failure to support Ukraine inconceivable. Such support, he argued, would surely reflect well on both Britain's war aims and her moral reputation:

He thought it wrong for Britain to make any guarantees of Ukrainian sovereignty it could not keep, but, as the war was apparently being fought for the right of nations to organise themselves, believed the Allies would eventually have to face up to this principle. He worried that Hitler might offer the Ukrainians —

Alarmed by contacts reports that "daily Axis short-wave propaganda broadcasts" were influencing foreign-born workers, Philipps repeatedly encouraged the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) to introduce its own foreign language broadcasts. Giving in to Philipps' "incessant lobbying", the CBC began producing one fifteen minute programme in Italian, which earned Philipps the thanks of Italian Canadians, but otherwise stuck to its usual schedule of English and French-language broadcasting. By October 1941, as the Nationalities Branch was taking shape, mother and son were living with government press censor Ladislaus Biberovich and his wife. This allegation was founded on his friendships with Lord Halifax, Lady Astor and other members of the controversial Cliveden set. He was defended by T. C. Davis, Professor George Simpson of the University of Saskatchewan, and the diplomat Norman Robertson, who successfully argued he was the victim of unfair criticism; and consequently, Philipps would keep his job.

Exit

This episode forced him to retire from lecturing members of the public, but his distaste for communism continued to interrupt his work. In May 1943 he made a series of anti-Soviet speeches, which drew the ire of John Grierson, the new chairman of the Wartime Information Board. Grierson, determined to undermine both Philipps and the activities of the renegade Nationalities Branch, then started to meet with the Canadian Unity Council, an alliance of ethnic organisations that opposed Philipps. They argued Philipps saw himself as a "guardian" of "helpless and divided" ethnic communities that depended upon him to lead them towards Canadian identity – an attitude they regarded as patronising.

Grierson's efforts would come to nought however, as General LaFleche refused to have Philipps removed despite his personal dislike for the man, or to transfer the Nationalities Branch to Grierson's control. LaFleche felt this would hurt ethnic minority outreach efforts and create an opening that "communist agitators" would take advantage of.

UNRRA, 1944–1945 In 1944 Philipps successfully lobbied for a role at the United Nations. He was appointed Chief of Planning Resettlement of Displaced Persons with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), working initially from New York, and later Germany.

Writing in his memoirs, Kirkconnell revealed that Philipps was suspicious of the eagerness with which some Allied officials carried out this policy and believed that the "officialdom" of the western Allies was "honeycombed with Communists and fellow-travellers" more than willing to help along the programme. In the same text he stressed how uneasy Philipps was with the ramifications of Yalta, revealing the contents of a 1948 letter from Philipps where he argued the following:

"One of the main dangers of our modern world issues from a common belief that it is right for an individual to approve action by his country (that is, his nation) which, for himself, he would know to be wrong. This nationalist doctrine is dignified as 'a sense of realism'. Call it 'realism' and any dastardy will pass." He claimed the men, sixty among several thousand Ukrainians prisoners in Britain that served in some capacity with the Germans, were sick and set to be shipped to Germany on 12 June; he expressed special concern for a teenage boy who had gone blind and had no friends or relatives in Germany.

Press officer 'J. Cahill' of the Home Office replied a week later. Cahill stated that most Ukrainian prisoners would probably be deported somewhere at a later date (though no final decision had been taken), while a few currently working in agriculture could be given "civilian status" if found to be suitably qualified.

Information Research Department

In the aftermath of the Second World War Philipps joined the Information Research Department (IRD), a secret branch of the Foreign Office tasked with countering Soviet propaganda in Western Europe. In this role he helped to recruit émigrés from Eastern Europe.

Philipps' work in the IRD was intertwined with his membership of the Church of England Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), an anti-communist outfit whom the IRD collaborated with. Philipps was a member of both organisations. He argued in a 1949 CFR meeting that the persecution of Christians by other Christians (giving one example as the treatment of Protestants in Francoist Spain) should be downplayed, as all Christian groups and regimes needed to be enlisted in the propaganda war against Communism. On 1 December 1952 Philipps was appointed to a "Special Sub-Committee on Information about the Treatment of the Churches in Communist Countries", which explored methods of bringing to public attention the treatment of churches in Eastern Europe by communist authorities.

Conservation

Philipps devoted his later years to conservation, and was keen to ensure that countries fast approaching self-government were prepared to conserve their wildlife and natural resources. As an early advocate of animal conservation and the founding of African national parks, he endorsed the creation of sanctuaries to protect the Gorilla population in a 1930 article for The Times. In February 1937 he visited the Swedish doctor Axel Munthe at his home on the island of Capri, the two of them discussing wildfowl conservation, which Philipps had also discussed with the Italian government. He was a long-standing member of the International Commission of the Belgian Research Institute on African National Parks. Writing in 1959, Lord Hurcomb remarked that his interest in Natural History and Zoology had been stimulated by the journey he took across Africa in 1921. He did not take a salary, as the finances of the Union were in a poor state. He retired at the end of 1958 due to health concerns. They moved in together in 1937.

With his frequent travelling, Philipps did not own any property in London and Pall Mall clubs like the Army and Navy and the Travellers were effectively his 'residence' in the city. According to Luther Evans, Philipps also held honorary awards from the Sorbonne, the University of Tehran, Al-Azhar University in Cairo, and the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome.

A skilled linguist, he was conversant in up to 14 African languages and also fluent in Russian and Turkish.

According to friend and comrade from the Great War Richard Meinertzhagen, Philipps was sceptical of the idea of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, considering the concept impractical and unnecessary – which frustrated Meinertzhagen. Unconvinced by the proposals of the Zionist movement, he believed that geopolitically and historically, Palestine belonged to the Arab people and that "the honour, the power and the glory of the Jewry lies in the diaspora".

Philipps was uncomfortable with casual antisemitism. He wondered "whether it has not become a public duty of citizens of our free countries, each time we hear Jews as a whole indiscriminately reviled, to not let the occasion pass without question".

Colonialism Philipps supported Frederick Lugard and his 'dual mandate' concept, that on the one hand the European powers should develop the economic resources of the lands they had conquered, but also had a moral responsibility to improve the lot of the native population and adapt them to the modern world.

Writing in 1922, Philipps noted a growing racial consciousness in Africa, which he blamed on propaganda spread by the Soviet Union and American black intellectuals. Nonetheless, he felt what he regarded as the economic interdependence of Africa and the European powers made a retreat from imperialism unthinkable.

By the following decade, he was willing to concede the possibility of decolonisation, but argued that the sudden application of European-style administration and democratic modes of government might be too much of a culture shock.

In essence, Philipps believed that Africa's "inexperience in political terms" meant the imposition of full democracy was unwise, instead advocating a hybrid form of government built on partial endorsement of pre-colonial sources of authority; and crucially, implemented from a position of strength to ensure what was left behind was sympathetic to European interests.

Death At the time of his death he was living in the country at East Hagbourne, Berkshire (now in Oxfordshire), with a second address in Brussels.

He died on 21 July 1959 at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford, and is buried in Enstone, Oxfordshire. His funeral was held in East Hagbourne at St Andrew's parish church on 27 July.

Selected publications "'Mufúmbiro': The Birunga Volcanoes of Kigezi-Ruanda-Kivu." The Geographical Journal, vol. 61, no. 4, 233–253 (1923) "The Azande: Vongara: Note on the Vongara Ruling Caste of the Zande (Niam-Niam) People." Journal of the Royal African Society, vol. 26, no. 101, 21–26 (1926) "Observations on Some Aspects of Religion Among the Azande ('Niam-Niam') of Equatorial Africa." The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. 56, 171–187 (1926) "La nécessité d'une collaboration internationale pour la civilisation des peuples d'Afrique." English translation: "The need for international collaboration for the civilization of the peoples of Africa" Politique Étrangère, vol. 2, no. 1, 56–64 (1937) PDF "The Natural Sciences in Africa: The Belgian National Parks." The Geographical Journal, vol. 115, no. 1/3, 58–62 (1950)

Honours