Teaching; adviser to Lloyd George After graduating, Jones taught languages briefly at Cambridge, and then in January 1930 The post involved preparing notes and briefings Lloyd George could use in debates, articles, and speeches, and also included some travel abroad.
Journalism In 1929, Jones became a professional freelance reporter,
Germany In late January and some of February 1933, Jones was in
Germany covering the accession to power of the
Nazi Party, and he was in
Leipzig on the day
Adolf Hitler was appointed
Chancellor. Some three weeks later, on 23 February in the Richthofen, "the fastest and most powerful three-motored aeroplane in Germany", Jones, along with
Sefton Delmer, became the first foreign journalists, after he became Chancellor, to fly with Hitler. They accompanied Hitler and
Joseph Goebbels to
Frankfurt where Jones reported for the
Western Mail on the new Chancellor's tumultuous acclamation in that city. He wrote that if the Richthofen had crashed the history of Europe would be changed.
Soviet Union By 1932, Jones had been to the
Soviet Union twice, for three weeks in the summer of 1930 and for a month in the summer of 1931. The Vice Consul's son, Adolf Ehrt, was a leading Nazi propagandist who became head of Goebbels’ Anti-Komintern agency. Jones got off the train 40 miles before his declared destination and walked across the border from the Russian SFSR. As he walked he kept diaries of
the starvation he witnessed. On his return to
Berlin on 29 March, he issued a press release, which was published by many newspapers, including
The Manchester Guardian and the
New York Evening Post: This report was denounced by Moscow-resident British journalist
Walter Duranty, who had been obscuring the truth to please the Soviet regime. Historian
Timothy Snyder has written that "Duranty's claim that there was 'no actual starvation' but only 'widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition' echoed Soviet usages and pushed euphemism into mendacity. This was an Orwellian distinction; and indeed
George Orwell himself regarded the Ukrainian famine of 1933 as a central example of a black truth that artists of language had covered with bright colors." Duranty's article claimed, citing multiple Soviet and foreign sources, "there is no famine"; part of
The New York Times headline was: "Russian and Foreign Observers in Country See No Ground for Predictions of Disaster." On 13 May,
The New York Times published a strong rebuttal of Duranty by Jones, who stood by his report: In a personal letter from Soviet Foreign Commissar
Maxim Litvinov (whom Jones had interviewed while in
Moscow) to Lloyd George, Jones was informed that he was
banned from ever visiting the Soviet Union again. After his Soviet articles, Jones took up his new job in Cardiff on the
Western Mail covering "arts, crafts and coracles", according to his great-nephew Nigel Linsan Colley. Yet he managed to get an interview with the owner of nearby
St Donat's Castle, the American press magnate
William Randolph Hearst. Hearst published Jones's account of what had happened in Ukraine – as he did for the almost identical eye-witness testimony of the disillusioned American Communist
Fred Beal. Hearst also arranged for Jones to undertake a lecture and broadcast tour of the US.
Japan and China Banned from the Soviet Union, Jones turned his attention to the
Far East and in late 1934 he left Britain on a "Round-the-World Fact-Finding Tour". He spent about six weeks in
Japan, interviewing important generals and politicians, and he eventually reached
Beijing. From there, he travelled to
Inner Mongolia where he secured an interview with Inner Mongolian independence leader
Demchugdongrub (Prince De). He continued his journey to
Dolonor close to the border of Japanese-occupied
Manchukuo in the company of a German journalist, Herbert Müller. Detained by Japanese forces there, the pair were told that there were three routes back to the Chinese town of
Kalgan, only one of which was safe. == Kidnapping and death ==