LIEUT.-COLONEL W. G. MALONE.

Taranaki Daily News, 3 September 1915, Page 3

LIEUT.-COLONEL W. G. MALONE.

AN APPRECIATION. (BY COLONEL C. E. MAJOR.) . The privilege was possessed only by a few of knowing the great talent, the dynamic energy, and the high courage of the late Lieut.-Colonel W. G. Malone. As one who knew him from the time of his arrival in Now Zealand until his untimely death at the Dardanelles, I feel that I am qualified by knowledge i and experience to pen these few lines as a tribute to his memory and a legacy to the surviving members, of his family. He was a type of man who, by reason of his powerful physique and resolute countenace, was always a factor to be reckoned with in whatever circle of men or whatever society he found himself in; educated, keen, alert, and added to these characteristics a concentration of purpose, enabled him fo take a leading place in the many affairs of Taranaki settlement and progress during the past thirty years. Always an enthusiast in everything he undertook, and possessing the rare faculty of transmitting his enthusiasm to others, by example, by exhortation, and by cajolery, he thereby accomplished tasks that would have been impossible to others less gifted and versatile than himself. As a member of the old Armed Constabulary Force when quite a youth, he was commended by his officers as one of the smartest and best men in the force. As a bush farmer during the fungus era. he paid his way and held his own during these the most parlous days of farming in 1 Taranaki history. As clerk at the ' Stratford County Council, and subsequently as the head of it, he did much good work in promoting the settlement of the county and in placing the county's affairs on a .stable foundation. As a lawyer he was afao successful. He was a believer in Zola's aphorism: "There is luck in labor." It was not by reason of lack of merit or organising ability that he did not win a seat in Par'ament upon the occasion of his contesting same; it was party and religious issues that brought .about his defeat. His defeat the writer felt keenly, for lie knew full well that as a member of Parliament he would liave been of much service to the State, and would have left his mark upon the scroll of Parliamentary fame. His real metier, however, was that of a soldier. As a fellow captain with him in the Taranaki battalion that visited Wellington for the purpose of attending tho reception of our present King and Qceen, then the Duke and Duchess of YorJf, every man in the battalion, from the latest private to the colonel commanding, realised that Captain Malone was a soldier and an officer in the most comprehensive meaning of those words. A strict disciplinarian, and yet possessed of a fund of humor and more than the average modicum of human kindness. Without any sense of wishing to derogate from the many good soldiers that New Zealand has sent into the firing lino, oven including our BrigadierGeneral, in my opinion none were equal in all-round merit to the subject of this short biography. His loss will ho mourned by all those who admire and appreciate talent, courage, probity, and kindliness, particularly when found combined in one person. This type of man, possessing all these, qualities in so marked a degree, a man of both precept and example, can ill be spared, and, although only a humn unit, as a citizen and a soldier he was an asset of inestimable value to New Zealand, and particularly to Taranaki