THE LATE DR. McNAB.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 16456, 5 February 1917, Page 4

THE LATE DR. McNAB.

By the death of the Minister for Justice and Marine, New Zealand loses a citizen whose peculiar services to this community will be remembered with gratitude when the political differences of this generation interest only historians and students. Dr. McNab had in most exceptional measure the qualities which make for research, and early realised the incalculable value of historical compilations which must be made before the material perished and the sources were lost. For many years of his very strenuous life he has given his leisure and his pleasure to the collecting, examining, classifying, and preservation of all obtainable information concerning- the colonisation of

New Zealand by the European. The worth of the volumes already published is the measure of the loss the Dominion suffers by his dying with his voluntary task only partly clone. Mr. McNab was not so much a man of strange views as he was a man constitutionally disposed to assert his views and to endeavour to carry them into effect. This characteristic led him to appear at one time as the champion of short-term leases and later as the acknowledged exponent of universal defensive training. With both movements he will always be identified, but his famo will rest upon the historical work in which he had no rivals, no opponents, and no detractors, and by which he has erected for himself an honourable and imperishable monument.