THE NEW MEMBER.

Taranaki Daily News, 12 November 1921, Page 9

THE NEW MEMBER.

MR. CLUTHA MACKENZIE. ■ The successful candidate for Auckland city, Mr. Clutha N. Mackenzie, is the youngest son of Sir Thomas Mackenzie, a former Prime Minister of New Zealand, and until recently High Commissioner for New Zealand in London. He is a brother of Mr. Kenneth Mackenzie, surgeon, of Princess Street, Auckland. He was born at Ralclutha, Otago, in 1895, and attended in turn the Mornington School. Otago Boys’ High Sehpol. and Waitski Boys’ High School. For several years he worked as a cadet, agricultural laborer, and shepherd in the Manawatu, Waikato, King Country, and Rangitikei, gaining sound practical knowledge of all branches of agriculture, with the intention of future sciontifice research. On various expeditions he travelled extensively through most parts of both islands, civilised and far back, particularly among the mountain country of the South.

On the outbreak of war he joined with his territorial unit to form the Manawatu squadron of the Wellington Mounted Rifles, proceeding with the Main Body to Egypt and then Gallipoli. On the morning of August 9, 1915, in the fierce battle on the summit of Chunuk Bair, he was wounded, losing his sight, by a Gin. shell from a British msn-o’twar which fell short. In hospital at Walton on-Thames, for some time from enteric fever as well as the wound, he was visited constantly by Sir Arthur Pearson, and became his preat personal friend, making his home in London with him for the next three years. Following travels in England and Wales and a course of training at St. Dunstan's Hostel for Blind Soldiers Mr. Mackenzie founded the Chronicles of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, the last number of which appeared in January. 1919, when the paper wound up. He paid a visit of a few weeks to New Zealand in 1917. and returned finally with Viscount -lellieoe in H.M.S. New Zealand. The interests of his lather in public life were primarily the agricultural and trade development of- New Zealand, the preservation of native bird life, the wiser management of the native forests, and the afforestation of bare regions. In the ways and means to these ends Mr. Mackenziie has had long training, and has added much kowledge to it in a voting and practical life in the New Zealand country. Meeting constantly men of the Empire in London, the directors of the war and of the Allies, *he ha/l opportunities which rarely come to young men of a broad training in Imperial matters, defensive, commercial, political, and diplomatic. As a trooper of the ranks, too, he mixed much with people of all classes, earned their opinions and points of view, and thus gamed an increased knowledge of what had been wrong in the past, and what should be the position of labor in the future.