Brian Mooney-"Will we have mattered?"

Brian Mooney was a lovely man.

Once, when he was Chief Correspondent in Spain and I his UPI counterpart, we met up at a party in Barcelona - an anniversary of El Pais, the country's premier newspaper. We chatted about his time in Poland - where we also had an overlap under martial law in 1982.

Later that evening, we walked rain-splattered streets, lurching a little on our way back to the hotel. He stopped and said: "Will we have mattered? Isn't that the only measure of a person?" I don't know what I replied. But the question posed by this talented and fiercely focused man have often come back to me. Will we? ■