11 JANUARY 1913, Page 2

The appointment of Herr von Jagow, the German Ambas- sador

at Rome, to succeed the late Herr von Kiderlen Wacchter as German Foreign Secretary, was officially announced at the beginning of the week. Herr von Jagow, who is alleged to have accepted the post with considerable reluctance, is in his fiftieth year, and has spent most of his diplomatic career at Rome. Little is known of him in Berlin, but in Italy he has achieved a great personal popularity besides deriving credit from the renewal of the Triple Alliance during his tenure of office. Be has the reputation of being at once unaggressive, capable, and sincere, and the Times correspondent at Rome pays him the rare compliment of including him "in that rare category of statesmen whose words are never doubted, because it is inconceivable that they should ever break faith." His association with so moderate a statesman as the present German Chancellor is of good augury for the maintenance of European peace.