11 JANUARY 1919, Page 2

Count von Raffling, the Bavarian statesman who waa the German

Imperial Chancellor from November, 1017, till Sept. ember last, died last Saturday at the age of seventy-rfire. He was chosen for a poet which none but a Prussian .had filled because he was the leader of the Roman Catholic Party and had

great influence at Vienna and at Rome. The peace intrigues which he set on foot failed because the military chiefs insisted on a new offensive and shocked the conscience of the world by the shameless Treaties of Brest-Litovsk and Bucharest. The old Chancellor played the game to the lad in his final speech at the end of September he declared that "the iron wall on the West" would not be broken, though he knew that it was already °rumbling into fragments. The era to which he belonged is closed, but it would be premature to assume that Germany has abandoned the deceitful diplomacy which he practised.