10 FEBRUARY 1933, Page 6

It is a striking reflection that Count Albert Apponyi, who

died at Geneva on Tuesday, was alive when Metter- nich fell in 1848. He was one of those great seigneurial figures of whom few survive in Europe to-day, and of those few not many care to mix themselves in the turmoil of politics. Count Apponyi's towering figure, his great hooked nose and his long white beard, would have made him conspicuous in any society, and his complete mastery of English, French, German, and, I think, Italian, as well as his own Magyar, put him on terms at once with every European of any education. If I had closed my eyes when talking with him I should never have dreamed

it was not an Englishman speaking to me. JANus,