Departure of a farsighted European statesman

HELMUT Schmidt, West German chancellor between 1974 and 1982, who died on Tuesday aged 96, carried with him to the end the hallmark and allure of a European statesman. His passing marks the fourth demise in less than a year of a batch of illustrious German and British monetary figures who played exceptional roles in shaping European finance in the 1970s and 1980s.

The talented and often quarrelsome quartet - Mr Schmidt, Denis Healey, Geoffrey Howe and Karl Otto Pöhl…