Disasters

Numerous European insurance firms listed as "acts of God" the remarkable series of disasters, chiefly due to floods, which have caused incalculable damage throughout Europe during the past fortnight (TIME, Jan. 11). The flood situation threw immense numbers of workers out of employment, and caused acute distress throughout communities along almost every river of note in Europe. New developments :

Great Britain. The Thames flooded the gardens of Windsor Castle, and forced the abandonment of Eton, famed British public school. Londoners rubbed their eyes as "a beautiful bungalow" floated past the squalid Limehouse docks. Indefatigable vicars rounded up their flocks and conveyed them to Sunday service in punts. The general flood situation improved notably.

France. M. Anatole de Monzie, Minister of Public Works, announced late in the week that the Seine was at length subsiding; but that the suburbs of Paris have already suffered a flood damage of at least 500 million francs ($17,500,000). The subways continued to run, being kept dry by emergency pumps. Throughout the week the heights of Montmartre were stormed by a veritable horde of rats, which swarmed up from flooded cellars in the lower quarters of the city.

The valleys of the Marne, Meuse and Oise were reported "dotted with the decaying bodies of domestic animals, which swirl about in a greasy slime." The industrial breakdown in the North approached complete paralysis. Nearly all the French rivers fell late in the week.

Germany. Water filtering down into the earth from the flooded Rhine Valley slightly weakened the geological substratum of the Rhineland, and caused severe earth tremors, which terrified the already wretched flood refugees. Disastrous landslides took place in the Hartz Mountains. Reserve icebreakers were despatched from Hamburg and Bremen to keep open the badly frozen up shipping routes in the northern Baltic.

Italy. The noted volcanologist, Professor Malladra, expressed satisfaction at a minor eruption of Vesuvius, which frightened out of their wits the grape growers who till the rich soil at its base. "There is no cause for alarm," he said. "I myself have been growing more alarmed month by month as the volcano has not erupted. The nature of its volcanic structure is such that it should erupt at a regular three-monthly period. Recently it has lagged behind its period for five months; and I confess to having felt great uneasiness lest the period should stretch to a year or more. In that case the eruption, when it came, would have taken place with terrific violence."

Belgium and Holland. The Pope despatched 20,000 florins ($8,000) to aid the flood rescue work in Holland, and despatched a like sum for the same purpose to Belgium.