16 FEBRUARY 1929, Page 3

Europe is in the grip of " the coldest spell

since the ace-age." In Great Britain we are only on the fringe of it. In Vienna there have been forty-eight degrees of frost, the Danube is frozen and the water supply is failing. Further east, the Bosphorus and Golden Horn are frozen and the Orient Express was snowed up for a fortnight. The stories of the ravages of hungry wolves are ghastly. A pack is said to have killed all the children in an Austrian village school. Such horrors challenge the triumphs of civilization over the forces of nature.

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