PEACE BEFORE IT CAME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 308, 18 May 1945, Page 6

PEACE BEFORE IT CAME

The Premature Armistice of I91é

ON November 7, 1918, the United States celebrated the Armistice ending the World War four days before the actual signature of the Armistice terms. The fact that a premature announcement was also made of the termination of the present war makes it worth while asking how such things can happen. Here is the story of the "false armistice" of 1918 as told by Roy W. Howard, the man who sent the message on which celebrations were started. The circumstances surrounding the origin of the premature Armistice report and its transmission constituted one of the most remarkable incidents in newspaper history.

N November 6 (1918), the day of my departure from Paris for Brest, a Berlin dispatch from Wolff (the official German news agency) had stated that the German delegates had left to meet the Allied commission. The dispatch did not state where they had left from, and left uncertain the time of their arrival. However, there was a constant interchange of messages going on across the lines and events were moving with great rapidity. There was every reason to believe that an announcement of the signing of a truce was but a matter of hours. All of these facts were clearly in my mind when a few minutes after nine the next morning I stepped off the train at Brest under orders to report to General George H. Harries, Commander of the American Expeditionary Forces at Brest. Before I had time to make an inquiry, I was approached by a young man in mufti, who addressed me with the inquiry: "Mr. Howard?" "Grand News, Isn’t It?" Upon my acknowledgment of the identity, the young man introduced himself as a representative of the local LO. (Intelligence Office), and said that he had been sent to conduct me to the office of Lieutenant Arthur Hornblow, jJun., Chief Intelligence Officer of General Harries’ staff. As we got under way on foot, my escort remarked quite casually, "Well, it’s grand news, isn’t it?" In answer to my inquiry as to the nature of the news, he replied that the Armistice had been) signed. That was news to me. Furthermore, it was vitally important to me for two reasons, First, because Brest was the cable head and a dispatch filed at Brest was transmitted directly into the New York office of the cable company. Secondly; because, due to the notorious slowness and inefficiency of the French telegrapl. lines, news dispatches filed at the censor’s office in Paris-even urgent messages-frequently required from three to seven hours in transmission over the land lines from Paris to Brest. Once in Brest, transmission to New York was a matter of but a few moments. If, by any chance, announcement of the Armistice had been released to the Press in Paris that morning, at any time within the preceding three to seven hours, a news dispatch filed directly through the cable office in Brest had a good chance of reaching New York, not merely minutes, but pospies hours, ahead of any Press dispatch d in Paris. — Disappointingly, however, my escort in. mufti explained that there had been no official announcement. The rumour, general throughout the base, was via the grapevine-the unofficial word-of-mouth

communication of the army, which often ran considerably ahead of official announcements. "A Pain in the Neck" We hurried to the office of Lieutenant Hornblow, who was awaiting my arrival. He, toc, had the rumour, but no official announcement. He did have an_invitation for me to lunch with General Harries at 12 o'clock. After a check-up of my credentials and my travel order, Hornblow informed me that I was to return on the s.s. Great Northern. The time of sailing was to be communicated to me a few hours before the ship’s departure. The lieutenant escorted me to the Hotel Continental, to which I had been assigned, and then, his own interest in the armistice rumour as keen as my own, suggested that we visit the headquarters of Admiral Henry B. Wilson, Commanding Officer of all the United States Naval Forces in France, to whom I carried a letter of introduction from Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels. Unfortunately, Admiral Wilson was not at his office. The sailor on desk duty had heard the armistice rumour, but so far as he knew the Admiral had received no official report. Admiral Wilson was not expected in his office until four o’clock that afternoon. Had Admiral Wilson been in his office at that time, I should have paid my courtesy call, been told that the armistice rumour was unconfirmed, and the dramatic developments resulting from my meeting with him later in the day would not have eventuated. Our next call-was at the headquarters of General Harries, whom we found in high spirits as a result of the rumours which had come to him and members of his staff. Prior to luncheon all hands had a drink "To the Armistice," but to me this unconfirmable rumour was rapidly becoming a severe pain in the neck. So long as the rumour was unofficial it was, under the rules of military censorship, not news and could not be filed as a dispatch. The rumour was much less valuable than no news. Visit to the Admiral At approximately ten minutes past four in the afternoon Major Cook, now of General Harries’ staff but formerly news editor of the Washington Star, and I again climbed the five flights of stairs to Admiral Wilson’s office overlooking the Place du President Wilson, the city’s large public square. The day was balmy for November, a bright sun was shining, and the Navy band was giving a concert in the centre of the square, surrounded by a throng of civilians and of French and American soldiers and sailors. As we entered the Admiral’s office we were greeted by Ensign James Sellards, Admiral Wilson’s personal aide, secretary, and interpreter. Sellards immediately ushered us into

the inner office, where Admiral Wilson was standing by his desk holding in his hand a sheaf of carbon copies of a message. The bluff old sailor’s greeting to Major Cook, even before I could be introduced, was: "By God, Major, this is news, isn’t it?" and, without waiting. for a reply or giving Cook an opportunity to make an introduction, the Admiral barked at a young orderly who had followed us into the room:

"Here, take this to the editor of La Depeche and tell him that he can publish it-and tell him to put it on his bulletin board, And here, take this copy to that bandmaster; tell him to read it to the crowd-both in English and French-and then tell him to put some life into that music!" As the sailor saluted, reached for the copies of the dispatch, and started for the door with a single movement, the Admiral called after him, "And tell the lieutenant on duty to break out the biggest flag we have across the front of the building." Set to Music With this the Admiral turned to me with an outstretched hand, as Cook made the somewhat delayed introduction, followed by an inquiry as to what the big news was. *The Armistice has been signed," replied the Admiral, as he handed a copy of the dispatch to Cook, "Js this official?" inquired the Major. "Howard and I have been chasing this rumour all day, but haven’t been able to get anything that was authoritative." "Official, hell?’ snorted the Admiral. "J should say it is official. I just received this over my ditect wire from the Embassy-from Jackson. It’s the official announcement. I’ve given it to Depeche, and told the bandmaster to-he’s evidently done it." At this instant a roar came up from the packed square five stories below, a dozen lorry motors started backfiring, and ‘the Navy band broke into "There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight."

"I beg your pardon, Admiral," I inquired, "but if this is official and you've announced it to the base and have given it to the local newspaper for publication, have you any objection to my filing it to the United Press?" "Hell, no," replied the Admiral, "this is official. It is direct from G.H.Q., via the Embassy. It’s signed by Captain Jackson, our Naval Attaché at Paris. Here’s a copy of what I have just sent to Depeche. Go to it. By the way, unless your French is okay, perhaps I'd better -Here, Ensign Sellards, I’d like to have you take Mr. Howard over to the cable office. See that he gets this none cleared through the censorship." "Thanks, Admiral," I replied. "If this is quite okay with you, I’m going to take it on the run, and I'll be seeing you a little later." "Okay; come back when you get through, and, Sellards, stay with Mr, Howard until he ‘gets ‘his’ message through, then bring him back here." The Cable to New York Down the five flights of stairs Sellards and I took it on the run, crossing the Place du President Wilson to the cable office, and stopping at the office of La Depeche, which was a client of the United Press. It was my intention to retype the message, addressing it to the United Press in New York on the regular form of cable blank, and making a carbon copy for my own files. But at the office of Depeche I was unable to find a typewriter with a standard keyboard. In my difficulty the telegraph (continued on next page)

... (continued from previous page) operator handling the U.P. wire typed the message for me on the regular tape used for Press telegrams. The tape was then pasted to a regular cable blank. The only change in my message from the wording of the official message received by Admiral Wilson was the dropping out of the word "this," which occurred two or three times in the original dispatch, In condensed form the message read: UNIPRESS NEW YORK URGENT ARMISTICE ALLIES GERMANY SIGNED. ELEVEN SMORNING HOSTILITIES CEASED TWO SAFTERNOON SEDAN TAKEN SMORNING BY AMERICANS HOWARD SIMMS "Unipress" was the cable address of the United Press. The signature "Simms," that of William Philip Simms, manager of the United Press in France, was followed by the number of his official Press card, both of which-signature and card number-were necessary on collect messages filed to the United Press. The Impossible Happened When Sellards and I reached the cable office with the retyped message, the censor room was deserted, the entire personnel having poured into the streets to join in the mass celebration which was on in the Place du President Wilson. Suggesting that 1 remain in the censor’s office, Sellards alone went directly to the operating room at the cable head. Due to his being known by all the operators as Admiral Wilson’s confidential secretary, he was able to expedite the sending of my dispatch and remained alongside the operator until the brief bulletin with its momentous potentialities had cleared into New York.

Though I did not know it at the time, I learned afterwards that no French censor ever passed on the message. The impossible had happened. A fantastic set of circumstances which could not have been conceived of in advance combined unintentionally and unwittingly to circumvent an airtight military censorship which no amount of strategy and planning had ever beaten. The surprising result was produced by a combination of extraordinary elements. The censors were, to a man, in the street celebrating, with the rest of the populace, what they too believed to be the official announcement of the end of the war. The dispatch, not by design but by the purest accident of my being unable to use a French typewriter, resembled in all its physical appearance an ordinary United Press bulletin passed by the American Press censor in Paris. and relayed via the United Press-Depeche leased wire to Brest. Furthermore, its authenticity was vouched for by the highest American naval" commander in French waters, through the medium of his own personal and confidential aide, Ensign Sellards. The combination was more perfect than if it had been planned, and it resulted in the enactment of one of the most dramatic events of the entire war. The hour was approximately 4.20 p.m. in Brest, and approximately 11.20 a.m. New York time. Mad Enthusiasm Leaving the cable office, Sellards and I recrossed the. Place du President Wilson, delaying a few moments to watch the mad celebration which was taking

place on all sides. French shopkeepers and wine*merchants, infected by the spirit of the occasion, were bringing great baskets of vin ordinaire to the sidewalks and passing the bottles about freely among all who cared to partake. This in itself was to the American doughboys, with their high appreciation of French thrift; an act almost as sensational as the Armistice itself. Doughboys, gobs, poilus, and hundreds of French girls and women who seemed to have sprung from the earth marched and danced, arms entwined, as they sung lustily the popular wartime songs. Motor lorries, their engines backfiring like machine-guns, contributed to the uproar. By dinnertime the streets were a solid mass of cheering, singing, good-natured humanity, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that we were able to make our way through the crowd to La Brasserie de la Marine, Brest’s liveliest restaurant. The scene inside would fave

put to shame the jazziest Broadway restaurant at one o’clock on New Year’s morning. We had not yet ordered our dinner-not even the drinks which were to precede it-when a naval orderly, who had missed us at the Continental and had been told he could find us at the restaurant, made his way through the crowd :to our table. He had-a’ message for me from Admiral Wilson,’ in which the latter stated tWat a: second message, which he had received via his direct signal corps wire to Paris, had stated that the first dispatch was "unconfirmable." The Admiral expressed his regret at not having been able to get in touch with me personally, as he had to leave the city for the evening. Accompanied by Lieutenant Hornblow, I went immediately to the office of La Depeche, where I wrote another dispatch, stating that Admiral Wilson’s first bulletin had been followed. by e@ second stating that the original statement was now held to be unconfirmable. This dispatch was filed at Brest approximately two hours after the first one. Had it been delivered with the same dispatch as the first, the correction® would have been in the United Press office in New York some time after one p.m. However, for reasons which have to this day never been satisfactorily explained, this second bulletin, which would have enabled the United Press to correct the original error within two hours, was not delivered to the United Press in New York until shortly before noon on the following day, Friday, November 8.

Immediately upon learning on the morning of November 8 that my second message was being held up by the Navy Department, Hawkins, our vice-president, and general manager in New York, got the Washington Bureau of the United Press busy, but it was not until late in the forenoon, after the matter had been put before President Wilson himself, that the correction was released, upon instructions from the President. During the intervening time, between the receipt of the original dispatch, a little before noon on November 7, and the delayed delivery to the United Press of the correction on the forenoon of November 8, Hawkins had stood absolutely pat on the original message for reasons obvious to any practical newspaperman. He knew that the original dispatch was of a sort that no sane newspaperman would attempt to fake. It was either all right or it was all wrong. It was not the sort on which any reporter could expect to obtain any edge or any advantage, except through some possible chance accident of transmission. Hawkins knew that I, as president, and as one of the principal stockholders in the United Press, could not possibly have sent the message if there had been Teason to suspect the existence of any element of chance. The Admiral’s Explanation It was not until late on the evening of the seventh that the United PressDepeche wire opened between Paris and Brest. Meantime, it was impossible for censorship reasons for me to communicate with the Paris office, or for them to get in touch with me. Upon the opening of the wire I learned for the first time of the celebration under way in America, but even then did not know that my correcting message had not gotten through.

I was at Admiral Wilson’s office when | he arrived around ten o’clock on the morning of the eighth, I explained the situation to him and he communicated to me such additional information as he had received from Paris. But it was still wartime. The information was meagre and explanations were not to be had. The Admiral asked me what he could do to set matters right. I requested a statement for publication, giving his version of what had occurred. The dispatch read: "The statement of the United Press relative to the signing of the Armistice was made public from my office on the basis of what appeared to be official and authoritative information. I am in a position to know that the United Press its representative acted in perfect good faith, and the premature announcement was the result of an error, for which the agency was in, no wise responsible. HENRY B. WILSON." On the tenth of November I sailed on the troopship s.s. Great Northern from Brest. What Happened in America Meantime, what was happening in the United States was another story. In New York and the east, the first extras carrying the bulletin announcement of the signing of the Armistice reached the street during the lunch hour. In the Middle West the extras were out before noon and on the Pacific Coast in the early forenoon. Newspaper presses rolled as never before, and new records were established for newspaper sales. It =f (continued on next page)

~~ PREMATURE ARMISTICE

(continued from previous page) doubtful if any other news ever travelled so swiftly or so widely in the United States of pre-radio days, Telephone exchanges became madhouses. Telegraph offices were swamped. Offices and businesses were deserted. New York’s luncheon crowd never went ‘back to business. Impromptu parades were started and grew to gigantic proportions. Lower Broadway in New York invented its first artificial snowstorm. Ticker tape, telephone books, office stationery, and waste-basket contents provided the "snow." None who participated in the American celebration will ever forget it. Those who did not see it will probably never appreciate its magnitude, its spontaneity, or its unquenchability. Germany was known to be beaten. For all practical purposes the war was over. For a fortnight the emotions of America had been under compression and on the verge of explosion. A 20-word news bulletin furnished the detonating spark. After the first shock of having been "scooped" on one of the biggest stories in American history, the newspapers which did not receive United Press dispatches began to recover and issue extras of their own denying that the war was over, or that the Armistice had been signed. Their newsboys were in many instances mobbed and their papers. destroyed. In the minds and the conviction of the American.public the war was over, even if the formalities had not been concluded. People wanted to celebrate. The excuse for a celebration had been furnished. They would permit no kill-joy to function. Washington denials that the Armistice had been signed were hooted. News services and correspondents that questioned the authenticity of the United Press bulletin were ridiculed. Joy was unconfined. Mixing of the milk of human kindness with alcohol in various forms continued far into the night. The boss and the staff in thousands of businesses banished formality and rank and continued their celebrations into the wee hours. America awoke on the morning of November 8, 1918, with what'was probably the greatest national headache in history.

But a good time had been had by all. There were few regrets and less bitterness on the part of the public. Possibly a cofrespondent and a press association and some hundreds of newspapers had made a slight mistake as to the signing of some formal paper, but in the minds of the public the war was over and the celebration had been to signalise an actuality. Any incompleted formality was of no consequence. Proof of this was furnished four days later when, on November 11, the official Signing having taken place and been formally announced, the resulting celebration throughout the country turned out to be but a pale imitation of the spontaneous outbursts of November 7. Still a Mystery What or who caused the premature report? After over a score of years the answer to that question is still a mystery. There are many people who still believe that an armistice of some sort actually was signed on November 7. They cite the never officially denied Teport that German emissaries crossed the French lines at daybreak on the morning of Thursday, November 7; that the terms of the Armistice were already drawn at that hour; and that they had probably been agreed to in advance by the Germans. For a time it seemed to me that such a theory might be plausible. However, as the years passed and no confirmation of such a situation ever became public, the plausibility of the theory that an armistice had actually been signed on November 7 gradually diminished. In my present opinion, the explanation probably lies in a different direction. In the official records of the State Department covering the war period, which were made public in 1933, there appears, on page 483 of Volume I. for the year 1918, the following dispatch: "Special Representative (House) to the Secretary of Siate, (Telegram-extract.) Paris, November 8, 1918, 7.00 p.m. (Received November 8 — 5.10 p.m.) "Yours 16, November 7, 4.00 p.m., I have investigated this matter, and I understand ‘Embassy is repotting fully concerning it. My information c@incides with that given Embassy. Most of the officials in Paris, and practically every non-official petson here, believed yesterday that the Armistice had been signed. Captain Jackson, Naval Attaché at the Embassy, sent Admiral Wilson at Brest a wire to that effect, Wilson showed wire to Roy Howard at Brest and sent an aide with him to cable censor so that Howard would be permitted to send through a dispatch stating that the Armistice had been signed. It is perfectly clear that the United Press was not at fault in this matter, and that the fault, if any, lies with Jackson or the French official who started the rumour. (Signed) EDWARD HOUSE," In the identity of the "French official who started the rumour" lies, in my opinion, the answer to the mystery of the false armistice of November 7, 1918. Investigation at the Embassy in Paris revealed that a secretary had received a ‘phone call from the French Foreign Office during the afternoon of November 7, via the Embassy’s private Foreign Office wire. The "French official" had announced the signing of the Armistice, the hour of the cessation of hostilities, etc., and had requested that the information be communicated to Ambassador Sharp. To the secretary the call was

routine, and the message arrived via @ channel regafded as strictly private and official. But in my opinion no "French official". ever phoned the news of an armistice to the American Embassy on November 7. In my opinion, which is based largely upon conversations I have since had with American and French intelligerice officers, the bulletin communicated to Ambassador Sharp was phoned by a German secret agent located in Paris. It seems logical to believe that this agent had successfully tapped the private wire connecting the American Embassy and the Quai d’Orsay-that he may have had it tapped for months-and, when the situation warranted, he merely rang the Embassy, announced himself in perfect French as speaking for the Foreign Office, and communicated his message. The objective of the manoguvre and its value from a German point of view are not difficult to understand. It wes known that Foch would be ruthless in his terms. It was believed that he, in common with most of the Allied leaders, preferred to follow the retreating German armies right into Berlin. The Germans wanted an armistice des-perately-and wanted it quickly. They were faced with starvation, anarchy, and civil war. Time meant everything. They were fearful that there might be fatal delays. But the Allies, though triumphant, were war weary also. Those behind the Allied lines were also eager for peace and the return of their soldiers. The urge for peace was in the hearts of all peoples. The Germans knew this. They feared the Allied military leaders, but they knew that even these leaders would nét be deaf to the demands of their nationals. If these nations could just be told that an armistice had been signed, that the war and the killing were actually finished, it was reasonable to suppose that their joy would be so great that no Power would risk continuance of the war in view of the recognition that all necessary objectives had already been attained. The thing to do, therefore, was to announce peace and dare the Allied military commanders to delay it longer. In my opinion, that was what was done, and if ever the "French official" who, in my belief, was in fact a German secret agent working in Paris, tells his story, or if his official report in the German War Office is ever made public, the secret of the false armistice will be re-vealed-but not otherwise.