Admiral Henry B. Wilson, the Commander of US Naval Forces in French Waters, November 1917-January 1919, never published his recollections about False Armistice events in Brest, unlike Arthur Hornblow, Fred Cook, and Roy Howard, President of United Press news agency at the time. And he spoke in public about what occurred there only once, apparently – in an interview for an American newspaper’s False Armistice anniversary feature. But he put together a file of ‘False Armistice Papers’ which was to be used “in case of ‘attack’ on his memory after his death”. This article presents Admiral Wilson’s recollections of Thursday 7 and Friday 8 November in Brest from these Papers and other sources.
Generally accepted as basic “facts” in the False Armistice story are that Admiral Wilson gave permission to Roy Howard to send the 7 November armistice cablegram to the United States, and helped make sure the local French cable censors allowed it through. The Admiral repeatedly denied the claims, but to no avail – hence the collection of his False Armistice Papers for use, as necessary, after his demise.
The article’s main sections are:
The US Navy Department demands an “immediate explanation”, November 1918.
The State Department demands explanations, November 1918.
Associated Press suspicions about Admiral Wilson, November 1918.
Arthur Hornblow’s Fake Armistice article and changes for Amazing Armistice, 1921.
Admiral Wilson’s newspaper interview, 1928.
Admiral Wilson’s information for Josephus Daniels, 1933-34.
Roy Howard’s Premature Armistice, 1936.
Josephus Daniels’ memoirs, 1946.
Commentary on the conflicting claims.
Addendum: Josephus Daniels’ 8 November 1918 telegrams to Admiral Wilson and Admiral Sims.
The US Navy Department demands an “immediate explanation”
7-8 November 1918
(Text in this colour is quoted directly from Admiral Wilson’s correspondence. Inverted commas are not used to enclose it.)
As Admiral Wilson’s armistice news raced across North America on 7 November in United Press (UP) bulletins to its subscribers, provoking unprecedented scenes of public rejoicing and celebration, the US Navy Department demanded to know from Admiral Wilson in Brest, and from Admiral W. S. Sims in London, the Commander of US Naval Forces in European Waters, whether they had been involved in releasing it.
The Secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels, had copies of the following telegraphed to both admirals:
“United Press announced armistice signed. Later they received cable quote Admiral Wilson, who announced to Brest newspaper Armistice had been signed, later notified announcement unconfirmed. Meanwhile French riotously celebrate. Howard unquote Did you make this or similar statement. Cable immediate explanation.” A1.1 (Archive Reference) and Addendum.
The order arrived in Brest “early in the morning” of 8 November, according to Wilson’s Assistant Chief of Staff who wrote a memorandum about it many years later. A1.2 The Admiral replied the same day, recounting what took place in Brest during 7 November:
United States Naval Forces in France, Brest, France
My dear Mr. Secretary:
I am in receipt of your cable . . . .
The facts are as follows:
[Concerning the armistice news from Paris] Yesterday afternoon November 7, an official telegram in plain English came to [my] office from Captain Jackson the Paris Representative and the Naval Attache, which read as follows:
‘Foreign office announced Armistice signed 11 A.M. hostilities ceased 2 P.M. today. Sedan taken this morning by U.S. Army.’
It being so apparently authentic, I allowed it to become known to the officers and men of my Force and the civil population including the little local newspaper. Two hours later I received the following message in code from the same source:
‘Rush signature Armistice unconfirmed German representatives rush [reach?] borders 6 P.M. and let it be known at once, thereby killing the previous report.’
[Concerning Roy Howard and the armistice news] When the first message came Mr. Roy Howard, President of the United Press, who had just come to town with letters from the President and yourself, was in my office and I let him know the contents. He asked to ‘use it’. I said ‘yes’ but it never occurred to me at the time that he meant by ‘using it’, to send it to the United States, my mind being entirely taken up with local conditions. From your message, quoted above, it seems that Mr. Howard sent the report home and that it was published. I can assure you that Mr. Howard acted entirely in good faith, believing as I did at the time that the report was true. Had I realized that the news was to be sent to America from this source and by reason of information received from me, I would not have authorized it. However, it is probable that even then I would not have made any determined opposition to the information being used as he saw fit, considering that there were censors at both ends of the line and the communications to America could go out only through properly authorized channels, none of which was controlled by me.
It was unfortunate that this thing happened, but any jollification here was perfectly orderly and the word ‘riotously’ as used in this connection was incorrect.
Concluding, Wilson noted: I have always been shy about appearing in the public prints and I shall try all the harder in the future to keep out.
Most respectfully,
(Signed) Henry B. Wilson
Vice Admiral, U.S.N.
Commander, U.S. Naval Forces in France
P.S. [On 8 November] At Mr. Howard’s request I gave him for the information of the United Press Editors, but not for publication, the following statement. ‘Admiral Wilson today made the following statement for the information of United Press Editors. The statement of the United Press relative to signing of Armistice was made public from my office on basis of what appeared to be official and authoritative information. Am in position to know that the United Press and its representative acted in perfect good faith and that the premature announcement was result of an error for which agency was in no wise responsible.’ A1.3
In short: Admiral Wilson told Josephus Daniels he was not expecting Howard to transmit the armistice news to the United States. Had he known, he would have refused the request but would probably have relented because he assumed either the French censors in Brest or American censors in New York City (over whom he had no influence) would stop it. And in the postscript he emphasized that he agreed to the 8 November note clearing Howard and his agency of having fabricated the armistice news on the understanding that it was for use only within the UP organization and not for general release to the newspapers. (No reply from Daniels has been found.)
The State Department demands explanations Thursday 7 – Saturday 9 November 1918
During 7 November, Secretary of State Robert Lansing instructed the American Ambassador in Paris, William Sharp, and the President’s Special Representative, Edward House, to find out how the false armistice news had evaded the censors to reach the UP office in New York City. They replied that Admiral Wilson gave the news to UP President Roy Howard, who was in Brest and not (as people thought) in Paris, and influenced the local cable censors to secure its transmission to America.
Having “investigated this matter”, Edward House’s understanding was that the armistice message had been sent to Admiral Wilson by Naval Attaché Jackson in Paris, that Wilson showed it to Roy Howard, who was in Brest by chance, then “sent an aide with [Howard] to cable censor so that Howard would be permitted to send through a despatch stating that Armistice had been signed”. Ambassador Sharp reported that, according to UP staff in Paris, they spoke by telephone to Roy Howard in Brest who assured them Admiral Wilson had presented the armistice news to him and to the local newspaper, and that “accompanied by one of Admiral Wilson’s aides [he] filed the cable to the United States which was passed by the censor”. N1 (NOTES) (It is uncertain whether Lansing also saw Admiral Wilson’s reply to Navy Secretary Daniels’ demand for answers about UP’s acquisition and transmission of the armistice news.)
At the time, Wilson seems to have been unaware of these official reports that he influenced the cable censors; but he certainly became aware of them and responded to them in 1933 (some fifteen years later), when the State Department publicised them in a selection of its wartime documents (below). They imply that Roy Howard was the source of the allegations; but this is questionable.
During Friday 8 November, Howard telegraphed the UP offices in Paris and New York City telling them simply that the previous day Admiral Wilson had received the armistice news from Paris, announced it in the town and to the local newspaper, and “sent his aid with [him] to file [it]”. On 20 November, back from France, Howard announced this to the press, with the clarification that “the Admiral . . . sent his personal aid with me to assist me in filing the dispatch, as I do not speak French fluently”; and related the ‘Full Story of Premature Peace Rumor’ for the Editor & Publisher trade magazine’s 23 November issue, in which he also remarked that “the message was filed at the cable office by messenger from La Dépêche”. N2
The Paris and New York City offices were facing a crisis on 8 November over Howard’s false armistice cablegram, which Howard – in Brest on the tip of the Brittany peninsula – was oblivious to at first. In such circumstances, it is far more likely that the Paris office overstated what Howard told them about Wilson’s sending an aide with him to file the cablegram and gave the impression to the officials investigating the false armistice news for Sharp and House that the Admiral had intervened to make sure Howard’s cablegram left Brest for New York City. In short, they not Howard first made the allegations. (See Commentary.)
On 8 November 1918 Roy Howard had described Admiral Wilson as “a victim” who might feel “some grief” in the future over his part in the False Armistice. This proved to be prescient, for items about Wilson appeared in sundry publications in later years and greatly disturbed his retirement. However, it was not reminders that he was responsible for releasing the false armistice news in Brest and letting Howard use it that later troubled him, but the claims that he allowed Howard to transmit it to New York City and secured the Brest censors’ clearance of it – in other words that he misused his position as a high-ranking American commander to interfere in French censorship procedures in Brest to the advantage of an American news agency. As noted above, the defamation most likely came from the UP office in Paris and not originally from Roy Howard himself. But Howard repeated it subsequently, perpetuated it in Premature Armistice, and gave Admiral Wilson cause to worry that it would overshadow his career even after his death. In the meantime, Wilson left France to become Commander-in-Chief of the Atlantic Fleet (February 1919-June 1921) and then Superintendent of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland. He retired from the service in February 1925.
When Howard returned from France, he tried to find out what had caused the False Armistice. N3 And as part of his search, he wrote to Admiral Wilson a number of times. He wanted to meet him again – perhaps for lunch “some day (sic) with my partner, Mr. Hawkins and myself” – to discuss “some of the interesting phases of the incident [of 7 November 1918] which came to my attention on my return home”. A1.4 Wilson ignored most of his letters and there were no other meetings between them. He suspected that Howard was trying to draw him deeper into the False Armistice affair for reasons of his own and was not to be trusted.
For the same reason, the Admiral also refused to have anything to do with the Associated Press (AP) news agency, a leading critic of Roy Howard’s armistice bulletin and one of UP’s main business competitors.
Associated Press suspicions about Admiral Wilson, 8 – 21 November 1918
Staff at AP’s New York City Bureau (51 Chambers Street, Manhattan) suspected that Admiral Wilson was complicit in Howard’s armistice cablegram. On 8 November, the day that newspapers in the USA published Wilson’s statement exonerating Howard, the News Department Chief there – Jackson S. Elliott (the man who “Spiked False Armistice”) – sent this telegram to Elmer Roberts, who was in charge at the AP Paris Bureau (13 Place de la Bourse):
UNIPRESS EXPLAINS THURSDAY PEACE FIASCO WITH STATEMENT THAT HOWARDS INFORMATION WAS SUPPLIED BY AMERICAN ADMIRAL WILSON AT BREST AND PUBLISHES DIRECT WILSON STATEMENT ASSUMING RESPONSIBILITY [.] SEE WILSON ELLIOTT A3.1
“SEE WILSON” instructed Roberts to travel to Brest to interview the Admiral about Howard’s “PEACE FIASCO”.
(In what is assumed to be the draft of the message, the words “WHO AUTHORIZED TRANSMISSION UNIPRESS” are between “AT BREST” and “PUBLISHES” but are crossed through and omitted from the telegram itself.) A3.1
Roberts replied the same or following day:
HOWARDS EXPLANATION AGREES WITH WHAT I HAVE LEARNED FROM AMERICAN OFFICIALS HERE STOP APPEARS AMERICAN NAVAL CAPTAIN NOW PARIS HEARD ARMISTICE SIGNED . . . TELEGRAPHED DECLARATION TO ADMIRAL WILSON WHO TOLD HOWARD THEN BREST ADMIRAL SENT NAVAL OFFICER WITH HOWARD TO FRENCH CENSORSHIP WITH REQUEST PASS HIS DISPATCH ADMIRAL ALSO COMMUNICATED HIS INFORMATION TO TOWNSPEOPLE WHO CELEBRATED STOP
In view of this information, Roberts wondered whether he should still go to see Admiral Wilson:
WILL TAKE THREE DAYS FROM INTENSE SITUATION HERE WHICH [AM] COVERING WITH NUMERICALLY LIMITED STAFF A3.2
In other words, a return journey to Brest meant “three days” away from Paris for Roberts just when the German armistice delegation had met Marshal Foch. Elliott changed his mind: “Trip Brest unnecessary”, he decided on 9 November. A3.3 (The “American officials” in Paris quoted by Roberts may have been members of Edward House’s team or of G-2 (SOS) US Army Intelligence.)
However, Roberts had not dropped the matter, for a few days later he wrote to Elliott to tell him he had sent Admiral Wilson “a long telegram . . . concerning Roy Howard’s message on the armistice and asked him if he would be kind enough to let [him] know what the circumstances [of the message] were so that [he] might transmit the facts to [the AP News Department in New York City]”. A3.4
Wilson (who had resolved to have no further contact with newspapers) refused out of hand, and on 10 November, Ensign J. A. Sellards, the Admiral’s aide and interpreter, sent Roberts this brusque response by letter: “Admiral Wilson directs me to . . . inform you that he has nothing to send for transmission to the Management of the Associated Press.” A3.5
Concluding his letter, Roberts remarked that Captain Jackson, the US Naval Attaché “who wired Admiral Wilson that the armistice had been signed”, was a friend of his; but he had not been able to ask him about it because Jackson had “returned to Washington rather suddenly”. A3.4
Roberts’ letter from Paris is dated 14 November 1918 (three days after the Armistice) but it is not known when it was delivered in New York City. It may have taken weeks, and is unlikely to have arrived before 21 November and a discussion that took place, in Washington, DC, between Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels and AP Superintendent, L. C. Probert, about AP’s suspicions of Admiral Wilson.
Enlisting the help of the AP Washington, DC, Bureau for a meeting with Josephus Daniels
Newspaper condemnations of Roy Howard and United Press ceased following the publication of Admiral Wilson’s 8 November statement and of Howard’s own lengthy 9 November defence of his actions in Brest. In the latter, Howard warned “interested parties . . . endeavoring to capitalize the incident whereof The United Press was a victim” that he would “take any steps necessary” to protect his and his agency’s reputations; while Bill Hawkins, UP’s General Manager in New York City, who circulated both documents, cautioned “all editors” receiving them that “we see no reason to continue the controversy”. A3.6
Elmer Roberts’ cablegram from Paris with the information from American officials about Admiral Wilson and Roy Howard had reached the New York City Bureau around the same time as those 8 and 9 November United Press releases. Its contents appear to have induced the AP New York City staff to brush aside Howard’s and Bill Hawkins’ warnings about continuing the false armistice news “controversy” and adopt a different line of enquiry about UP’s role in it. Had this succeeded, it would have discredited Howard and his agency, and Admiral Wilson.
On 12 November, the day after the German Armistice, F. R. Martin, AP Assistant General Manager in New York City, wrote to L. C. Probert, Superintendent of the AP Washington, DC, Bureau (Second Floor, [Evening] Star Building, 1101 Pennsylvania Avenue) to tell him about “an angle of the recent United Press fiasco which seems to all of us [here] worthy of further investigation”.
The different “angle” of enquiry
Martin began by reminding Probert that UP’s exclusive use of the local Brest newspaper’s private telegraph link to Paris (its “wire from Paris”) – which they had known about for some time – provided UP’s news to the United States with a time “advantage” over that of Associated Press and other agencies. N4 Then, referring to the Paris officials’ information that Admiral Wilson “passed” Howard’s armistice cablegram, he told Probert that the New York City Bureau now believed that Howard’s “presence in Brest [on 7 November]” was not “altogether accidental”. Indeed, there was “every reason to suppose that by hook or crook Howard has made some arrangement with Navy officers at Brest which, if not circumventing the established methods of censorship, is giving him a great advantage – including the opportunity to put over his celebrated hoax”. A3.7
Essentially, Martin was still incriminating Admiral Wilson in Howard’s uncensored transmission of the 7 November armistice news the Admiral had received from Paris, but now introducing UP’s use of the La Dépêche telegraph wire between Brest and Paris and Howard’s presence in Brest (rather than in Paris) as new factors in AP’s suspicions. And he wanted Probert to arrange a meeting with Navy Secretary Daniels (in private life, a newspaper proprietor and AP member) to “present the case” to him that “If the Navy Department has permitted a private censorship to be established at Brest, we ought to know it. If the Navy Department, which is in charge of all censorship, will permit us to cable directly from Brest by personal influence with naval officers, we ought to know it.”
But before acting upon it, Martin wanted Probert to “show this letter to Mr. Noyes” – Frank B. Noyes, the Associated Press President – “and tell him it is my judgment that we should present the case to Secretary Daniels”. A3.7
Perhaps Noyes advised Probert against confronting Navy Secretary Daniels in the forthright manner implied in Martin’s letter, because a few days later AP News Department Chief Jackson Elliott now wrote to Probert from New York City saying “by all means drop the several investigations you have started into apparent discrimination in censorship” but not “our inquiry concerning Admiral Wilson at Brest as our curiosity requires that some report be made in connection with that incident”. A3.8
L. C. Probert’s meeting with Josephus Daniels, 21 November 1918
Probert saw Daniels at the Navy Department the day after Roy Howard publicised his 19 November meeting with Daniels, reiterated that he “had no apology to offer” for his false armistice dispatch, and implied that the authorities were withholding important details about 7 November occurrences. N5 He typed a report the same day, which Martin received in New York City the next day, 22 November.
Probert had asked Daniels about Howard’s press comments, and about Admiral Wilson’s relations with Howard in Brest.
Regarding Howard’s comments, Daniels’ “resentment was almost boundless”, and “he intended to write to Howard, expressing his indignation”. He showed him no sympathy over the armistice cablegram, telling him that Admiral Wilson’s statement exonerating him “did not lessen his responsibility a bit”; that he was “in the hole”; and that the “best thing” he could do would be “to shut up and let the newspapers and the American people forget about it if they can”.
Regarding Wilson, he said that the Admiral was one of “our best and most able officers and a very good fellow” but had been “indiscreet” in showing the armistice news to Howard. He was certain that Wilson “had no idea that Howard was going to transmit it as a fact”; pointed out that it was Howard who asked for a naval officer to “go over to the cable office with him on the plea that he did not speak French”; and thought that “the presence” of this officer “probably impressed” the clerk who dealt with Howard’s cablegram in the absence of the local censor (“it was lunch time and the censor was away”), adding, however, that “nobody here knows what was said to support the impression”.
“I don’t want to go any further than this”, Daniels insisted, “because if I have to investigate this thing I will have to court-martial Wilson . . . who was probably led into taking the responsibility for the thing because Howard pleaded that he was in great trouble and Wilson undoubtedly did not recognize the enormity of the disturbance it caused in this country.”
And with regard to AP’s suspicions of censorship malpractice in Brest in favour of United Press, he reassured Probert “there is no private arrangement whatever between the United Press and the naval officers at Brest . . . the censorship is entirely in the hands of the French”.
“This, I think, answers the question you raise in your letter of November 12, so far as it may be answered on the information the Secretary of the Navy has at hand”, Probert observed to Martin; “[But] I do not mean to say that something may be going on sub-rosa [secretly] at Brest which Mr. Daniels does not know about and which might be developed by investigation there”. A3.9
(On 9 November, nearly two weeks earlier, Daniels had already announced that he would not be making “any further inquiry” into Wilson’s handling of the false armistice news in Brest. It is not clear whether Daniels was told at the time that the Sharp and House reports to the State Department implicated the Admiral in the censors’ acceptance of Howard’s armistice cablegram.)
Probert’s two-page record of his interview with Navy Secretary Daniels calmed AP’s concerns about Wilson and the censors in Brest. Some weeks later, Jackson Elliott, who had suggested the meeting, sent a New Year’s letter to R. M. Collins, in charge of the AP Bureau in London. “On the subject of the United Press fake”, he disclosed, “there are several things about the Navy participation in this fake which Mr. Daniels would like to investigate, but he fears that if he does so, it may be necessary to court-martial Admiral Wilson. Naturally, he does not want to do this and I think all of the newspaper men who met Admiral Wilson in Washington would be loathe [sic] to do anything which would make trouble for him. Admiral Wilson was one of a number of very fine officers with whom newspaper men came in close contact.” A3.10
Interestingly, when Josephus Daniels wrote about the 21 November 1918 AP interview, in his coverage of the False Armistice for the second volume of his memoirs (1946), there is praise for Admiral Wilson for being “forthright” in giving Howard “a clean bill of health” while the latter was “being roasted at home by some news agencies as a faker”, and nothing about AP suspicions of him. The impression Daniels gives is that Probert complained to him only about Roy Howard who, in his opinion, deserved to be penalized for the false armistice cablegram. Under the sub-title WANTED HOWARD REBUKED, Daniels recounted that he tried to “mollify” Melville E. Stone (AP General Manager at the time) who arrived at the “Navy Department indignant at the ‘fake message’, as he called it” and demanded that “some condign punishment” be inflicted on Howard for the trouble it had caused. But Daniels refused. “See here, Mel Stone”, he remembered retorting, “you and I have been reporters eager for scoops. If you had received the news as Roy Howard did and had not rushed to give your papers the scoop, you would be no reporter and ought to lose your job.” N6
Twenty-eight years later then, Daniels had evidently forgotten that it was L. C. Probert, not Melville Stone, he actually spoke to, while his almost boundless resentment of November 1918 towards Roy Howard, described by Probert, had become empathy. Admiral Wilson perhaps never knew about the Associated Press suspicions of his conduct on 7 November 1918; but he did find out, from the 1946 second volume, what Daniels had decided to say about him and Roy Howard (below).
Arthur Hornblow’s Fake Armistice and amendments for Amazing Armistice, July 1921
(Text in this colour is quoted directly from Hornblow’s articles. Inverted commas are not used to enclose it.)
Arthur Hornblow had met Admiral Wilson in Brest during his military service as a US Army Intelligence Officer there. In later years he became well-known as an author, playwright and Hollywood film producer, but in July 1921, at the beginning of his writing career, he had recently completed what he titled ‘Fake Armistice’ – a partly eye-witness view of 7 November 1918 in Brest which he was hoping to have published. He sent it to the Admiral with a request for his comments and Wilson, who had recently moved to the Annapolis Naval Academy, criticised the parts of the text relating to himself and to Captain Jackson.
References in Fake Armistice to Admiral Wilson
Hornblow did not take part in the events he recounted here, so it is assumed that much of what he wrote about them came from Roy Howard and from what he found out himself. Interestingly, he intended to make public the claims that Admiral Wilson permitted Howard to dispatch the armistice news to America and sent an officer with him to make sure the censors accepted it.
Promptly at four o’clock Howard had been presented to Admiral Wilson. They had not been chatting more than a few minutes when an orderly entered with a telegram for his chief. Reading it, the Admiral gave vent to an explosive explanation and bounding enthusiastically from his chair, handed the message to Howard. The latter beheld an official communication signed by Commander Jackson, the naval attache at our Paris embassy. It said: ‘ARMISTICE SIGNED THIS MORNING AT 11 ALL HOSTILITIES CEASED AT 2 P.M. TO-DAY’.
With quick sympathy for the people, Wilson at once despatched orderlies to bulletin the great tidings in the public square and ordered the band out to help the populace celebrate. Pursuant also to his commands, flags were spread all over the tall navy building until it was fairly lost to view in a blizzard of bunting. (pp8-9)
[Howard] was at Brest, the cable point, with hot news just off the official griddle that perhaps had not even yet been given to the press in Paris. He could beat every competitor in the business on the biggest newsbreak in the history of the world!
Admiral Wilson was entirely willing that Howard should take advantage of his chance, not because he was especially desirous that Howard should register a ‘beat’ but because he was anxious for the people back home to have the news as soon as they possibly could, an attitude in which, I believe, he was more than justified. In company, therefore, with Ensign Sellards to assist him in getting his message past the local French censor, Howard dashed to the Postes (post and telegraph office). Desiring to file a type-written message so there would be no misunderstanding on the part of the cable operator, Howard dived, en route, into the near-by telegraph room of the Dépêche and demanded a typewriter, explaining hurriedly his reason. (My italics.)
Knowing that type of French official as I do, I am convinced that not even the Admiral in person could have caused the local censors to let by so portentous a message without having the O.K. of either the Ministry of War or the Paris censorship office. It was … the message’s looking as if it came from Paris . . . that resulted in its speedy transmission to America’s noon editions! (My italics.) (pp10-11)
The blackest of black skies cleared considerably for Howard the following morning, when Admiral Wilson, every inch the gentleman and the man, took upon his own shoulders complete responsibility for Howard’s fateful cable. In Wilson’s statement, issued at once to the press, he did not even make mention of the naval attache who had sent or at least signed the erroneous communication from Paris. To the latter he referred simply as ‘what appeared to be official and authoritative information’. The career of a lesser man might very well have been marred by this brave assumption of blame, but then a lesser man would probably not have done it. (p14.) A1.5
It is important to note that having written that Ensign Sellards was with Howard to help in getting his message past the local French censor, a few sentences later Hornblow firmly dismissed any implication that Sellards achieved this task: Knowing that type of French official as I do, I am convinced that not even the Admiral in person could have caused the local censors to let by so portentous a message without having the O.K. of either the Ministry of War or the Paris censorship office. (pp10-11) As far as Hornblow was concerned, the sole reason for the cablegram’s speedy transmission was its deceptive appearance – its looking as if it came from Paris.
Admiral Wilson read Fake Armistice “with much interest”. Some of its “facts” were not as he remembered them and, noting that his saved copy of the report he sent to the Navy Department the day after “the incident” had served as a “very good aid” to his memory, objected to most of Hornblow’s references to him.
Wilson’s criticisms of Fake Armistice
The Admiral began with what Hornblow said about the armistice communication from Paris, explaining:
[The message was] a routine one from my representative in Paris who kept me informed of all reports and rumors. I have never told anyone from whom the message came, other than saying it was from our office there. It is true that one of his functions was Naval Attache, but those duties were small in comparison with others, and to have the article read that the message was from the Naval Attache is off, though perhaps, technically correct. I feel you do the office of the Naval Attache an injustice in so expressing yourself. It was from my office in Paris. I hope you see this. I gave it the same credence as the one hundred and one other messages I had received from time to time, some proving correct and some incorrect.
He then corrected Hornblow’s (second-hand) version of what occurred when Howard was at Navy Headquarters, which he described as being off a little:
I had had the message for some time before Mr. Howard arrived, and it was lying on my desk when he came in. It is not exact to say, ‘They had been chatting for more than a few minutes when an orderly entered with a telegram for his Chief. Reading it, the Admiral gave vent to an explosive exclamation and, bounding enthusiastically from his chair, handed the message to Howard.’ With mutual greetings between Mr. Howard and myself over, conversation lagged and, with a desire to make more, I asked him if this message was of any interest to him.
Quoting from his 8 November 1918 report to Navy Secretary Daniels, the Admiral informed Hornblow he had allowed Howard to read the armistice message after Howard had asked to do so. And, referring to Hornblow’s sentence that Sellards went with Howard to help with the censors, added:
[The armistice bulletin] was good local news for Brest, but news to go abroad had to be confirmed. I would not have asked the censors [to pass Howard’s cablegram] as you mention on page 11. Howard thought he had something. He said nothing to me of his intentions. Lost out and then came next morning for help. I could give him none. Told him he had been foolish etc. Then he asked me for something to protect himself. I asked him what he wanted me to say, and requested him to write out what he wanted and, if it were correct, I would willingly sign it.
He quoted what Howard wrote out, and then corrected Hornblow’s comments that he ordered the US navy band “to help the populace celebrate” and flags to be spread “all over the tall navy building”:
About the band. It was a regular concert day and the concert had started sometime before the message came. No ‘blizzard of bunting’ was hoisted at our place on 7 November. That happened on the 11th when the real word came. On the 7th there were displayed from our Headquarters the regular colors, and the bunch of three flags – one French, with the American flags on each side – that were put out on many occasions during the war.
And concluded his letter with a request that Hornblow treat his responses as being entirely confidential and avoid using his name in connection with anything . . . written herein to you. He would have preferred Hornblow to leave his name out of Fake Armistice altogether, disliking very much to see [it] in print in any connection, but conceded that this was too much to expect. A2.1
Hornblow replied nine days later. Admiral Wilson’s conduct on 7 November 1918, he felt, did not reflect unfavourably on him in any way. On the contrary, it showed that his position in the matter was . . . entirely blameless and, in fact, praiseworthy – a circumstance Hornblow said he had endeavored to make . . . clear throughout. He promised to use all the corrections and avoid any manner of injustice to him and his part in the False Armistice, but if the Admiral insisted on being kept out of it Hornblow promised to throw the whole thing in the basket. A1.6
There was evidently no wish for Hornblow to do that: amended to accommodate the Admiral’s criticisms (and those of Roy Howard made separately) Fake Armistice was published in November 1921 under the new title of Amazing Armistice.
Amended references to Admiral Wilson in Amazing Armistice, November 1921
Hornblow removed the Fake Armistice imputation that the Admiral had authorised Howard to cable the peace news across the Atlantic and had made sure the Brest censors passed it. He also changed the wording about Wilson’s ‘wild’ reaction to the armistice news and ordering the navy band into the town square to celebrate the news; and deleted the sentence about flags and bunting on the US Navy Headquarters.
The amended text read as follows:
Promptly at four o’clock Howard had been presented to Admiral Wilson. They had been chatting awhile when the admiral remarked that he had just received a message which might possibly interest Howard, and handed it to him for his perusal. Howard beheld an official telegram, signed by Commander Jackson of Admiral Wilson’s office in Paris and naval attache at our Paris embassy. It said: ‘Armistice signed this morning at 11 all hostilities ceased at 2 p.m. to-day.’
Desirous that the people of Brest learn of it, Admiral Wilson despatched an orderly to bulletin the tidings in the public square, where the naval band happened to be giving its weekly concert.
Admiral Wilson expressed his willingness that Howard should use the report. In company, therefore, with Ensign Sellards to assist him in arranging things, Howard rushed to the postes. But . . . dived en route into the nearby telegraph room of ‘La Dépêche’. (My italics)
As in Fake Armistice, Hornblow was adamant that the Brest censors had accepted the cablegram for New York City because they thought it had been already censored in Paris. But he altered the Fake Armistice line that not even the Admiral in person [could have influenced the censors] so that it now read: Knowing that type of French official as I do, I am convinced that no one in Brest, of whatever exalted rank, could have caused the local French censors to let by so portentous a message without [the permission] of either the Ministry of War or the Paris censorship office. N7 (My italics)
Admiral Wilson’s newspaper interview, 7 November 1928
Admiral Wilson overcame his reluctance to have his name “appear in print” and agreed to talk about his part in the False Armistice for a tenth anniversary newspaper feature. Ironically, his interviewer, Ralph H. Turner, was a United Press correspondent.
By now retired, the Admiral and his wife were living in Tulsa, Oklahoma, not far from their daughter Ruth and her husband Patrick J. Hurley (soon to become Secretary of War in President Herbert Hoover’s administration). What he recounted, which was printed in the California Madera Daily Tribune and Madera Mercury, is brief, inaccurate in part, and entirely uncontroversial:
“As Wilson tells the story, it was a routine day in Brest . . . . The admiral was in constant communication with Captain R. H. Jackson, then naval attache in the American embassy in Paris. Jackson sent daily, sometimes hourly, reports.
And then about 4 p.m. French time on the 7th there came a message from Jackson, saying the armistice has been signed . . . . There was no special reason to doubt it. There had been reports on several days preceding that the Germans were ready to sign and that negotiations had been started.
Roy W. Howard . . . was in Brest that day on his way back to the United States after a trip to Europe. He heard the news, went to Admiral Wilson to confirm it, and received the admiral’s report. At 4:21 p.m., French time, Howard cabled the news to the New York office of the United Press . . . . Wilson said he has never learned the source of the information from the Paris embassy.” N8
Information sent to Josephus Daniels for his memoirs, July 1933 – February 1934
Josephus Daniels left office as Navy Secretary in 1921, went back to his newspaper business in Raleigh, North Carolina, and remained active in Democratic Party affairs. He supported Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1933 presidential campaign (Roosevelt had been Assistant Navy Secretary under Daniels) and when Roosevelt became President, Daniels was appointed US Ambassador to Mexico (April 1933-November 1941). He soon began collecting material for his memoirs, which were published during the 1940s in two volumes under the title The Wilson Era.
From Mexico in July 1933, Daniels wrote two private letters to Admiral Wilson about the False Armistice in Brest, disclosing his plans “to write a book one of these days about some of the high lights during the Wilson Administration”. Having read recently about the “true facts” surrounding Roy Howard’s false armistice cablegram from Brest, he wanted from Wilson a “very full and very clear [account] of what happened and why you let Howard send the telegram, if you did”, together with “a copy if you sent in a report of it to the Navy Department”.
From Atlantic City, New Jersey, Admiral Wilson promised to forward the details of his 8 November 1918 report when he next visited Washington, DC, where his wartime “scrap book” was stored. Daniels thanked him, reminded him that he was “getting ready to write a book one of these days” and needed “all the data with reference to the Brest event, so that I will be certain to have it correct”. A1.7
It took several months for Admiral Wilson to prepare the information eventually sent to Daniels in appreciation of “the many many considerations . . . shown me . . . in the past”. It fills an eight-page typed-letter dated 1 January 1934 but (seemingly delayed by a bout of influenza) not sent until 3 February. And consists of what he had sent from Brest to Daniels on 8 November 1918 (above); some additional material regarding his dealings with Roy Howard; comments on two 1933 magazine features; a few lines from John Sellards, dated 23 July (1933), about accompanying Howard to the La Dépêche de Brest building; his reaction to the recently published 8 November 1918 reports sent from Paris by Special Representative Edward House and US Ambassador William Sharp; and some “Odds and Ends” mostly about how the false armistice news “got to the civil population” in Brest and the ensuing celebrations there.
As in his 8 November 1918 report, Wilson’s stand in his January 1934 eight-page letter to Daniels is that he agreed to let Roy Howard “use” the 7 November armistice news not realizing what Howard was planning to do with it; and that he did not influence the Brest censors to approve Howard’s cablegram.
Rebuttal of Roy Howard’s Claims
In the additional material about Howard, Admiral Wilson related (with echoes of his July 1921 responses to Arthur Hornblow about Fake Armistice) that:
Mr. Howard had come to the office (about 4 p.m. 7 November, 1918) for the purpose of securing passage home in one of the transports. He was accompanied by Major Cook, U.S.A., Aide to Major General Harries, U.S.A. Commanding U.S. Army Base Number 7 (Brest District). Passage home was arranged for Mr. Howard, then he was shown the message just received from Paris – perhaps to make conversation as much as anything else – adding as I handed it to him “This may interest you”. It was then that he said “May I use this” and I replied “Yes” – my thoughts being centred on our theatre of operations (the coast of France) his significance of his questions escaped me.
Before Mr. Howard left the office he expressed a wish to meet the editor of the local newspaper. I sent with him an aide [John Sellards] who knew the editor personally. The aide left Mr. Howard in the editor’s office.
That night (7 November) I dined with Vice Admiral Schwerer, French Navy Commander of the Brittany Patrols. Shortly after the dinner started my host informed me that some one (sic) wished to speak to me on a matter of much importance. Asking to be excused I left the table and to my surprise found that it was Mr. Howard who was waiting to see me. He was in a state of great agitation, saying that he had heard a second message had come killing the first one. I told him that was correct. He then said “My God! I have sent the word to the United States”. I replied to the effect that he had been foolish to do so.
[Note: – What I actually said was more emphatic. Mr. Howard had been given no confidential information, but he had violated a rule which required correspondents to submit all material for home consumption on matters relating to my command to a designated officer of my staff for an o.k. as to fact before handing the same to the censor. I also distinctly recollect that after my surprise I became curious – what about the censor? This official in no way came under my jurisdiction. I had never met the censor; never had seen him or knew where the office of the censor was located. Our own messages went out over our own direct lines to the U.S. Naval Headquarters in London. I had heard indirectly, however, from various newspaper men that the censor was very strict. Again I said to myself – what about the censor?]
Mr. Howard said that he “would not have had it happen for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars”; that the word he had sent “would go out to all the four hundred papers covered by the United Press, both in the United States and in South America”. He repeated the above statements and asked what I “could do to set him straight with the editors”. There was nothing I could do then, but he was obviously in distress and I suggested that he come to see me the following morning at nine o’clock.
Mr. Howard turned up the next morning (8 November) at the office promptly at the appointed time, and we had another talk. He was most emphatic that he wanted nothing for publication – just some word to take home with him to show his editors that he had acted in good faith. I was equally emphatic that nothing would be given him for publication. Finally I told him to write out what he should like to have me say, and if it were correct I would sign it. He did so. I made a few minor corrections and signed the statement. It was clearly understood between us that this statement was not for publication but was to take home with him for the information of his editors.
[Note:- Some days later I was told that my statement had been cabled from Brest. Whether this be true I never learned. I was not sufficiently interested to investigate. So many matters of importance turning up to occupy my time, I soon forgot about Mr. Howard and his troubles.]
Ending his letter, he observed indignantly: It was only when the [armistice] information proved to be in error that the U.P. ran to cover, the source of the information [Admiral Wilson] revealed and the buck passed. I sometimes ask myself if the U.P. is not trying to make itself (and others) believe that it was the injured party. Well! The truth is that the U.P. was let out of a bad situation, of its own creation too easily. It should be appreciative of its luck. A1.8 (By ‘U.P.’ Wilson obviously meant ‘Howard’, the main target of these criticisms.)
Comments on two 1933 magazine features
The first feature was the one Daniels had mentioned in his 11 July letter from Mexico City. Written by S. V. Benét and published in the May 1933 issue of Fortune, it was a celebration of UP’s first twenty-five years. The part that interested Daniels and Wilson came under the heading ‘Premature’. The Admiral rejected two of its main claims.
First, that “in the office of Admiral Henry Wilson at Brest, Howard had been handed a slip of paper by the Admiral himself with permission to file it verbatim. It was an official dispatch from the Embassy at Paris, ‘Armistice signed at 11 A.M’”. Wilson referred Daniels to the point he had already made in his letter about only permitting Howard to “use” the information – not to telegraph it to the United States.
The other, that “coincidentally, Admiral Wilson had sent a cable to Secretary of State Lansing assuming entire responsibility for giving out the armistice message. This was held by Lansing until President Wilson intervened [and] ordered its release at two o’clock on November 8, the day after the celebration”. Wilson was adamant that no such cable had gone to Lansing from his office in Brest. A1.9 (This seems to be confusing Admiral Wilson’s 8 November exoneration of Howard with UP complaints about a delayed release of Roy Howard’s later cablegram cancelling his 7 November armistice news. N10)
The second feature was one Wilson brought to Daniels’ attention. It was a TIME magazine piece in November 1933 about Howard and his newspaper interests. Referring to the false armistice report, it declared that “Publisher Howard rushed to the cable office in Admiral Wilson’s car, with one of the Admiral’s aides to help get his message through the cable censor”. A1.10 Ignoring the fiction about the use of his car, Wilson dismissed the part about the aide and the censor: No aid was sent with Mr. Howard by me to any place other than across the street to the office of the local newspaper, the editor of which paper Mr. Howard had asked to meet.
He then quoted from a brief letter written by the aide, John Sellards, about going with Roy Howard to the newspaper building. Sellards wrote:
“I have a fairly clear recollection of events on 7 November 1918. I went with Mr. Howard to the office of the ‘Dépêche’ (the local newspaper in Brest), then back to your Headquarters. Putting his message through the office of the censor was handled by Howard. As I recall it none of us knew it at your Headquarters that the message had actually been sent until Mr. Howard came slinking back again filled with misgivings because he began to wonder if he had acted too hastily. It has always seemed to me that Mr. Howard distorts his version of what happened that day in Brest.” A1.11
Comments on the 8 November 1918 reports from Edward House and Ambassador Sharp to Secretary of State Lansing
(As discussed earlier) these were publicised in July 1933 (the same month Daniels wrote to Admiral Wilson from Mexico City), as part of a collection of State Department wartime documents. N1
Wilson drew Daniels’ attention to these and unreservedly rejected their accusations against him:
My only comment is that apparently both despatches are entirely based on identical information furnished by the Paris representative of the United Press; he – the representative – having carried on a “conversation by telephone”. The information – “accompanied by one of Admiral Wilson’s aides” – was not correct. No questions were asked our office. The facts could have been obtained by so doing.
And appended an undated duplicate of a letter Edward House sent to him at the time:
“Embassy of the United States of America Vice Admiral Wilson Brest, France
Dear Admiral Wilson,
May I not express to you my sincere admiration for your courageous action in the matter of the report cabled to America by Mr. Roy Howard of the United Press concerning the signing of the German Armistice.
I know the whole story and it reflects much honor upon you.
I am, my dear Admiral,
Faithfully yours,
(signed) E. M. House
78 rue de l’Université, Paris.” A1.12
(Not included in what Wilson forwarded to Daniels is a memorandum M. S. Tisdale wrote for the Admiral regarding Howard’s false armistice cablegram. Tisdale recorded that:
“The letter of Sellards, dated 23 July and attached hereto, states that he did accompany Mr. Howard to the Depeche office, then returned to the Flag office. And that he, Sellards, had nothing to do with the sending of the dispatch nor did he know it had been sent until Mr. Howard later returned to the Flag office. Sellards was not a press censor.
I was Assistant Chief of Staff to Admiral Wilson and was the U.S. Naval Press Censor in Brest at that time. Mr. Howard did not apply to me to have his dispatch censored, nor did I know that he intended to send it . . . .
Early in the morning of the day after Mr. Howard had sent the dispatch [Friday 8 November] Admiral Wilson received an urgent query from the Secretary of the Navy. Admiral Wilson then directed me to ask the Army Cable Censor if he had released the dispatch. The answer was ‘No’. He then sent me to visit Mr. Howard at his hotel to learn who had authorized the release of the dispatch and by what means it had passed without our censorship. The local French high commander, Vice Admiral Moreau . . . had phoned Admiral Wilson the previous night that he did not believe the report of the signing of the Armistice to be true . . . . So it seemed reasonably certain that Mr. Howard could not have obtained an official release from the French Cable Censor.
I was unable to obtain any satisfactory explanation from Mr. Howard but he said he would come to see Admiral Wilson about the matter. As I remember, he said to me only that he had filed it in the cable office in the usual manner and presumed that it would pass thru the French Censor as a matter of routine . . . .
I do not know what passed between the Admiral and Mr. Howard during the subsequent visit except a hearsay knowledge of parts of the conversation as related in my presence by Admiral Wilson later.” A1.2
(What Tisdale refers to as Howard’s “subsequent visit” to Admiral Wilson on Friday morning must have been the one Howard had arranged the previous evening when he interrupted the dinner at Vice Admiral Schwerer’s house. Tisdale’s questions could only have increased what Wilson described to Daniels as Howard’s “state of great agitation” caused by his armistice cablegram.)
Daniels, presumably, thanked Wilson for what he had put together for him. But when he came to write about the False Armistice for the second volume of his memoirs, he ignored the bulk of it. Ten years before this volume came out, Roy Howard’s ‘Premature Armistice’ chapter was published in Webb Miller’s I Found No Peace, and Daniels therefore had the benefit of reading and pondering Howard’s recollections before he eventually committed himself to paper. N9
Roy Howard’s Premature Armistice, 1936
Howard unequivocally asserted in Miller’s book that Admiral Wilson gave him permission to send the 7 November armistice news to America and instructed Ensign Sellards to accompany him to make sure his cablegram was cleared for transmission by the French censors in the Brest cable office. He also misrepresented how he learned from the Admiral later in the day that the news was false. But there is nothing in Wilson’s Papers specifically about Premature Armistice – perhaps any thoughts he had about it at the time are in his scrapbook (if it still exists).
Josephus Daniels’ memoirs, 1946
(Text in this colour is quoted directly from Roy Howard’s Premature Armistice memoir. Inverted commas are not used to enclose it.)
Volume Two of The Wilson Era, covering the period 1917-1923, included what Daniels described as a condensed version of “globe-trotter and correspondent plenipotentiary and extraordinary” Roy Howard’s “graphic account . . . of how he pulled off the Premature Armistice”. It is quoted here, word for word:
‘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 Dépêche. 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 message 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.’
Daniels then changed Howard’s sequencing of what followed by omitting the part about what happened in the La Dépêche building and jumping to what Howard said happened later in the Post and Cable Office:
When Sellards and I reached the cable office with the re-typed 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 Président Wilson. Suggesting that I 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.
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-Dépêche 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.
At the end of his coverage, Daniels referred only to Admiral Wilson’s 8 November 1918 report to him as Navy Secretary, stating blandly that it “did not confirm all the details related by Howard”. He noted merely that Wilson maintained he “did not send his aide to the censor’s office with Mr. Howard but to the office of the Brest newspaper”, and would not have authorised the armistice news to be sent to the United States had he realized that was Howard’s intention. He ignored what Wilson had provided in his January 1934 eight-page letter.
In all, Daniels’ attention to Wilson’s story fills just six lines in nearly five pages dedicated to Roy Howard’s and to how, as Navy Secretary, he had handled a demand for Howard’s punishment for his false armistice cablegram made in person by an Associated Press official (described earlier). N6
Admiral Wilson copied by hand some of the text from these pages; and then, under the heading “Notes by me – Henry B. Wilson”, appended what are probably his last written observations on his part in the False Armistice:
Today – 19 July 1946 – I have read the book by Mr. Daniels, and gotten his point of view. Mr. Howard’s comments I read years ago. I have refrained from entering into a controversy with a newspaper publisher. But I have written a full account of the incident and stored it away with my other papers. And I can say that my interpretation differs widely from Mr. Howards or Mr. Daniels, and that mine is correct. Again and again I have been importuned to state the facts publicly in writing, but I have not walked into the trap. Several years ago Mr. Daniels told me that he was writing a book covering the war and asked that I give him my version of the False Armistice. For a long while I declined to do so. Later he asked again and I sent him a copy of my version that I had prepared and stowed with my papers. Evidently he was not interested in it, for he has almost completely taken the version of Mr. Howard – which version is far from the facts. But his version yarn [sic] makes good news copy no doubt. Mine may not – but it is the true version.
Henry B. Wilson A1.13
The Admiral died on 30 January 1954. He had entrusted his ‘False Armistice Papers’ to M. S. Tisdale, his former Assistant Chief of Staff, who wrote on the cover of the file: “I kept these for Adml Wilson . . . to be used in case of ‘attack’ on his memory after death . . . he asked me to accept them for any use or disposition I at any time deem best. I carried them from N.Y. to Wash. DC”. A1.2
Commentary
Whose conflicting claims should be believed, Roy Howard’s or Admiral Wilson’s?
In his short July 1933 letter, John Sellards urged Admiral Wilson to publish a book or series of articles about what occurred in Brest and promised to assist with the necessary preparation. “I am more convinced than ever, Admiral” he wrote “that you should give your story to the public”. A1.11 Sellards died in December 1938 , and unfortunately no other evidence from him about the part he played in Brest on 7 November has come to light.
Fred Cook, who was there with Howard and Admiral Wilson between about 4:00 and 4:30 pm on 7 November 1918, was probably the only other person who could resolve the question. But the Cook sources cited in articles on this website do not do so. On balance, what Cook wrote about events in Brest reinforces neither Howard’s nor Wilson’s and Sellards’ accounts of them.
With the prior publication of Premature Armistice, of the 8 November 1918 documents incriminating Admiral Wilson in Howard’s armistice cablegram, and Wilson’s refusal to defend himself in print, it is not surprising that Josephus Daniels’ memoirs favoured what Howard wrote. And in any case, Daniels’ memoirs were not the place for an adjudication of Howard’s and the Admiral’s stories about events in Brest twenty-eight years earlier.
A discussion and an answer to the unavoidable question about the conflicting claims are therefore proffered here.
Inferences from the conflicting claims
The armistice cablegram
Howard alleged in Premature Armistice that Admiral Wilson gave him permission to file the armistice news to United Press. Wilson maintained that Howard had asked only to be allowed to use the news. Indeed, in his earliest account, Howard said he sought permission to “use” the news, or as Fred Cook put it, permission to “make use of the information”. The Admiral does not say how he expected Howard “to use” the news, but Howard already knew what he was going to with it: he rushed off to cable it to his New York City office from the Postes, calling first at the nearby La Dépêche building. Ensign John Sellards also went to La Dépêche from Admiral Wilson’s headquarters. Howard states that they went there together, as does Sellards in his July 1933 letter for Admiral Wilson.
At issue here is why Sellards also went to La Dépêche. Was it, as a French speaker, to translate for Howard and so facilitate the preparation of the armistice cablegram, and then, as the Admiral’s aide, to make sure it was sent to America? This is what Howard claimed in 1936. But on an earlier occasion he had mentioned that, on Wilson’s order, Sellards was taking the armistice news back to La Dépêche because he had failed a few minutes earlier to hand it to someone in charge there. And Admiral Wilson claimed he sent Sellards to La Dépêche simply to introduce Howard to the newspaper’s editor, whom Howard wanted to meet. Sellards himself does not explain why he accompanied Howard. But it is probable that he assisted him by telling La Dépêche staff why Howard was there and that he wanted to use their equipment to set out a cablegram about Admiral Wilson’s recently announced armistice news; and also probable that he then left him in the La Dépêche building.
Had there been no existing agreement covering UP’s use of La Dépêche’s telegraph link to Paris, it is doubtful whether Howard would have called at La Dépêche in the first place. He would have headed straight to the local Postes where a telegraphist would have prepared the cablegram for him and added a Brest dateline. It would then have been checked by the French censors in the same building, failed the censorship, and been cancelled or withheld. But, clearly, this did not happen.
The armistice news was set out using La Dépêche stationery and equipment, and so looked exactly like a regular UP news bulletin from Paris en route to the United States via La Dépêche and the Brest Postes. And, as Howard related on earlier occasions, a La Dépêche employee walked to the Postes to have it cabled to New York City – which was the usual practice. Howard in fact remained in the La Dépêche building to notify UP in Paris of his armistice cablegram to New York City.
This means that Howard did not himself experience what was happening in the Postes at that particular time: he learnt only afterwards that the censors did not see his cablegram, that two hours elapsed before they became aware of it. And if, as he also wrote, the censors were absent from their room celebrating outside, he learnt this later too. Consequently, Howard did not actually state that the Brest censors cleared his cablegram in deference to Admiral Wilson’s wishes conveyed by Sellards. (Arthur Hornblow had firmly dismissed this notion in 1921, as did Fred Cook, indirectly, in his 1925 newspaper piece.) Instead, Howard related that the censors were absent from their room and, therefore by implication, did not have to be persuaded by Sellards to pass the cablegram. But he then stated that Sellards went to the cable room itself and remained there until the cablegram was on its way to New York – his presence, as Wilson’s aide, ensuring that the transmission-room clerk sent it off uncensored.
The receipt of Admiral Wilson’s armistice-unconfirmable information
Arthur Hornblow and Howard himself related in the early 1920s that Admiral Wilson warned them that the armistice news was ‘unconfirmable’ after their dinner on the evening of 7 November. Wilson affirms this in his False Armistice papers. But Howard wittingly distorted it in Premature Armistice by writing that the Admiral sent an orderly with this news to find him, and delivered it during the dinner he was having with Lieutenant Hornblow and some other officers.
Howard made this change because he also changed the actual sequence, and therefore the actual times of the three cablegrams he sent from Brest to New York during the afternoon and evening of 7 November 1918. The receipt of the ‘unconfirmable’ news from Wilson actually occurred after-dinner, but this detail disproved Howard’s assertion that he had tried to cancel his armistice cablegram not long after he sent it. His misstated during-the-dinner timing of it supported his distortion. N10
Admiral Wilson’s 8 November Statement
The following day, 8 November, Howard obtained Wilson’s admission of responsibility for releasing the armistice news and sent copies of it to Paris and New York City. Wilson claimed that Howard assured him it was intended only for editors subscribing to the United Press news service and would not be made public. Howard’s 1936 assertion is that he “requested a statement for publication” and Wilson, by implication therefore, agreed, fully realizing it would be published.
Howard was under pressure from his Paris staff to use the Admiral as a means of dealing with a furore in American newspapers over the false armistice cablegram and its effects. They had wired, “THINK EXTREMELY IMPORTANT YOU FILE FORMAL STATEMENT URGENT TO NEW YORK USING ADMIRAL WILSONS NAME IF POSSIBLE . . . STOP OBVIOUS OUR POSITION CRITICALEST AT HOME STOP”; and advised five minutes later, “STATEMENT EXADMIRAL CLEARING US RUSHED TO NEWYORK FOR PUBLICATION WILL DO MOREN ANYTHING ELSE SQUARE US WITH PUBLISHERS”. N10
An obvious inference to make from this is that Howard would have promised almost anything to secure Admiral Wilson’s signature on the 8 November exonerating words, and that – knowing he would renege – persuaded Wilson the document would not be published. During the afternoon, the New York City office cabled that the statement came through to them at 1:10 pm local time (6:10 pm French time) and that they had “BROADCASTED” it.
Over the years, then, Howard distorted what transpired between him and Admiral Wilson on 7 and 8 November 1918, to the latter’s evident agitation and frustration. His initial gratitude for Wilson’s readiness to approve the statement was replaced by readiness to imply that the Admiral grossly misused his authority and standing in Brest to circumvent strict censorship procedures on behalf of the president of a leading American news agency. Why?
Howard’s likely motives for implicating Admiral Wilson in his armistice cablegram’s transmission
Howard and his colleagues feared that the outrage which erupted over their handling of the 7 November armistice news would severely damage the agency financially and ruin their reputations as newspapermen. Faced by such a crisis, anything that suggested Howard was not to blame must have been welcomed as a defence against their detractors and the potentially disastrous repercussions of publishing false war news. Indeed, everything Howard said had happened between about 4:00 and 4:30 pm on 7 November creates the impression that – rather than being the initiator – he was carried along by other people’s actions.
Thus, in his narrative:
Having passed Howard a copy of the armistice news and assured him it was official, Admiral Wilson readily agreed that it could go to the United States.
Admiral Wilson, on his own initiative, instructed John Sellards to accompany him and make sure the news went off to New York City.
The La Dépêche telegraph operator prepared the armistice cablegram for Howard, which then, by chance, looked exactly like an already-censored UP news item sent from Paris.
In the absence of the censors, Sellards took the telegram sheet to the cable-room in the Postes and remained there until it was sent off by the operator.
The Navy Department in Washington, DC, delayed for several hours Howard’s cancellation of the armistice news, supposedly not long after he sent it, thus leaving the erroneous news plenty of time to spread as extensively as it did.
Not surprisingly, therefore, Premature Armistice controverts all accusations made in November 1918 and subsequently that Howard and his agency acted grossly irresponsibly, recklessly and unprofessionally in pursuit of a German-armistice scoop. Accusations Howard remained especially sensitive about for many years and never completely lived down. By implicating Admiral Wilson, Howard effectively abandoned his 8 November 1918 wish, and the gratitude behind it, that the Admiral’s name should be kept out of the false armistice controversy as much as possible. But even in 1918, while acknowledging that Wilson was a “victim”, he named himself as the “worst sufferer” from the Admiral’s “misinformation”. N10
ADDENDUM
Josephus Daniels’ 8 November 1918 telegrams to Admiral Wilson and Admiral Sims
From papers Admiral Wilson kept for his scrapbook, the telegram Daniels sent to him read:
“United Press announced armistice signed. Later they received cable quote Admiral Wilson, who announced to Brest newspaper Armistice had been signed, later notified announcement unconfirmed. Meanwhile French riotously celebrate. Howard unquote Did you make this or similar statement. Cable immediate explanation.” (This document does not seem to be in US Navy archives.)
There is no indication of when it was sent to Brest. But a 1933 memorandum by M. S. Tisdale, Wilson’s Assistant Chief of Staff in Brest, recalls that it arrived on Friday 8 November “early in the morning”. Wilson answered it the same day. (The words between quote and unquote are from the third cablegram Roy Howard sent to New York City on Thursday 7 November, the one which finally cancelled the armistice news he had sent earlier that day. According to Howard’s archive, the cancellation was ready at 10:50 pm on 7 November (5:50 pm Eastern Standard Time) and so must have been transmitted sometime after that.)
The US Navy censors reportedly delayed the cancellation’s delivery to United Press until Daniels had read it during late evening on the 7th – that is, held on to it until late-evening on 7 November or not long past midnight. Bearing in mind that French time was five hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time, Daniels’ cablegram to Wilson would indeed have been in Brest during early morning on the 8th.
This is an abridgement of the cablegram Daniels sent to Admiral Sims.
“SECRETARY OF THE NAVY JOSEPHUS DANIELS TO VICE ADMIRAL WILLIAM S. SIMS, COMMANDER, UNITED STATES NAVAL FORCES OPERATING IN EUROPEAN WATERS
Chronological Copy. File No. <55-5-2>
Cablegram Received <November 7, 1918.> Y-40
Origin Opnav Washington (Secnav) Ser. No. 4780 Simsadus. [To Admiral Sims]
RUSH. United Press announced armistice signed. Later they received following cable QUOTE Admiral Wilson, who announced to Brest, France, newspapers armistice been signed, later notified announcement unconfirmed. Meanwhile French “riotously” celebrate. Signed Howard UNQUOTE. Did you make this or similar announcement? Cable immediate explanation. 14007.
R E T R A N S M I T.
Sent: 5:30 a.m., November 8, 1918.
Recd: 5:29 a.m., November 8, 1918.”
(The full copy is available online through the Washington, DC, Naval History and Heritage Command website.)
This telegram to Sims is slightly different to the one sent to Admiral Wilson. But its date and time are in the notation “14007”: 2:00 pm on 7 November, which was two o’clock in the afternoon in Washington, DC, seven o’clock in the evening in Brest and London in November 1918. However, for the reasons mentioned above, Roy Howard’s ‘armistice announcement unconfirmed’ cablegram was not in the Navy Department as early as 2:00 pm on Thursday 7 November. What they did have by 2:00 pm was Howard’s ‘armistice-signed’ news which had reached New York City not long before midday and spread rapidly around the country.
Indeed, Daniels’ cablegram appears to combine information the Navy Department received at different times during 7 or 7-8 November. And as the one to Sims is described as a “Chronological Copy” with “RETRANSMIT” details, it may be that two separate cablegrams were sent to him about the false armistice news. One, at 2:00 pm on 7 November, perhaps to the effect: “United Press announced armistice signed. Did you make this or similar announcement? Cable immediate explanation”. And the other, the “retransmit” one, sent at 5:30 am on 8 November, which added items from Howard’s cancellation cablegram to those in the 2:00 pm one.
The original 2:00 pm cablegram would most probably not have been sent to Admiral Wilson because Daniels had no reason at that hour to suspect that Wilson and Brest were in any way involved in the false armistice news – it was assumed Howard had sent his armistice cablegram from Paris. On the other hand, it was reasonable to expect that Admiral Sims knew something about it because the armistice news had been published in England just before 4:00 pm (11:00 am in Washington, DC) and the US Embassy in London, where Sims’ headquarters were located, was implicated in the event.
© James Smith (July 2020) (Revised and with additions, March 2023. Reviewed August 2024; November 2025.)
REFERENCES
ARCHIVE SOURCES
A1. A2. A3.
A1. Henry B. Wilson Papers. Box 1. Correspondence, 18 Jul 1919-1 Jan 1934. Archives Branch, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC.
Admiral Wilson kept a “scrapbook” which covered his time in France from 1917. This writer has not had access to it, but Wilson’s archive contains materials from it.
A1.1 Admiral Wilson to Josephus Daniels, 1 January, 1934, Box 1, pp.1-3.
A1.2 Memo to be attached to file of “False Armistice” papers of Admiral H.B. Wilson at his request, pp.25 and 26-27 of the Papers in Box 1. The undated memorandum was prepared after 23 July 1933.
A1.3 Box 1, pp.1-3.
A1.4 Roy W. Howard to Admiral Wilson. July 18, 1919. (Not in Roy Howard’s Papers.)
A1.5 Arthur Hornblow Jr, Fake Armistice. Listed as “Monograph, ‘The False Armistice’, undated”. It is the Fake Armistice copyHornblow sent to Admiral Wilson. (There is no copy of Fake Armistice in Hornblow’s own archive.)
A1.6 Arthur Hornblow to Admiral H. B. Wilson, 22 July 1921. (Not in Arthur Hornblow’s Papers.)
A1.7 Josephus Daniels to Admiral Wilson. Mexico, July 11, 1933; and Josephus Daniels to Admiral Wilson. Mexico, July 25, 1933. Admiral Wilson’s reply to Daniels’ 11 July letter is not among his papers; its contents are inferred from Daniels’ 25 July response. The article alluded to is ‘The United Press’ by Stephen Vincent Benét, published in Fortune Magazine, Volume 7, No. 5, in May 1933. Available online, at http://www.downhold.org › The United Press.
A1.8 Admiral Wilson to Josephus Daniels, 1 January, 1934, pp.3-4; and p.8 under ‘Odds and Ends’.
A1.9 Admiral Wilson to Josephus Daniels, 1 January, 1934, p4. An excerpt is on pp.28-29 of the Papers in Box 1.
A1.10 TIME, Monday, 20 November, 1933, under ‘Press’: ‘Howard’s Feather’.
A1.11 John Sellards to Admiral Wilson, 23 July (1933). It is pp.16-17 of the Papers in Box 1; excerpt on pp.4-5 of Wilson’s 1 January, 1934 letter to Daniels.
A1.12 Admiral Wilson to Josephus Daniels, 1 January, 1934, pp.5-6.
A1.13“Notes by me – Henry B. Wilson”, on pp.23-24 of the papers in Box 1.
A2. Arthur and Leonora Hornblow Papers. Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, California.
A2.1 Admiral Henry B. Wilson to Arthur Hornblow, 13 July 1921. (Not in Box 1 of Admiral Wilson’s Papers.)
A3. Associated Press Corporate Archives, New York, NY. AP02A.03A, Subject Files, Box 27, Folder 6.
A3.1 Telegram: Elliott to Associated, Paris, November 8 1918.
The “Spiked False Armistice” reference is from The Evening Star, Washington, D.C., Wednesday, March 11, 1942, p.12 under ‘Jackson Elliott Dies; A.P. Editor Spiked False Armistice’: Elliott “endeared himself to every Associated Press member for his calm refusal to accept as fact the . . . rumors of November 7, 1918” [despite a] deluge of telegrams, telephone calls and near hysteria [urging him[ to follow the United Press and bulletin the Armistice rumor”. Instead, he “meticulously checked Washington, London and Paris officials and news sources [until] hours later, the State Department in an official announcement confirmed his shrewd judgment”.
A3.2 Telegram: Roberts to Elliott, (no date, but 8 or 9 November 1918).
A3.3 Telegram: Elliott to Associated, Paris, November 9 1918.
A3.4 Letter: Roberts to Elliott, 14th November 1918.
A3.5 Letter: J. A. Sellards to Roberts (10 November 1918). Included with A3.4
A3.6 Howard Cable, New York, Nov. 9, pp.1-4. See also, ‘Roy W. Howard in Brest, Part One’.
A3.7 Letter: Assistant General Manager [F. R. Martin] to L. C. Probert, November 12, 1918.
A3.8 Letter: Chief of News Department [Jackson S. Elliott] to L. C. Probert, November 16th, 1918. The communication from Probert that Elliott was responding to has not been found.
A3.9 Letter: L. C. Probert to Frederick Roy Martin, November 21, 1918.
A3.10 Letter: Chief of News Department [Jackson Elliott] to Robert M. Collins, January 2nd, 1919.]
NOTES
N1. For an examination of these reports in their context, see ‘False Armistice Cablegrams from France’ on this website.
N2. See ‘Roy W. Howard in Brest, Part Two’ on this website.
N3. See ‘Roy Howard’s search for information about the False Armistice’ on this website.
N4. See ‘The La Dépêche private telegraph . . .’, under ADDENDUM of ‘Roy W. Howard in Brest: Part Two’ on this website.
N5. In The New York Times, November 21, 1918 under ‘Howard Excuses False Peace Report’. (Access to subscribers.)And item in Editor & Publisher for November 23, 1918, p18. (Accessible through the ‘Internet Archive’ portal.)
N6. Josephus Daniels, The Wilson Era: Years of War and After, 1917-1923, pp339-343. (Volume 2, published July 1946)
N7. ‘The Amazing Armistice: Inside Story of the Premature Peace Report’, pp94-95. Published originally in The Century Magazine, November 1921. Available online. See also ‘Arthur Hornblow’s information about the Jackson Armistice Telegram’ on this website.
N8. The Madera Daily Tribune and Madera Mercury (California), 7 November 1928, p3, under ‘World War Officials Give Story of How False Report Started’. Available online through the California Digital Newspaper Collection website. This is one of two separate pieces on the page about the False Armistice, but paragraphs from both evidently became mixed-up during the typesetting, and cause some confusion.
N9. Webb Miller, I Found No Peace: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent. First published in the USA in 1936 by Simon and Schuster.
N10.For a detailed examination of Howard’s version, see ‘Roy W. Howard in Brest’ Parts One and Two on this website.
The False Armistice, 7 November 1918 