Various False Armistice Conspiracy Theories

(From: Roy W. Howard (two), Arthur Hornblow, and Others)  

Roy W. Howard’s ‘Armistice Agreement Cover-Up’ Conspiracy Theory

United Press president, Roy W. Howard, was the first to suggest (without elaboration) that there was a conspiracy surrounding the 7 November 1918 false armistice news which was concealing the truth about the news and what really happened that day.  According to him, the Allies and the Germans were hiding the fact that they signed an armistice on Thursday 7 November which they did not implement, thereby allowing the war to continue unnecessarily until 11 November – what may be called his ‘Armistice Agreement Cover-Up’ Theory.

Howard’s Suspicions and Insinuations, November 1918

Soon after his return to the United States from Brest, Howard made it known that he was convinced there had been a ‘first’ German armistice delegation on 6 November – the Admiral von Hintze delegation – which was quickly replaced by the Matthias Erzberger delegation.

On 20 November, nine days after the signing of the Armistice, he made a lengthy press statement about the absence of an official explanation from Allied authorities for the 7 November armistice news, insinuating that there was a connection between their silence on the matter and “the [existence of the] first German armistice delegation”.  The New York Times published it under the heading ‘Howard Excuses False Peace Report’:

“Upon my return to the United States I learned that no news had been published here of the fact that celebrations of the signing of the armistice took place on Nov. 7 at practically all the army and naval bases on the French coast.

I was also surprised to learn that nothing had reached here by cable concerning the fact that all Paris had the report of the armistice being signed . . . . All the celebration on that day was by no means on this side of the Atlantic.

Nothing much has yet been said as to the source of Admiral Wilson’s [false armistice] information.  This is not for me to discuss.  Nothing has been said as to the reason for the [false news] report current on that day throughout France.  No explanation has yet been offered of how the report reached the American Embassy in Paris as official.  Neither has any explanation been offered yet as to what became of the first German armistice delegation, headed by von Hintze, which was reported to have reached the French lines on Nov. 6 and which then disappeared from the news, being supplanted by the Erzberger plenipotentiaries.” 1  [My boldface]

A few days later, in a confidential letter to R. J. Bender, the Washington, D.C., United Press manager, Howard disclosed that “in a round-about way” details had reached him of official dispatches, sent from France to the US State and Navy Departments between 5:10 pm and 6:10 pm French time on 7 November, announcing and then, not long afterwards, denying the signing of an armistice.

He told Bender he wanted “to get into the facts [about the False Armistice] deeply enough to find the whole story”, which would mean obtaining more information about those official dispatches, and trying to ascertain where the false armistice report came from, what caused it, and “what happened to the first bunch of German peace delegates”. 2  [My boldface]

Shortly afterwards, in a letter to Major C. F. Cook, who had been with him at Admiral Wilson’s Headquarters on 7 November, Howard confided that he was “convinced on the basis of certain information which has come to me that we will find one of these days that there was considerable (sic) more ground and justification for Admiral Wilson’s statement than we at first suspected”. 2

Thus, in late November 1918, Howard named Admiral von Hintze as the head of what he supposed was a first German armistice delegation, specified Wednesday 6 November as the date of its reported arrival at the French lines, and asserted that the Matthias Erzberger delegation “supplanted” it, after which it “disappeared from the news”.

Howard’s notion of a von Hintze delegation most likely came from details in Allied newspapers between 6-8 November about Germany’s preparations for an armistice, details which the papers took from official bulletins printed in German newspapers on 6 November.  One bulletin named four high-ranking officers – Admiral von Hintze, Admiral Meurer, General von Gündell and General von Winterfeldt – as members of “the armistice commission”.  Another announced that the “German delegation” had departed from Berlin for the West to conclude an armistice. 3  (My italics)

However, newspapers in Britain, France and the United States conflated details from both bulletins and inaccurately reported that the German armistice delegation that left Berlin on Wednesday 6 November for the Western Front consisted of those two admirals and two generals.  Some named von Hintze as the delegation’s head, others von Winterfeldt, and provided readers with a few background biographical details.  But there was no armistice delegation headed by von Hintze or von Winterfeldt.  Von Winterfeldt was included in Erzberger’s delegation and accompanied him on the train journey from Berlin to Spa during the night of 6-7 November, but the three other officers took no part in it.  When Allied newspapers subsequently published the Spa-Senlis wireless messages naming von Winterfeldt as a delegation member under Erzberger, but not the others, some commented on the fact, most did not. 4

Howard dropped the von Hintze delegation details when he raised his ‘cover-up’ conspiracy theory again in 1936, but they are worthy of further attention.  Indeed, looking at them in their historical context produces speculations broadly similar to his. 

What if ?

In their Wednesday 6 November late-evening and 7 November morning editions, many Allied newspapers printed an unconfirmed report that the German armistice delegation had crossed the front lines (French in some bulletins, British in others) during the evening of the 6th.  They assumed that this was the same delegation that had left Berlin that afternoon (and, therefore, that it had reached the Front the same day and only a few hours after it had set out.)  For Howard, this meant von Hintze’s delegation; for others, von Winterfeldt’s.  It seems that these press reports were never denied or explained; but they were important because the alleged 6th November arrival became linked in the minds of many people with the armistice reports that suddenly started circulating on 7 November: the delegation’s arrival news enhanced the credibility of the news a few hours later that the war was over. 5

Supposing for the moment that the unconfirmed arrival report was true, the obvious immediate questions would then be: who were the 6 November delegates? Where did they come from?  Who sent them?  What authority did they have to discuss an armistice?  What happened to them?  In the context of what is known about events at German Army High Command Headquarters in Spa during the first week of November 1918, a consideration of such questions suggests plausible answers:

By Wednesday 6 November, both Imperial Chancellor Prince Maximilian (Max) of Baden’s Government in Berlin and the German High Command Headquarters in Spa were desperate to stop the war, in order both to avoid a complete military collapse on the Western Front and to bring loyal troops home to put down the Bolshevik-inspired mutinies and popular upheavals spreading across Germany.  But preparations to send an armistice delegation were being delayed by arguments between Berlin and Spa about the proposed delegation’s members, demands for Kaiser Wilhelm II’s abdication, and delayed information from US President Wilson about the Allies’ position on armistice terms.

The Kaiser, Admiral von Hintze and General Gündell were all in Spa at that time.  General Groener (General Ludendorff’s replacement at Spa Headquarters) had gone to Berlin to speak to Prince Max; on 6 November he told him that the Kaiser had advised him and the Foreign Office that, as matters were now so pressing, action by the Army to contact the Allies and obtain their armistice terms was urgently necessary.  The moment was rapidly approaching, Groener warned, when “we must cross the lines with the white flag”. 6

Now, if the Kaiser and his staff had gone ahead with this plan unbeknown to Berlin, envoys carrying credentials from Spa Headquarters could have left for the Front on 6 November and arrived at the French or British lines, to the south-west, sometime during that evening.  They would have been held there, questioned, their papers scrutinised, and reports about them sent to Marshal Foch’s Headquarters at Senlis.  And the Marshal would have refused to meet them – the Allies had agreed already that they would not engage in armistice talks with the Kaiser and his Army High Command.

The arrival at Foch’s Headquarters, between 11:00 and 11:30 pm on 6 November, of the German wireless telegram announcing the departure of an armistice delegation from Berlin would have ended any further dealings with the Spa envoys, who would either have been sent back or detained behind Allied lines.  But at some point, information about their arrival late on 6 November possibly leaked out and was reported in London.

If the Allies had been prepared to deal with the Spa envoys, the latter would most certainly have accepted the Allies’ armistice terms without delay.  And the war would then have ended on 6 November, or 7 November at the latest.  Had the envoys’ arrival at the Front later become known, the charge would inevitably have arisen that, by rejecting them and their Spa credentials, the Allies were responsible for unnecessarily prolonging the war.  Their arrival was therefore kept hidden from the public, and the leaked news about it was conveniently lost in the entirely separate false armistice news that arose on 7 November.

The above is mere conjecture.  But it is quite possible that Roy Howard had been on to something with his November 1918 suspicions about an armistice delegation and its arrival somewhere on the front lines on 6 November.

Howard’s 1936 account of his theory

Howard did try to find the information he told R. J. Bender he hoped would give him the “whole story” about 6-7 November 1918; but he did not refer publicly again to his armistice cover-up suspicions until 1936.  In the final part of his ‘Premature Armistice’ chapter for Webb Miller’s book, Howard set out his theory in more detail as an answer to the fundamental question “what or who caused the premature report?”  But there was no mention now of an Admiral von Hintze armistice delegation, only of the Matthias Erzberger delegation as having been initially authorised by the Kaiser– what Howard called the “first” Erzberger delegation – and later by Prince Max’s Government (logically, the second Erzberger delegation but not labelled as such).

“Many people”, Howard wrote, still held the belief that “an armistice of some sort was actually signed on November 7” by the Allies and the “first [Erzberger]” armistice delegation “bearing credentials from the Kaiser’s government”.  The basis of the belief, he explained, was a “never officially denied report” that Erzberger’s delegation had crossed the French front lines “at daybreak” on 7 November; and a supposition that, as the Allies had already decided upon the armistice terms they wanted and the Germans had “probably agreed . . . in advance” to accept the terms, both sides signed an armistice that day and in effect brought the war to an end.  However, “these people” (the ‘cover-up’ theorists) “contend” that “after having signed at least a preliminary armistice”, Marshal Foch subsequently halted the proceedings and sent the armistice delegates back to Berlin.  For, on being told that the Kaiser had abdicated and Prince Max had been appointed Chancellor, Foch insisted that they obtain authority from the new German government to continue the armistice talks.  But four days passed, during which thousands more were killed and wounded on both sides before the fighting finally ended on 11 November.  And, in the event, neither side “dared to assume responsibility” for the “needless casualties” by admitting that “hostilities might have been terminated on November 7”.

According to the 1936 version of Howard’s conspiracy theory, therefore, the armistice news that circulated on 7 November was true, not false.  But the authorities denied it, hoping to keep secret Foch’s meeting with the “first” Erzberger delegation, the acceptance of a “preliminary armistice”, and an unnecessary four-day prolongation of the war.  The notion of a False Armistice on 7 November was thus fostered by the Allies to hide from the public what had really happened.

Howard admitted that “for a time” he thought the theory “might be plausible”; but he abandoned it “as the years passed and no confirmation . . . ever became public”.  By 1936, he had decided that “the explanation” for the false armistice news now lay “in a different direction”: the theory that a German spy fabricated and circulated the false armistice news. 7 

Commentary

Howard’s claims about Matthias Erzberger’s “first” armistice delegation, and a “never officially denied report” that it crossed the French lines “at daybreak on the morning of Thursday, November 7” (about which he said nothing else)  completely undermine his theory of an armistice agreement cover-up.  For, as was well documented after 1918, until 8:00 am (German time) on 7 November Erzberger and two other delegates were still on their way by train from Berlin to German Army High Command Headquarters in Spa (in occupied Belgium).  They and the rest of the delegation members (already at Spa) did not set out for the Front until midday on the 7th, and then needed more than nine hours to reach the French lines by car.  The historical facts are that there was only one Erzberger delegation; it did not cross the lines during early morning on 7 November; and did not meet Marshal Foch until 9:00 am on Friday 8 November. 8

As for the assertion that, when he learned of the Kaiser’s abdication (on 7 November by implication), Marshal Foch sent the delegates away to obtain credentials from the ‘new’ government in Berlin under “Prince Max of Baden as Chancellor”, the facts are that the abdication occurred not on the 7th but two days later on 9 November (only two days before the real Armistice), and Prince Max had become Chancellor a month earlier.

After the war, especially in the United States, there was much debate about ‘unnecessary’ casualties among Allied personnel during 8-11 November when the German armistice talks were taking place.  But there was no attempt to conceal why the fighting continued and who was responsible for its continuation: newspapers in the Allied countries reported, and approved, Marshal Foch’s refusals to agree to German requests to suspend hostilities during the talks.  Howard’s 1936 account of the armistice cover-up theory does not fit the particular historical circumstances of 7-11 November 1918.

No other published accounts of, or references to this 7 November 1918 Erzberger “first delegation” conspiracy theory have been found.  For Howard, it served as a lead-in to his version of the German spies in Paris theory, which follows it directly in his 1936 memoir.  And it is clear where the “first delegation” element of the story comes from: Howard’s late November 1918 implications of a cover-up of a 6 November armistice agreement.

Arthur Hornblow’s ‘German Spies in Paris’ Conspiracy Theory

The earliest published False Armistice conspiracy theory appeared in November 1921 in a monthly magazine False Armistice anniversary feature written by Arthur Hornblow.  In early November 1918, Hornblow was the US Army Intelligence Officer on the staff of General George Harries, Commander of the AEF Army base in the French port of Brest.  He was with Roy Howard for part of Thursday 7 November and participated in a few of the events relating to Howard’s dispatch of his false armistice cablegram to the United States.  Hornblow called his feature The Amazing Armistice: Inside Story of the Premature Peace Report – “Inside Story” because he considered himself to be one of “scarcely a handful of persons . . . acquainted with the facts”. 9

Towards its end, Hornblow suggested that “one or more [German] secret agents” concocted the 7 November 1918 peace news in order to precipitate an armistice agreement between the Allies and Germany.  From his own counter-espionage experience, he felt it “reasonable to suppose” that German spies in Paris, acting on “their own initiative and without orders”, put the armistice story together after the release of the news that a German armistice delegation was on its way to meet Marshal Foch.  By spreading such disinformation their aim, he surmised, was to provoke widespread popular relief and rejoicing in the Allied countries that would put Allied leaders under considerable pressure to end the war quickly once armistice talks began, induce a “swifter cessation of hostilities”, and thereby avert “the terrible smashing blows that . . . Germany seemed doomed to receive”.  As he put it, the spies carried out “an organised attempt . . . to make the Allied nations cherish an armistice which, though not yet existent, was within easy reach if the people wanted it and showed clearly that they wanted it”.

Hornblow’s comments about his theory are unsubstantiated.  First, he alleged that the 7 November armistice message Captain Jackson, US Naval Attaché in Paris, sent to Admiral Wilson in Brest reached the American Embassy by telephone from an official at the French Ministry of War: “It is said that the wire [telegram] . . . was based on information telephoned . . . by a person who purported to be speaking officially from the French Ministry of War”.  Then, remarking that the official was never identified because enquiries found that “no one at the ministry had called the embassy that day”, he insinuated that the culprit was a German spy, and from this decided that “the naval office in Paris, Admiral Wilson, Roy Howard, and the entire United States of America were the victims of one or more secret agents of the German Espionage Corps”.  After expressing his admiration for a “scheme [which was] worthy of the German service in both ingenuity and execution [and a] credit to [those] who conceived it”, Hornblow commented “I should greatly like to see [the German] intelligence reports . . . for November 7, 1918”. 9

Roy Howard’s version of the ‘German Spies in Paris’ Theory

Roy Howard believed the Germans were behind the false armistice news for the same reasons put forward by Hornblow.  Without referring to the latter’s 1921 article, he enlarged upon the spy theory in the Premature Armistice chapter he contributed to the 1936 memoirs of United Press reporter Webb Miller.

Howard took advantage of the 1933 publication of US State Department documents from November 1918 to quote the telegram Special Representative Edward House sent to Secretary of State Lansing on 8 November concerning the spread of the false armistice news in Paris.  Part of the telegram explained why Howard and United Press were not to blame for what had happened and concluded that “[Captain] Jackson or the French official who started the rumour” were likely to be at fault. 10

In Howard’s view (as in Hornblow’s), the person who started the rumour was not a French official but “a German secret agent located in Paris” – an opinion he based on “conversations with American and French intelligence officers” (if true, Hornblow was perhaps one of them).  He described, at greater length and more clearly than Hornblow, Germany’s desperation for an armistice by November 1918 and the war-weariness in Allied countries the supposed spy hoped the fake peace armistice news would transform into widespread, irresistible outbursts of popular expectation that the war was ending on 7 November.  He thought the agent “very probably phoned” the disinformation to the American Embassy, having, it was “logical to believe”, previously “tapped the private wire connecting the American Embassy and the Quai d’Orsay” (location of the French Foreign Ministry).  Indeed, the agent “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”.

Howard’s belief that the spy pretended to be calling from the French Foreign Ministry rather than, as Hornblow stated, from the French War Ministry –  recalls the information he obtained in August 1919 from a copy of the Captain Jackson armistice message to Admiral Wilson in Brest.  This disclosed where the 7 November peace news came from: “Foreign office announces Armistice signed 11 a.m. hostilities cease 2 p.m. today.  Sedan taken this morning by U.S. army. (My boldface.)” 11  This detail as such was of no evidential value to the spy theory.  Indeed, Howard’s account offered no more to substantiate the spy theory than Hornblow’s speculations about it.  And like Hornblow, he concluded with a similar excuse for the unproved and unprovable propositions: “if ever (the) 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 revealed – but not otherwise”. 7

Commentary

The spy conspiracy theory evinced Allied anxieties in early November 1918 that German overtures for armistice talks were little more than a ruse, aimed at gaining time to stabilize their military position in the West.  Marshal Foch and the French Army High Command in particular were apprehensive of the Germans spreading rumours that the war had ended and undermining military and civilian willingness to continue the struggle.  Foch warned Allied commanders to be alert to the possibility.  He refused German requests for a cessation of hostilities while armistice talks were being held in case the talks failed, fighting had to be resumed, but the army and people refused to support a renewed war.  When armistice rumours did start to spread on 7 November, commanders were told that the Germans were trying to deceive them and that hostilities must continue unabated. 12

When Roy Howard read the pre-publication version of Hornblow’s 1921 article, with the title Fake Armistice, he referred to Hornblow’s spy explanation as being ‘supposititious’.  He was advising Hornblow to change the article’s title when he wrote: “I can imagine that in using the term ‘fake’ you had in mind your supposititious German spy”.  By using ‘supposititious’, Howard could be implying that Hornblow’s explanation of Germans faking the armistice news was ‘spurious’, a ‘cover’ to hide the real reason for what had happened.  But perhaps he confused ‘supposititious’ for ‘suppositious’, use of which would simply have acknowledged a  supposition by Hornblow of a German conspiracy behind the false armistice news . 13

Hornblow did not say categorically that it was a German spy, pretending to be an official at the French Ministry of War, who telephoned the false peace news to the American Embassy.  He implied it and left his readers to ponder how and why the spy was able to carry out this vital part of the alleged plot without arousing suspicion.  Roy Howard on the other hand spelt out the practicalities – tapping into the telephone line without detection and impersonating a French official convincingly enough to deceive the Embassy staff with the disinformation.  But they both, in effect, conveyed the stark message that the False Armistice occurred because Americans were easily duped by a German agent in Paris and incautiously circulated German fake peace news designed to serve German interests.

The G-2 (SOS) Report of 9 November 1918 (not publicized until 1948) blamed the French for releasing the false armistice news on Thursday 7, and US Liaison Service officers for passing it to the American Embassy not long before midday. 14  As Chief AEF Intelligence Officer in Brest (SOS Base Section No. 5) Hornblow may have provided some of the information in the 9 November Report about Roy Howard’s dispatch of his false armistice cablegram from Brest to the United States – in his 1921 article he related that he contacted his immediate superior in Paris about the release of armistice news in Brest not long after 4:00 pm and was instructed to “wire full details of local hoax immediately”. 9  But what neither Hornblow nor Howard pointed out in their respective spy conspiracy versions is that false armistice news had been circulating in Paris and spreading to other parts of France since late morning on the 7th – a number of hours before the afternoon message which they suggest a German spy ‘planted’ in the American Embassy during the afternoon. 15

After the Armistice, Hornblow spent some time in Paris as a “chief intelligence officer”, where he could have read a copy of the 9 November G-2 (SOS) Report and engaged in speculation about 7 November events with his G-2 (SOS) colleagues.  There is no hint of the Report’s explanations in his 1921 magazine article; but his spy conspiracy theory was certainly grounded in speculation.  Perhaps he thought a German conspiracy as the cause of the premature peace celebrations would engage readers more than the Report’s explanation about some Allied officers in Paris misinterpreting a 3:00 pm cease-fire order.  Or perhaps he preferred not to publicize the latter, and so not expose and embarrass the Allies for being directly responsible for such a colossal false-news event and its consequences.  He may have felt it was less shameful for them to suggest they were victims of highly competent German spies who threw them off-guard with eagerly awaited peace news.

Some other theories  

The first two ‘other theories’ are taken from letters written by American servicemen, one of whom was in Paris and the other in the Port of Brest at the time.

The first relates that an armistice agreement was indeed concluded on 7 November but then aborted because of German bad faith:

“This was the day when you good people at home had your premature celebration, but it was not so premature as you have been led to believe.  I have been told on good authority that . . . the Armistice was actually signed at the time its accounts stated, but that the discovery of German treachery forced the annulment of the earlier terms.  I am told that originally it was arranged for all hostilities to cease twenty-four hours after the signing of the papers; but it was discovered that Germany had laid such extensive plans for further treacherous destruction of men and property, that it was necessary to make more stringent terms and, as you know, in the final arrangement an interval of only six hours was provided for.” 16

This explanation recalls the suspicions among the Allied High Commands of German intentions in early November 1918, and the mistrust of their motives for proposing a general cease-fire during the armistice talks, proposals which Marshal Foch rejected. 12 So it is not surprising there were rumours afterwards that the so-called 7 November armistice was cancelled because of German treachery.   

The second blames financial considerations for preventing the ending of the war on 7 November:

“It was claimed here [in Brest] by many American officers, who secured their information from Headquarters, that the Armistice was actually signed at the time of the first announcement on Nov. 7, but that the report was later denied at the request of the French officials, who feared for the success of the French Liberty Loan then nearing completion.  The French thought the Loan would not be fully subscribed if the announcement was made at this time, so the report was denied in an official statement from Admiral Wilson and was withheld until the French Loan was completed three days later.“ 17

Comment: The “Liberty Loan” was the fourth war loan the French Government raised during the Great War.  The first of its scheduled sales of 4% Liberation Bonds lasted from 20 October until 24 November 1918, another three were held during 1919.  US Admiral Henry B. Wilson, who released the armistice news in Brest during the afternoon of the 7th, did admit later that it was an error.  But his retraction was not “withheld until the . . . Loan was completed three days later”.  He issued it the following day, Friday 8 November, by which time the armistice news had been widely declared to be false and celebrations of it had more or less petered out.  And the first tranche of the loan, as noted, was “completed” on 24 November, not three days after the False Armistice. 18

It is probably not a coincidence that “many American officers” were alleged to be responsible for this particular conspiracy theory because information about, and an implicit invitation to subscribe to, the war loan was circulated to American forces in France at the request of the French Government.  General Pershing’s Headquarters released a bulletin, dated 19 October 1918, containing details of the “French Liberation Loan” which the Commissioner General of Franco-American War Affairs had provided. 19

Stock Market speculators were widely suspected of being behind the False Armistice news, according to the following sources:

The Liverpool Journal of Commerce and Shipping Telegraph implicated unnamed profiteers, eager to make quick financial gains from the widely expected imminent end of the war, as the villains.  Its Saturday 9 November issue declared that while “no reasonable explanation is forthcoming . . . of the premature announcement of the armistice . . . the general view is that the [false news] was circulated from a source which had been unwittingly deceived by a [successful] London or New York Stock Exchange ramp”.  The profiteers’ successful ramp created “a sudden upward movement in certain forms of security”, which the entirely innocent, “unwittingly deceived source” interpreted as a sign that the war was over and began circulating the widely expected peace news. 20

A few years later, in October 1925, Harper’s Magazine published an article under the title ‘Fake News and The Public: How the Press Combats Rumor, the Market Rigger, and the Propagandist’.  It was written by Edward McKernon who was Superintendent of the Eastern Division of the Associated Press organization.  The theme of the article is the “marked difference between rumors and reports” and how “the news editor has to contend not only with rumor” but also with the efforts of numerous people “intent on misinforming the public for their own ends”.  Among the latter, he identified the “market rigger, the news faker, the promoter of questionable projects, and [those] obsessed with a single idea”.

McKernon illustrated how the Associated Press had succeeded in separating rumours and disinformation from genuine, verifiable, reports by describing its handling of a number of recent news stories, one of which was “the false report of the signing of the Armistice in 1918”.  With similarities to the above Journal of Commerce and Shipping explanation, McKernon believed the false armistice news was “first started deliberately as a market-rigging plot” and defined the culprits’ “business” as being “to cause prices in Wall Street to rise or fall suddenly in order that he or his associates may profit thereby”.  Their key to success, McKernon observed, was watching “for the psychological moment when the public may be most easily stampeded” by rumours that anticipate events.

He did not know who the market riggers were that had started the 7 November armistice rumour or where they had operated from – “one can only speculate” about these particulars, he noted.  But indicting the “president of a news agency” – not named, but obviously Roy Howard and United Press – for treating the armistice story “as a fact” and sending it as such to newspapers across the United States, he argued that Howard was responsible for the market riggers’ success: “the immediate effect of the rumor [on the New York Stock Exchange] was a confused movement of prices with sharp breaks in several ‘war stocks’ and advances in railroads and various other ‘peace’ shares”.  In short, Howard’s failure to verify the armistice news and his “bad reporting” of it “played into [the market riggers’] hands”.  However, according to McKernon, the Associated Press’s denial of the veracity of the armistice news, based on their own investigation of it the same day, had persuaded the Stock Exchange governors to close earlier than usual on 7 November, and so had helped to limit the overall damage the United Press’s mishandling of the rumour was causing. 21

Roy Howard read McKernon’s article and, in a comment no doubt directed specifically at its criticisms of his actions that day (rather than at the work as a whole), dismissed it as being “malicious . . . in that it was a perversion and a distortion of the facts through a telling of half truths and the elimination of relevant facts prepared and published by an executive of the A.P.” 22

© James Smith.  (First uploaded October 2018; with additions and re-arrangements October 2020 to November 2024.)

ENDNOTES 

  1. The New York Times, November 21, 1918. Available through NYTimes.com
  2. Letter: Howard to Robert J. Bender [in Washington, D.C.] CONFIDENTIAL. New York, December 2, 1918. And Howard to Fred Cook, November 15, 1918.  Roy Howard Papers (1892-1964). MSA 1, The Media School Archive, Indiana University Libraries, Bloomington, Indiana. Available online.
  3. For example, Neue Badische Landes-Zeitung. 7. November 1918. Translation of Reports from Berlin, 6 November 1918, available under ‘The German Negotiations’ and ‘Armistice Negotiations’. Available online.
  4. For example, The Freeman’s Journal(Dublin), Friday, November 8, 1918, p3 under ‘Armistice – Contradictory Statements’. Available online through the British Newspaper Archive website.
  5. 5. See ‘The False Armistice in Britain’ and ‘The False Armistice in France’ on this website.
  6. H. R. Rudin, Armistice, 1918. Chapter X, ‘Germany in Revolution’, p263-264. (Archon Books. 1967. First published 1944, Yale University Press.)
  7. Roy Howard, ‘Premature Armistice – Roy W. Howard Speaking’. Chapter IV in Webb Miller’s, I Found No Peace. The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent. (The Book Club Special Edition, Camelot Press, London, 1937, is used here.) (Conspiracy theories pp92-95.) For a detailed account of what happened in Brest, see ‘Roy W. Howard in Brest’, Parts One and Two on this website.
  8. See ‘French and German Cease-Fires for the German Armistice Delegation’ on this website.
  9. Arthur Hornblow Jr, ‘The Amazing Armistice: Inside Story of the Premature Peace Report’. Published originally in The Century Magazine, November 1921. (Conspiracy theory, pp96-99.)
  10. See ‘False Armistice Cablegrams from France’ on this website.
  11. Letter: B. Mickel to Roy Howard, Oklahoma City, Aug 11, 1919. Roy Howard Papers (1892-1964). MSA 1, The Media School Archive, Indiana University Libraries, Bloomington, Indiana. See ‘Roy Howard’s Search for Information about the False Armistice’ on this website.
  12. See ‘No Cease-Fire with Germany without an Armistice Agreement’ on this website.
  13. Letter: Roy W. Howard to Arthur Hornblow. San Diego. June nineteenth 1921, Arthur and Leonora Hornblow Papers. Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Beverly Hills, California.  See the Howard entry in ‘Biographical Details’ for his advice to Hornblow against using ‘fake’ to describe the False Armistice of 7 November 1918.
  14. See the ‘American Army G-2 (SOS) Report on the False Armistice News’ on this website.
  15. See ‘Local Cease-Fires for the German Armistice Delegation’ on this website.
  16. Excerpt from letter to Earl Reed Silvers from John P. Street, France, ca. January 14, 1919. Rutgers College War Service Bureau, RG 33/CO/01.
  17. Excerpt from letter to Earl Reed Silvers from Lawrence G. Gilliam, Brest, France, ca. January 1, 1919. Rutgers College War Service Bureau, RG 33/CO/01.
  18. See ‘Admiral H.B. Wilson and Roy Howard’s Armistice Cablegram’ on this website.
  19. United States Army in the World War, 1917-1919. Volume 17, Bulletins, GHQ, AEF. (Washington, D.C., 1992) ‘Bulletin, No. 79’. Available online.
  20. The Journal of Commerce and Shipping Telegraph, November 9 1918.  (Liverpool, England.) Available through the British Newspaper Archive portal.
  21. Edward McKernon, ‘Fake News and the Public’. Article in Harper’s Magazine, October 1925, pp528-536. Available through the Internet Archive. References above are from pp530-533.
  22. Letter: Roy Howard to Fred Cook, 28 November 1925, p3. The Roy Howard Papers (1892-1964). MSA 1, The Media School Archive, Indiana University Libraries, Bloomington, Indiana. Available online.