This article describes attempts Roy Howard made to find out what caused the False Armistice, and the information he collected about it from sundry sources. A companion article relates how Arthur Hornblow, who met Howard in Brest on 7 November 1918, separately acquired information about the Jackson False Armistice Telegram. Combined, their findings (which they seem not to have shared with each other) throw some light on the false armistice news that circulated in France on 7 November 1918.
Howard’s search and its results
When Howard left Brest on 10 November 1918, he was still “utterly distressed” over the armistice cablegram he had sent to United Press (UP) in New York City three days earlier, according to Fred Cook who saw him on board ship just before his departure.NOTE 1 The few days it took to cross the Atlantic would have given him time to reflect on what had happened, and Howard returned firmly convinced that the US authorities were withholding key information from the public concerning the 7 November false armistice news. Using UP’s news-gathering resources, he set about trying to unearth the truth behind the misinformation that embroiled him and his news agency in acrimonious controversy and threatened them with ruinous consequences. If he could “get into the facts deeply enough”, he believed he would uncover the “whole story” about the False Armistice which would “round out and throw a new light on the developments of November 7th”.2 And with this he would demonstrate irrefutably to detractors that he and his news agency had not behaved dishonestly, unprofessionally and unscrupulously in their handling of what the New York Times labelled “a monstrous invention” about the end of the war.3
Letters in his archive show that Howard had some early promising leads. For during the first nine months after the war ended, he acquired information about four official armistice messages that were transmitted from France on 7 November 1918, and five that were allegedly transmitted (and are not in the published official records).
Of the five allegedly transmitted, two were to the Navy Department in Washington, DC, from Admiral Wilson in Brest, and two were to the State Department from Special Representative Edward House in Paris. Howard had found out about these by early December 1918. The fifth, also to the State Department, was from the American Ambassador in Paris, William Sharp, but it is not certain when Howard became aware of this one. And it has not been possible to verify the authenticity of any of them.
Of the four whose transmissions can be verified, one was from US Navy Headquarters in Paris sent by a Lieutenant Emmett King. One was the Jackson False Armistice Message sent to Admiral H. B. Wilson in Brest. And two were false armistice naval signals sent out to warships in the British Grand Fleet.
The messages allegedly from Admiral Wilson to the Navy Department, and Edward House and Ambassador Sharp to the State Department.
Not long after he returned to the United States, in a confidential letter from New York dated 2 December 1918, Howard revealed to Robert (Bob) Bender, his news manager at the UP office in Washington, DC, what he knew about the 7 November armistice cablegrams supposedly from Admiral Wilson and Edward House. (Edward House is often called “Colonel House” but he had no official military rank.)
Howard knew merely that on 7 November the Navy Department received a cablegram at 12:10 pm from Admiral Wilson in Brest stating “headquarters reports armistice signed”; but at 1:10 pm, received a follow-on from him stating “headquarters report error in signature”. And that the State Department received a cablegram at 12:30 pm from Edward House, stating “armistice signed congratulations”; but at 12:40 pm, just ten minutes later, received another from him warning that the news was an error and promising to send a “full report”. “Of course”, Howard asserted, Josephus Daniels (Navy Secretary) and Frank Polk (State Department Counsellor) know “all about these messages”; and explained that they had come to him “in a round-about way” from a person “unknown” to him and “whose acquaintance [he] deliberately avoided making”. 2 (Whoever he was, the unnamed informant must have been an insider or someone with insider-contacts in Washington, DC.) In a letter to an American journalist many years later, Howard disclosed that Ambassador William Sharp had also sent a false armistice dispatch on 7 November 1918 which was “virtually identical to the one received by Admiral Wilson” (meaning, the Jackson Armistice Message).4
Howard probably already knew about the Admiral Wilson and Edward House alleged cablegrams before a meeting took place between him and Josephus Daniels at the Navy Department in late November 1918, and it is assumed that he discussed them there with Daniels to no avail.
Unhelpful meeting with Josephus Daniels at the Navy Department (19 November 1918)
Soon after returning from France, Howard had a meeting with Daniels (in private life, a newspaper proprietor and Associated Press subscriber) ostensibly “to express his appreciation” for Admiral Wilson’s exoneration of him and UP from blame for the false armistice news. But his main purpose, more likely, was to question Daniels about the Jackson Armistice Telegram Wilson received from Paris, Wilson’s alleged reports to Daniels on 7 November, and no doubt some other False Armistice events.
A few days after the meeting, Daniels confided to an Associated Press Superintendent something of what had occurred and of his annoyance at Howard’s attitude:
“Howard came here with the statement which Admiral Wilson had given him, and I told him that it did not lessen his responsibility a bit. I said to Howard ‘you fell down, you are in the hole. Admiral Wilson fell down in saying anything to you at all and you fell down to a pretty (sic) when you transmitted what he said as a flat statement. The best thing you can do about it is to shut up and let the newspapers and the American people forget about it if they can.’5 Not the type of response Howard was hoping or expecting to receive.
The next day – 20 November – Howard made a statement to the press in which he referred to the meeting with Daniels and remarked that:
“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. At the American Luncheon Club meeting in Paris on that day the toastmaster arose, and, with Admiral Benson seated on one side of him and American Consul General [Thackara] on the other announced on what he said was the authority of the American Embassy that the armistice had been 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 information. This is not for me to discuss. Nothing has been said as to the reason for the 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.”3
No doubt hoping to stimulate popular interest and demand for answers, Howard obviously chose not to “shut up” about the False Armistice and let the matter rest. All that Secretary Daniels was prepared to say was that he “authorized no statement of Howard’s conference with me: in fact, I did not understand he intended to make any.”3
Unsuccessful approaches to Admiral Wilson
Howard wrote a number of times to Admiral Wilson, hoping to meet him again to discuss what had happened during “the somewhat memorable incident of November 7th last in which you and I appeared as co-stars” – noting that particulars about its “interesting phases” had come to his attention on his return home.6 But most of his letters went unanswered; Wilson refused to have anything more to do with Howard after their meetings in Brest of 7-8 November 1918.7
Information Howard Subsequently Obtained
Despite these initial setbacks, Howard was determined to persevere. He told Bob Bender, in his 2 December 1918 letter to him, that he wanted confirmation from the Navy Department that Admiral Wilson had received the armistice news “officially from [Navy] Headquarters [in Paris]” and had forwarded it to them. And from Edward House that he or an aide “actually filed the same [false] news” on 7 November to either the Secretary of State or President Woodrow Wilson. He also wanted to learn what the “error” was that Admiral Wilson and House referred to in their follow-on cablegrams (above), where Navy Headquarters in Paris “got their report in the first place”, what originally gave rise to it, and what had happened to the German delegates Howard believed had crossed the Allied lines on Wednesday 6 November with authority to sign an armistice (the delegates he alluded to in his press statement following his meeting with Daniels a few days earlier). And he confided that he had now decided to approach President Wilson and Edward House themselves for the answers. He felt they would be more understanding and ready, for party-political reasons, to give him what he needed to put a stop to slurs still being made about him and United Press because of their handling of the false armistice news.2
But for the present, Bender was not to mention “to a soul in Washington” what he was now planning to do to obtain what he wanted.
“I think that this can better be done in Paris”
The Peace Conference between the Allies and defeated Central Powers, which drew up the treaties that formally ended the Great War, was due to open in Paris (at Versailles) on 18 January 1919. House was already in Paris; President Wilson would soon be travelling there for the Conference. And Howard proposed to take advantage of the occasion to raise his False Armistice questions with them.
Bob Bender was one of the UP team preparing to cover the Conference. Also in the team were Fred S. Ferguson, UP’s chief war correspondent in France, William Philip Simms, manager of the agency’s Paris Office, and Ed Keen, manager of the London Office.8
Howard instructed Bender to show the 2 December letter to the others when they met in Paris. He wanted them all to assist in gathering material from US officials there – “I would like that all four of you keep your ears open for any clues or any information that may be obtainable bearing on the real reason for the [armistice] report of November 7th”. Once he was back in Paris to oversee UP’s coverage, Howard planned to speak to House about it himself; but if anything happened to prevent this, Fred Ferguson was to assume responsibility for meeting House.2
As well as being manager of UP’s Washington Office (since 1917) Bob Bender was also the agency’s “regular White House correspondent”.9 He had been assigned to President Wilson’s press entourage and, as he was due to travel to France on the President’s ship, Howard thought there would be an opportunity during the voyage for Bender to “take [the] matter up with the President directly”. He urged him to do so “if such a contingency should arise”.2
Howard reasoned at some length why President Wilson and House might agree to answer his questions:
“In view of the fact that all of our troubles were occasioned by information furnished us through American government channels, in further view of the fact that the American government in Washington was a recipient of the very same information that we received – received it from its most trusted representative abroad Colonel House – and in further view of the fact that our misfortune was intensified and complicated by the action of the Navy Department in holding up our correction, there seems to me to be good reason why the American government itself should willingly and quickly take whatever action is necessary to restore to us any standing or prestige that we may have lost by reason of handling information secured through the government agents.”10
Alluding to UP’s support for the Democratic Party and Wilson’s Administration, he added that it was “to [the President’s] interest that an organization such as United Press should not be discredited in the public mind. The President is acquainted with the Associated Press and will be able to understand the unfair advantage they have of this incident in an attempt to belittle our standing and our reliability”.
Howard considered it “vitally important” to complete the task quickly and “to have this thing sprung as a full fledged story with all the punch and carrying force that can be put into it” rather than have “the facts dribble out a bit at a time [with no] corrective effect. Therefore, the quicker this matter is cleaned up the better for us”.
However, he appreciated that things must be done “without embarrassing the American position” and decided that should Edward House intimate that he was not able to “clear it up at this time without embarrassing the government” then they would have to bide their time until the story could be told “without damaging the interests of the government”. In this event, UP would just have to “stand the gaff a little longer”.2
President Wilson left for France on 4 December 1918 on board the SS George Washington, as did Bob Bender with Howard’s confidential letter of 2 December. The ship arrived in Brest on 13 December; the President and his party reached Paris the following day. Howard intended to leave for France on 14 December but apparently postponed his departure until after Christmas; whether he eventually went to Paris for the Peace Conference is not certain from available sources.11
In Paris
During the Conference, Fred Ferguson (from UP’s Paris office) managed to gain an illicit exclusive pre-publication access to the text of Article Ten of the Treaty of Versailles. This was concerned with the Covenant of the League of Nations and made provision for guaranteeing the territorial integrity and political independence of League Members. Ferguson had failed to find out anything about Article Ten from Edward House; but he succeeded with someone he knew “who was a minor official of the delegation”. The latter arranged for Ferguson clandestinely to read the text of Article Ten in a room of the Crillon Hotel in Paris, where American officials were staying during the Peace Conference.12
However, whether Ferguson, Bender, Simms, Keen, or Howard (if he was there) managed to unearth anything useful about 7 November 1918 is not known. And whatever transpired in Paris, there is nothing in Howard’s papers or in his later writings to suggest that he had been able to resolve the False Armistice mystery and use the knowledge to rehabilitate UP’s reputation in the newspaper world. It may be that his attempts to engage President Wilson, Edward House, and other officials with questions about the alleged false armistice telegrams to Washington, DC, were rebuffed. Or that he did obtain something about them and the other matters, but on condition that it remained strictly “off the record” because of its potential to embarrass the government – as Howard (in his letter to Bob Bender before the Conference) said might happen.
President Wilson returned home in the middle of February 1919 – almost a year before the Conference ended (January 1920). Edward House returned in October 1919. Howard wrote to the latter welcoming him back to New York, but it is not certain whether they met that year or indeed ever discussed the False Armistice.13
Meanwhile, from Paris Howard had received a few more False Armistice snippets before the end of December 1918. These are in a letter Emmett King sent to “W. F. L.” from US Navy Headquarters in Paris. The letter was copied by “W. F. L.” – William F. Lynch, in 1916 UP’s “Chief Operator” of telegraph – and eventually received by Howard.14
“It is too bad that the whole case cannot be put before the public” (19 December 1918)
Navy Lieutenant Emmett King identified himself as the Headquarters’ “Chief Electrician, (Radio)”, and knew W. F. L. (perhaps through their work in radio telegraphy).15 He had been reading newspapers about the False Armistice and the “strong criticism” levelled against United Press by the Associated Press and other agencies, and wanted to assure W. F. L. that United Press had “pulled the biggest ‘beat’ of all time” with its armistice bulletin.
He claimed to know “what caused the whole [false armistice news] affair”, and though he claimed he was not at liberty “just at present [to] explain it”, nevertheless offered the following tidbits:
“About 3:50 p.m., the seventh [of November] a message was handed me, in plain English, reading identically the same as the message that was afterwards published in America to the effect that hostilities had ceased. I flashed the message and as soon as had finished it was taken from my hands and never returned to the files. I can assure you that the signature on the message was thoroughly official and that the message itself was absolutely from official channels, so much so, that in half an hours time the entire Atlantic fleet would have been on its way into port, but they stopped the proceedings before they got too far . . . . But rest assured of this fact: That the United Press had the right dope and had in reality pulled the biggest ‘beat’ of all time. I know this for I handled the whole case. The whole ‘bone’ [‘stupid mistake’] lay in a government official (not American). It is too bad that the whole case cannot be put before the public . . . what a shame that [they] don’t know the facts.”
Having been working on the Armistice and “later peace stuff”, King was now engaged “in handling all Colonel House’s work”.16 And, under the impression that Howard was in Paris in December 1918, hoped to “drop around” and find out “what he [knew] regarding that message”.17
King did not say who handed the armistice message to him, where it had come from, or where and to whom he sent it; but what he sent was the Jackson Armistice Message of 7 November 1918. He was the operator who wired it from Paris to Admiral Wilson in Brest.18 And may have cabled it separately to US Navy Headquarters in London, for his comment that, having “flashed” it, he was sure “the entire Atlantic fleet would have been on its way into port” had “they” not “stopped the proceedings before they got too far”, implies that it would have reached the US Atlantic Fleet quite quickly. (Whether he subsequently transmitted a cancellation is not known.)
(In November 1918, Admiral Henry T. Mayo was commander of the US Atlantic Fleet. Under him, Vice Admiral William S. Sims was in charge of American naval operations in European waters and based at US Navy Headquarters in London, which, like the American Embassy, were located in Grosvenor Gardens. Had it not been stopped in time, the Jackson armistice news, therefore, would have been relayed to the US Atlantic Fleet from the Grosvenor Gardens Headquarters. As it happened, the news did reach the US Navy Headquarters and American Embassy in London, and was leaked to the British newspapers.19)
King’s allegation that “a government official (not American)” was responsible for the false news implies that the culprit was French or British. And his comment that the “whole case cannot be put before the public” implies that the Allies were concealing what had really happened – the most obvious reason being that they wanted to prevent any one of them being singled out for blame over the False Armistice.
It is not certain when Roy Howard received King’s letter, where he was at the time or whether he or one of his Peace Conference team was able to follow it up. (It is not known here how long Howard’s team remained in Paris.) But in view of King’s evident willingness to discuss 7 November events, the likelihood is that someone did talk to him in Paris about them. And Howard must have realized from the letter that the telegram King had transmitted was, in fact, the Jackson Armistice Telegram. A few months later, a copy of this was acquired for Howard.
A typed-out copy of the Jackson False Armistice Telegram (July-August 1919)
Captain Richard H. Jackson became US Naval Attaché in Paris in May 1918. As such, his instructions were to “confer” with the “Senior Naval Officer afloat in French Waters”.20 In November 1918 this was Admiral H. B. Wilson whose headquarters were at Brest. During the afternoon of 7 November, a telegram carrying Jackson’s name as authorization arrived for Admiral Wilson with the news that an armistice was signed with Germany at 11 o’clock that morning, hostilities had ceased at 2 o’clock that afternoon, and the US Army had taken Sedan in the morning. The Admiral released the news in Brest and gave it to Roy Howard who, purely by chance, had arrived at his headquarters not long after the telegram.7
The Hugh Baillie Letter about the Jackson Armistice Telegram.
On 19 July 1919, Hugh Baillie, UP’s new manager in Washington, DC, sent a letter to Howard at the New York City office. (Howard was either there at the time or the letter was forwarded to him in Paris.) Baillie stated that a colleague had called him that day to tell him a lawyer in Washington, DC, by the name of Carey, with offices in the Wilkins Buildings there,“was in possession of the original telegram” Captain Jackson had sent to Admiral Wilson on 7 November 1918 “notifying him the armistice had been signed”. Carey, he pointed out, was the Admiral’s former secretary in Brest – “hence his possession of the telegram”. He was not “mercenary” but “would expect some cash for the telegram”, which disclosed that “Captain Jackson got his information of the signing [of the armistice] from the French Foreign Office”.21
(There is a “Lieutenant J. A. Carey, (j. g.) Supply Corps, U.S.N.R.F.”, identified as “Flag Secretary” and “Navy Press Censor” at US Navy Headquarters in Brest in November 1918. And a “Lieutenant (j. g.) Joseph A. Carey (Pay Corps) U.S.N.R.F., listed in the 1919 US Navy Register, who were presumably the same person.22)
There is no other correspondence in Howard’s archive from Hugh Baillie about Carey and his so-called “original” Jackson Armistice Telegram brought from Brest, and no reply from Howard to this letter. What became of Carey’s “original” is a matter for speculation, however, because Howard did not acquire it – what he eventually obtained was a simple typed-out copy of it. And this came not from Hugh Baillie but from L. B. Mickel, another UP staff-member who became their Superintendent of U.S. Bureaus some years later.
The L. B. Mickel Letter about the Jackson Armistice Telegram.
Around three weeks after Baillie’s letter, Howard received one from L. B. Mickel, who was in Oklahoma City at the time. It was on a single sheet of paper, headed “United Press Associations”, onto which a copy of the Jackson Armistice Telegram had been typed out:
“Amnavpar” signifies that the telegram is from the American Navy in Paris, sent from the “Naval Forces in France Communication Office”.
“#2833″ [#2833] – presumably denotes the number of this telegram among those transmitted from the Communication Office on 11/7 ( November 7, 1918).
Its “DESTINATION” is “COMFRAN” – that is, ‘The [Naval Forces] Commander in France – [Admiral] “WILSON” – for his “ACTION”.
“15207” is the time and date notation for the telegram – 3:20 pm on the 7th (November 1918) – indicating when the content was originally released by “Jackson” for transmission from the Communication Office in the US Navy’s Paris Headquarters. (Admiral Wilson received the telegram in Brest sometime before 4:00 pm.)
The letters “RBWH” in the “DUTY” box presumably denote the personnel on duty at the time.
“This is a translation, shall never be transmitted” suggests it was not for general publication until its official confirmation had been received and circulation approved.
Mickel offered the following brief explanation of the typed-out telegram:
“Here is a copy of the Wilson armistice message on which the admiral based his announcement. It was taken by M. R. Toomer, Oklahoma News staff, from a copy made by a wireless operator in Wilson’s office at Brest. The original is in Wilson’s file. Whether or not it contains new information for you I do not know. To me the ‘Foreign Office announces’ part is new stuff.“23
Like the one from Baillie, this is the only letter from Mickel about the Jackson Armistice Telegram in Howard’s archive, so there is nothing to indicate how the unnamed wireless operator’s “copy” of the original telegram came to his notice, how it happened to be in Oklahoma City, or whether money was exchanged for the copy ”taken by M. R. Toomer” of the wireless operator’s “copy” of the original. And it is not known whether the operator’s “copy” of the original telegram was a duplicate made by filling in a blank Brest US Navy Headquarters telegram-form with the armistice message and details from the US Navy Headquarters in Paris, or whether it was his own typed-out copy of the original made on ordinary paper. Consequently, it is not known whether M. R. Toomer took a copy of (photographed) a Jackson Armistice Telegram duplicate or a typed-out copy of the original made by the wireless operator. Similarly, it is not known whether Mickel himself or Toomer typed out the copy on the letter to Roy Howard.
Whether there was some link between Baillie’s and Mickel’s Jackson Armistice Telegram letters is also not known. But that Howard received Mickel’s letter and its copy of the wireless operator’s “copy” of the original, about three weeks after receiving Baillie’s telling him of J. A. Carey’s claim to have the “original”, seems to be more than coincidental. As is the seemingly fortuitous appearance of the wireless operator’s “copy” of the original which M. R. Toomer was allowed to copy, and the subsequent silence about Carey’s “original”, now said to be still in Admiral Wilson’s file.
The Brest wireless operator probably duplicated the original either for himself (and took it to the United States) or made it for someone else (who took it there), and may have made additional duplicates for himself and other people; and it is likely that the so-called “original” which J. A. Carey said he obtained in Brest was also a duplicate. So, from the Baillie and Mickel letters, it could be inferred that at least two Jackson Armistice Telegram duplicates had now turned up in the United States, and that what Roy Howard obtained in August 1919 was the typed-out copy of either the Carey or the Brest wireless operator’s duplicate. (These could be one and the same duplicate, rather than two separate ones, possessed and retained by Carey after receiving payment from UP for permitting Toomer to take a copy of it.24)
Whether other duplicates were made and still exist is not known. But in the United States there is at least one (in private possession for more than two generations) that is almost identical to the image of the Jackson Armistice Telegram found in the US Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC) Archive.
(Until Roy Howard saw L. B. Mickel’s letter, he was probably unaware that the afternoon false armistice news in Paris was sent to the American Embassy from the French Foreign Ministry – it was as much “new stuff” to him in August 1919 as it was to Mickel.)
Two British False Armistice Naval Signals
Included in a collection of telegrams from Howard’s four days in Brest are two British naval signals sent out on 7 November 1918 and printed on Royal Navy signal sheets. But while there is at least something about how Howard acquired the other documents discussed in this article, there is nothing to show from whom, when or how Howard came by these naval signals. (It would be pure speculation to say that Emmett King at US Navy Headquarters in Paris was involved in Howard’s acquisition of them.)
This is the first one25:
Clarifications:
“C. in C. G. F.” is an abbreviation of ‘Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet’.
(The British Grand Fleet was mostly deployed in the North Sea to blockade Germany. Its main bases were at Rosyth, in the Firth of Forth on the east coast of Scotland, and Scapa Flow in the Scottish Orkney Islands. In November 1918, its Commander-in-Chief was Admiral David Beatty.)
“General”, is taken here to mean for ‘general release’ to other warships.
“System- Sem”: ‘Sem’ is an abbreviation for ‘semaphore’, indicating that “Hostilities ceased at 2:00 P.M. to-day” was sent, in this instance, by semaphore signals (made either by signal lamps, flags, or mechanical semaphore arms) rather than by a wireless transmission.
“Date- 11 7 1918”: that is, November 7 1918.
(This ‘month-day-year’ is the American style of writing the date. The British style is ‘day-month-year’, which would make it ‘7 11 1918’.)
“Time- 1553”: that is, 3:53 pm, indicating the time it was logged as having been received. .
“1555”: that is 3:55 pm, indicating the ‘time-of-origin’ – the time the signal was ordered to be made, and not necessarily the time it was sent out.
(There is obviously an error in these times – as it stands, the message was received by semaphore two minutes before it was ordered to be sent.)
And the second one26:
Clarifications:
“Lion” denotes the British warship HMS Lion.
(HMS Lion was the flagship of the British Grand Fleet’s battlecruiser force, under Vice Admiral Sir William Pakenham. In November 1918, the ship was at Rosyth, as was Admiral Beatty’s flagship HMS Queen Elizabeth.)
“System – S. L.”: sent by signal lamp.
“Time- 1655”: that is, 4:55 pm, when “Cancel signal re hostilities ceasing” was received.
“1650”: that is, 4:50 pm, indicating its ‘time-of-origin’.
From these two sheets, therefore, it seems that around four o’clock on 7 November 1918 a signal from Admiral Beatty was sent to warships in the Grand Fleet stating that hostilities had ceased at two o’clock that same afternoon (about two hours earlier), with the implication that the fighting against Germany had ended. There was, however, no mention of a signing of an armistice with Germany or specific instruction for the Grand Fleet to cease hostilities. About an hour later, a signal cancelling the ‘hostilities ceased’ notification was sent without any explanation.
(With the two sheets are what are taken to be photographic negatives of them.27)
The American date-format on these Royal Navy signal sheets implies that an American signals operator on an American warship was using them. Indeed, as Howardand others would have known at the time, American warships were operating with British warships in the North Sea. In fact, in December 1917, under the command of Rear Admiral Hugh Rodman, Battleship Division Nine of the US Navy’s Atlantic Fleet joined the Grand Fleet to become the latter’s Sixth Battle Squadron, which in November 1918 consisted of the USS Arkansas, Florida, New York, Texas, and Wyoming,28 The ships assimilated by adopting the Grand Fleet’s “signals and methods of communication, their plans, policies, manoeuvres and tactics”.29
During the afternoon of 7 November, the squadron, “without Texas”, left Rosyth at “1308” (1:08 pm) and returned at “4.55” pm (1655). USS Texas, like HMS Lion, remained at Rosyth the whole day.30 So, while the Sixth Battle Squadron was at sea the “hostilities ceased at 2:00 P.M. today” signal went out just before 4:00 pm; and the later “cancel signal re hostilities ceasing” went out at practically the same time as the squadron returned to Rosyth.
(See Addendum below for more about these naval signals.)
The results of Howard’s search for False Armistice information
As saved in his archive, what Roy Howard achieved by his search for the truth about the False Armistice amounted to the two British naval signal sheets, the typed-out copy of the Jackson Armistice Telegram (rather than the ‘original’ offered to Hugh Baillie in exchange for cash), the unverified armistice cablegrams sent from France on 7 November by Admiral Wilson in Brest, Edward House and Ambassador Sharp in Paris, and Lieutenant Emmett King’s disclosure that he transmitted the Jackson Armistice Telegram from US Navy Headquarters in Paris.
From these he made use of just one detail: the “new stuff” L. B. Mickel had noticed on the telegram form – namely, that the French Foreign Office ‘announced’ the peace news. Howard used it in his 1936 ‘Premature Armistice’ chapter for Webb Miller’s book, where he asserted that a German secret agent in Paris on 7 November 1918 had fooled a secretary at the American Embassy into believing he was sending the peace news from the French Foreign Ministry on the Quai d’Orsay.31
There may be other documents he did not wish to leave in his public archives. But nothing that he found, and made available above, answers the most fundamental of the questions Howard set down in his letter to Bob Bender about his search for False Armistice facts: where the armistice news originally came from (before the French Foreign Office announced it), and what had caused it. The two conspiracy theories Howard offered readers in his 1936 memoir were his way of addressing these questions. One of them, his own apparently, postulated a German delegation headed by Admiral Paul von Hintze and an actual armistice-signing with Marshal Foch on Wednesday 6 November. He eventually discarded this, he said, in favour of his German secret agent theory. In essence, this was the same theory Arthur Hornblow had aired, in his 1921 ‘Amazing Armistice’ article, that the spy pretended to be sending the peace news from the French Ministry of War.32
Addendum
More about the British naval signals
The following is from a feature the New Britain Daily Herald, an American newspaper and Associated Press member at the time which did not announce the false armistice news on 7 November 1918. It marks the first anniversary of the False Armistice in the USA, and is regarded here as corroboration that the two false armistice naval signals were in fact sent to ships in the British Grand Fleet on 7 November 1918. The author was almost certainly Lewis Ransome Freeman, an American “magazine and book writer” who was given the rank of lieutenant in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve and “served . . . for the last twelve months of the War in the Grand Fleet”.33 He wrote:
“Where the [false armistice] rumor started will always be a mystery. At the time of the circulation of the report, the writer happened to be at sea with the British Fleet. At some time in the forenoon a radio signal was received from the flagship of the fleet H. M. S. Lion, which in effect read, ‘Cease hostilities at 2:00 o’clock’ and which was signed by a British naval staff officer. There could be but one construction to place on this, and that was that Germany had capitulated. The officers upon the ship were discussing the message, copies of which had been posted in various messes, and debating whether they should open fire upon possible submarines after 2 o’clock, when the question was quickly settled for them by another message cancelling the previous one. The armistice had not been signed, although the two messages are proof that the Admiralty, for a very brief time, thought that it had. The rumor and the cancellation came very close together, so close that the newspaper men who had taken occasion to check up were disappointed almost at once.”34 (The times shown on the two signal sheets do not support the writer’s observations that they “came very close together” or that they were sent in the “forenoon” – they were afternoon signals.)
The 2:00 pm cessation-of-hostilities detail in the first signal was from the Jackson Armistice Message, but unfortunately it is not known how it reached the Grand Fleet, who ordered the signal about it, or what led up to its subsequent cancellation. The British Admiralty in London usually provided the Fleet with military intelligence passed on to them or acquired from their own sources – such as wireless telegraph intercepts by the Fleet itself and naval intercept stations around Britain.35 So it seems highly improbable that these signals about the end of the war would have gone to the Fleet without any authorization from the Admiralty.
However, a search of the British Admiralty records found nothing relating to a 2:00 pm cessation of hostilities on 7 November from the Admiralty to Admiral Beatty as Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C) of the Grand Fleet. And what was sent to him on Thursday 7 November leaves no room for an assumption that a cessation of hostilities, linked to the signature of a German armistice, was imminent.
Thus:
Telegram 151 from Beatty himself to the Admiralty, showing the time “1034” (10:34 am) on 7 November, contains the following: “Newspapers state German Delegates have crossed Allied lines to negotiate armistice. Request to be informed if this is correct as Grand Fleet should be concentrated at such a critical moment.”
(During the evening of 6 November and the morning of the 7th, some British newspapers reported the false news that the German armistice delegates had already arrived at the front lines.36)
The Admiralty’s reply, telegram 220, carries the time “1419” (2:19 pm), over three hours later: “Immediate. Personal from D.C.N.S. only information in England is that Germany has asked for a rendezvous for Parliamentaires [armistice delegates] and has been given one. They are expected to meet representatives of Marshal Foch at 1700 [5:00 pm] this afternoon Thursday at front line on La Capelle – Guise Road. ends.”
(D.C.N.S. = Deputy Chief of Naval Staff. The content of this reply was derived from the first three Spa-Senlis Telegrams exchanged up to early morning on 7 November.37)
If this went out straight away (as its “Immediate” command implies), the C-in-C would therefore have been aware after 2:19 pm – well before the time on the first false armistice signal – that the German delegation was still on its way to the Western Front, and that no armistice agreement was possible on 7 November before 5:00 pm. It was followed later that afternoon (“1657”, 4:57 pm) by unambiguous news in telegram 225: “Immediate. Personal from D.C.N.S. Terms of German Armistice provide for reply from Germany being given within 72 hours of terms being handed over. Penalty is withdrawal of terms. This is best guidance we can give you as to period of tension.”
(A telegram to the C-in-C on Friday 8 November concerning the German delegates’ first meeting with Marshal Foch that day, advised him that they had asked for an armistice and an immediate cessation of hostilities, and that Foch refused the latter.)38
To put the two signals in context, around the same time that the first one (from the C-in-C) went out at 3:55 pm, Emmett King transmitted the Jackson Armistice Message from Paris to Brest – as he recalled, at “about 3:50 pm”, some thirty minutes after its origin-time of 3:20 pm. Where Admiral Beatty actually was at this time is not known. But assuming he was at Rosyth, he would have received, sometime before 3:55 pm, the “immediate” 2:19 pm telegram from the Admiralty telling him that the German armistice delegation was still on its way and expected at the front lines around 5:00 pm. The cancellation signal (from HMS Lion), about sixty minutes later, has the origin-time 4:50 pm printed on its sheet. This is at least forty-five minutes after the false armistice news circulating in Britain was cancelled. And just seven minutes before the Admiralty sent its telegram 225 (4:57 pm) advising Beatty that the Germans would have to accept the armistice terms within seventy-two hours of receiving them.
Surviving from the time of these events are a diary kept by a wireless telegraphist aboard HMS Lion; a number of letters sent home by an officer from the same ship; and diaries kept by an officer of HMS Indomitable, like Lion, deployed in the Grand Fleet’s battlecruiser force. There are entries in them about the 11 November Armistice and its celebration by ships in the Fleet, and about the arrival shortly afterwards of German admirals to discuss the surrender and movement of their warships to the naval base at Scapa Flow. However, they contain nothing about Fleet signals on 7 November announcing a 2:00 pm cessation of hostilities.39
On the other hand, the Sun newspaper in New York City, on the uncertainty surrounding the origins of the False Armistice, noted two days after the event that “Talk was heard along Park Row of the possibility of the American warships having picked up a lie sent broadcast by the Nauen wireless in Germany. But this was pure guessing.”40 In other words, speculation among Park Row newspapermen was that American warships had intercepted German 7 November disinformation.
(Park Row, in New York City, was the location of the US daily newspaper industry at that time. The Nauen wireless station, north-west of Berlin, was Germany’s long-range transmitter from where the Spa telegrams about the German armistice delegation were broadcast for Marshal Foch’s headquarters at Senlis to pick up.)
By and large, the most plausible explanation for the two false armistice British naval signals is the assertion by the New Britain Daily Herald journalist that “the Admiralty, for a very brief time, thought that [the armistice] had [been signed]”. Roy Howard’s copies of the signals are evidence of this, and verify the journalist’s anniversary story about the signals’ occurrence. For some reason, however, there is no such evidence in the Admiralty’s archives. After the war, perhaps the two signals were “considered unimportant” and consequently “removed and destroyed” along with other papers.41 Or perhaps the mistake they revealed was felt to be too embarrassing or incriminating for them to be retained in the official archives.
© James Smith. (Periodically reviewed and edited, August 2019 to June 2025)
REFERENCES
ARCHIVE SOURCES
1. Library of Congress Chronicling America. (Online)
2. Roy Howard Papers. (1892-1964). MSA 1. The Media School Archive, Indiana University Libraries. Bloomington, Indiana.
3. Associated Press Corporate Archives, New York, New York.
4. Admiral H. B. Wilson Papers. Archives Branch, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, D.C.
5. Edward Mandell House Papers. Yale Library Collections.
6. The (UK) National Archives. Kew, Richmond, TW9 4DU, United Kingdom.
7. The National Maritime Museum. Greenwich, London.
8. East Riding of Yorkshire Archives and Local Studies Service. Champney Road, Beverley, Kingston upon Hull, HU17 8HE.
9. The Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge.
ENDNOTES
1. Article in the Evening Star [Washington, DC] November 11, 1925, p4, under ‘Real “False Armistice” Story Is Now Told By Eyewitness’. (Library of Congress Chronicling America)
2. Roy Howard to Robert J. Bender [UP General News Manager in Washington, DC] CONFIDENTIAL, New York, December 2, 1918. AND Roy Howard to Fred C. Cook, November twenty-eighth 1925, p3. (Roy Howard Papers)
3. The New York Times, 21 November 1918, under ‘Howard Excuses False Peace Report’. Available to subscribers. (These alleged messages are discussed in their 7 November 1918 context in ‘False Armistice Cablegrams from France’ on this website.)
4. R. W. Howard to David Lawrence, November 30, 1951. (The letter concerns a remark President Truman made during a Korean War press conference about Howard’s “fake” armistice cablegram.) Quoted by Lawrence in his article ‘Roy Howard Recounts ’18 Story’ for the Evening Star [Washington, DC], December 8, 1951, p13. (Library of Congress Chronicling America)
5. Letter: L. C. Probert to Frederick Roy Martin, November 21, 1918. AP02A.03A, Subject Files, Box 27, Folder 6. (Associated Press Corporate Archives)
(See the Associated Press suspicions about Admiral Wilson, 8-21 November 1918 aspect of ‘Admiral H. B. Wilson and Roy Howard’s Armistice Cablegram’ on this website.
6. Roy Howard to Admiral Wilson, July 18, 1919. Box 1. (Admiral H. B. Wilson Papers)
7. See the following on this website: ‘Admiral H. B. Wilson and Roy Howard’s Armistice Cablegram’; ‘Arthur Hornblow’s Information about the Jackson Armistice Telegram’; and ‘Roy W. Howard in Brest’, Parts One and Two.
8. See the Fourth Estate, December 7, 1918, p8, under ‘Howard and Keen In Charge of U.P. Staff’, for an item about United Press personnel in their Peace Conference team. Available online through the Hathi Trust Digital Library.
9. J. A. Morris, Deadline Every Minute. The Story of the United Press, pp82, 115. (New York 1957) “[Bender] quickly made friends in the right places and was able to develop a number of exclusive stories, possibly due in part to the fact that he was one of the few Washington reporters who owned an automobile and frequently taxied Joseph Tumulty, the President’s secretary, to his home at the end of the workday.” (p82)
10. For a discussion of Howard’s story about his “warning” cablegram, see Addendum in ‘Roy W. Howard in Brest, Part Two’ on this website.
11. In Roy W. Howard to Fred C. Cook, December 11, 1918. (Roy Howard Papers) Howard told Fred. C. Cook “I had expected to sail for France on the 14th but a crush of local affairs has made it necessary for me to postpone my trip until after the holidays.” In Howard’s Papers only two documents are listed for the whole of 1919, neither being to or from Paris.
12. J. A. Morris, Deadline Every Minute, p116. (Note 9)
13. Among Edward House’s papers is a box of “Correspondence with or relating to Howard, Roy W., 1917-1933”. (Edward Mandell House Papers. MS 466, Series 1. Correspondence 1858-1938. Box 63, Subtitle: Howard, Roy W. Date: 1917-1933.)
However, there is no correspondence from the years 1917 and 1918 in this collection which starts with a letter to House from Howard, dated 13 October 1919, welcoming him back to New York on his return from Paris as President Wilson’s Special Representative. House was “confined to his bed” at the time but was hoping to be able to meet Howard “sometime next week”. Whether they met later that month, or sometime before the early summer of 1920, is not certain. But comments in some of the letters, such as this from Howard to House on December 23, 1927, “It does seem difficult for us to locate one another among the six million others here in New York”, suggest that they did not manage to arrange a meeting between August 1920 and the end of 1933.
On the same day that Roy Howard wrote to House to welcome him home, House explained to Senator Henry Cabot Lodge that he had been taken ill on the day he left Paris and ordered to rest. He did not name his illness (possibly exhaustion brought on by his prolonged efforts since the Armistice to secure agreement for the Versailles Peace Treaties and the proposed League of Nations). But “his condition became worse during the voyage [home], and he left the ship in a state of almost complete collapse”. (He had been very ill with the ‘Spanish flu’ several months earlier, but his October 1919 illness was not considered to be a repeat of this.) (Charles Seymour, The Intimate Papers of Colonel House: The Ending of the War, pp503-504 and p273. (1928).)
14. Emmett King to W.F.L., December 19th, 1918. (Consists of the two-page original letter and an incomplete one-page copy of it.) (Roy Howard Papers) ‘William F. Lynch’ entries in J. A. Morris, Deadline Every Minute, pp79 and 167 refer to his telegraph work in the agency. (Note 9)
15. The US Navy List for 1918 has the following entry: “Archer Emmet King Jr, Lieutenant (junior grade) 5 June 1918; born 14 September 1893. Register of the Commissioned and Warrant Officers of the United States Navy, U.S. Naval Reserve Force and Marine Corps, January 1, 1919, p70.
16. Edward House’s official secretary at the Peace Conference was his son-in-law, Gordon Auchincloss.
17. Emmett King to W.F.L., December 19th, 1918. (Note 14.)
18. See ‘Arthur Hornblow’s Information about the Jackson Armistice Telegram’; and the discussion in ‘’False Armistice cablegrams from France’ on this website.
19. See the False Armistice Cablegram to the American Embassy in London item in ‘False Armistice Cablegrams from France’ on this website.
20. See the Captain R. H. Jackson item in ‘Biographical Details’ on this website.
21. Hugh Baillie to Roy Howard, Washington, July 19, 1919. (Roy Howard Papers) In 1919 “at the age of twenty-eight” Baillie became manager of the UP Washington office – “the youngest man in the bureau . . . then as now the biggest single source of wire-service news”. From: High Tension, the Recollections of Hugh Baillie, p42. (London 1959). There are no recollections about UP’s activities in France during 1914-1918 or his dealings with Roy Howard as UP’s president.
22. See: ‘Some of Brest Staff’: a handwritten note, listed as p25 of the Admiral Henry B. Wilson Papers (most likely M.S. Tisdale’s, in November 1918 Lieutenant-Commander and Assistant to Chief of Staff & Personnel Officer at the Brest Navy HQ). Also: An Account of the Operations of the American Navy in France during the War with Germany, pp8,10. (1919) Available online. And: Register of the Commissioned and Warrant Officers of the United States Navy, U.S. Naval Reserve Force and Marine Corps, January 1, 1919, p518.
23. L.B. Mickel to Roy Howard, Oklahoma City, August 11, 1919. (There are three copies, each showing different recipients’ initials.) (Roy Howard Papers).
24. In a short item from 22 January 1919, Robert Toomer is described, “before the war opened”, as being “city editor of the Oklahoma City News”. (In Harlow’s Weekly (Oklahoma City), 22 January 1919, page 9, under ‘Two Oklahoma Soldiers Graduate’. Available online through https://gateway.okhistory.org/ark:/67531/metadc1600526/)
And in a letter in Roy Howard’s Papers, he is named as “M. R. Toomer, Editor” alongside “Raymond Fields, City Editor” of the Oklahoma News. The letter is from G. B. Parker to T. L. Sidlo, May 2, 1923. Apart from taking the copy of the Jackson Telegram for L. B. Mickel, it is not known whether he contributed in any other way to Howard’s False Armistice collection.
25. Naval Signal, 32/34 in the collection at 7 November 1918. (Roy Howard Papers)
26. Naval Signal, 34/34 in the collection at 7 November 1918. (Roy Howard Papers)
27. Naval Signal Negatives, 31/34 and 33/34 in the collection at 7 November 1918. (Roy Howard Papers)
28. I am most grateful to Ken Sutton, curator of the Royal Navy Communications Branch Museum/Library, for information relevant to the signal sheets. The museum/library is located at HMS Collingwood in Fareham, Hampshire.
29. Mrs. John S. Cannon, Rear Admiral Hugh Rodman, pp5 & 11. Source: Register of Kentucky State Historical Society , SEPTEMBER, 1919, Vol. 17, No. 51 (SEPTEMBER 1919), Published by: Kentucky Historical Society Stable. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23368552
30. HMS Lion Ship’s Log, “Thursday 7th day of November, 1918”. ADM (Admiralty) 53/46847, 1 October 1917 to 31 December 1918. (The (UK) National Archives) And Battleship Texas BB35 website.
31. Chapter IV, in Webb Miller’s I Found No Peace: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, pp94-95. (London. Special Edition for the Book Club. 1937.)
32. See ‘False Armistice Conspiracy Theories’ on this website.
33. Sir Douglas Brownrigg, Indiscretions of the Naval Censor. Chapter Ten, ‘Pressmen of Allied Countries’, pp134-137. (1920)
34. New Britain Daily Herald [Connecticut] Friday, November 7, 1919, p6 under ‘A Year Ago’. (Library of Congress Chronicling America)
35. For a historical overview of the subject, see Paul Gannon, Inside Room 40: The Codebreakers of World War 1. (2010)
36. See ‘The False Armistice in Britain’ on this website.
37. See ‘The Spa-Senlis Telegrams and the German Armistice Delegation’, on this website.
38. ADM (Admiralty) 137/2064, Grand Fleet Secret & Personal Telegrams, C In C Copies July-Dec. 1918: No 151. C-in-C to Admiralty. 7/11/18. 1034; No 220. Admiralty to C-in-C. 7/11/18. 1419; No 225. Admiralty to C-in-C, 7/11/18. 1657. And ADM 137/927, Home Waters General Operations Telegrams, 7-9 November 1918, page 494. Telegram No. 253 to C-in-C Grand Fleet, 8.11.18. Sent 1853. (The (UK) National Archives)
39. The sources are: A Diary kept by George Lea on board HMS Lion. (The National Maritime Museum, ref. JOD/310); Letters from William Pakenham to Margaret Strickland-Constable. (Written whilst on board HMS Lion). (East Riding of Yorkshire Archives and Local Studies Service, ref. DDST/1/8/1/20); Diaries of Geoffrey Coleridge Harper. (Written whilst on board HMS Indomitable.) (The Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, ref. GBR/0014/HRPR).
40. The Sun, November 9, 1918, p2 under ‘Action on Messages’. (Library of Congress Chronicling America)
41. ‘Explanatory Note’ about what happened to some of the C-in-C’s papers of a confidential nature during re-arrangement by the Grand Fleet secretarial staff in February 1919. Under: National Archives’ Catalogue, Reference The National Archives of the UK. ADM (Admiralty) 137/1895A, Folio 2.
The False Armistice, 7 November 1918 