The False Armistice in Britain

On Thursday 7 November 1918, what US Army Intelligence called a “False Report of Signing of Armistice” spread from Paris to other parts of France and other Allied countries, provoking peace celebrations by millions of people four days before the real Monday 11 November Armistice was signed and ended the Great War. Those 7 November events are known as the False Armistice and the date as False Armistice Day, particularly in the United States.

According to the few, rather brief references to it, Britain was hardly affected by the False Armistice because cautious newspapers held back from reporting the 7 November armistice news. For instance, Arthur Hornblow, a former American Army G-2 (SOS) intelligence officer, wrote in a 1921 magazine article that, although the news arrived in London the British papers, “with one unimportant exception”, doubted its credibility and refused to print it.¹Many years later, historian Stanley Weintraub stated that the news “seeped into military camps” in Britain but the London press “prudently sat on it”.²And, more recently, Nicholas Best observed that the false news “leaked out” but only “a few people in Britain exulted”.³Such assessments, however, are mistaken: the false armistice news spread throughout Britain and caused widespread peace celebrations.

This account of Britain’s False Armistice is drawn largely from newspaper items published (for the most part) between 6–9 November 1918. Little seems to have been written about it in other sources of historical information, either at the time or later. Indeed, the 11 November Armistice completely overshadowed it, leaving it to be quickly forgotten about, and virtually excluded from the nation’s historical record of events during the last few days of the Great War.⁴

THE IMMEDIATE CONTEXT, 6-7 NOVEMBER

German Armistice Delegation News: Fact, Speculation, and Misinformation

During the first week of November 1918 there was growing optimism in Britain that a resounding Allied victory, an armistice with Germany and the end of the war were close at hand. Two separate press announcements about a German armistice delegation, published at the end of that week, boosted such hopes.

The first was that the German Government had sent representatives to the Western Front “to conclude an armistice and take up peace negotiations.” This momentous news appeared in Germany during the afternoon of Wednesday 6 November, and in Allied and other countries’ that same evening and the following day.⁵

Commenting on the development, many British, French, and American newspapers speculated persuasively that the German Government had probably already received the Allies’ armistice terms. And that, faced with imminent military collapse in the West, Bolshevik-inspired mutiny in the navy, political upheaval and widespread social disorder at home, had instructed the delegates to accept all the armistice terms and end the war as quickly as possible when they arrived.

The second was an announcement from the Daily News House of Commons Lobby correspondent on Wednesday evening that the German delegates had now reached the front lines (British in some versions, French in others), been allowed to cross and were due to meet Marshal Foch during Thursday morning. The information had apparently reached Parliament “within a minute or two of . . . being received in official quarters”, and had brought members together “in the Lobby” to discuss this “new and dramatic situation”.⁶

Some papers printed the news the same evening, others the following day in their morning and early afternoon issues. But it was misinformation: the German delegates could not possibly have reached the Western Front (hundreds of miles away) so soon after leaving Berlin on Wednesday afternoon. They were still on their way and had many hours yet to go before they crossed into France on Thursday evening; their first meeting with Marshal Foch took place during the morning of Friday 8 November.

The misinformation also reached Canada during Wednesday 6th and the United States the same and the following day. For instance, The Washington Herald’s 7 November headlines, which were based on information received from Montreal and London, declared: “Enemy Emissaries Within British Line; Will Accept Armistice Terms”, while a bulletin from Toronto, under the heading “Armistice Already Signed, Shaughnessy”, announced that Lord Shaughnessy, the chairman of the board of directors of the Canadian Pacific Railway, had “received from London a private unofficial cable that Germany has signed armistice terms”. The German 6 November information about the armistice delegation was also on the front page.⁷

People in Britain, Canada, and the United States who became aware of these announcements no doubt took them to mean that the armistice with Germany would be signed very soon and the war would finally be over. And when just such news did break on Thursday afternoon, it was not, therefore, unanticipated. It was readily and widely accepted – all-the-more so in Britain because it came from Reuters, the highly regarded “news agency of the British Empire”. As the (London) Evening News observed the following day, the armistice news “was not a surprise because it was expected. Everyone believed it . . . we may fairly say it was not so much the wish being father to the thought as it was a reasonable anticipation of an event”. ⁸

In other words, the combination of a few published facts about the delegates’ Wednesday afternoon Berlin departure, some convincing suppositions about their instructions and progress, and erroneous news that the delegates arrived on Wednesday evening thus preceded the false armistice news on Thursday 7 November, and helped prepare the British and Allied publics for the False Armistice.

The Reuters False Armistice Bulletin: Its Release, Spread, and Retraction

Release

The false armistice news reached Britain from France. It arrived at the American Embassy in London sometime before 4 o’clock on Thursday afternoon (from US Navy Headquarters in Paris, or US Navy Headquarters in Brest, or both). Reuters acquired it and around 4:00 pm sent it – by telegram – to the Press Association and some of the London newspapers. The message was simply: “Reuter’s Agency is informed that according to official American information the armistice with Germany was signed at 2:30.” The Press Association then circulated it to its mostly provincial newspaper members who released it to the public, as did a few London papers.⁹

Spread

Armistice ‘extras’ and ‘specials’ (mostly already prepared in outline) reached the streets with remarkable speed, and the news spread rapidly thereafter, passed on by word-of-mouth, telephone, telegram, and workplace siren alerts. “Multitudes of people were thrilled by the story that the German envoys sent to Marshal Foch had actually signed the armistice terms laid down by the Allies”; even “the most obscure villages” received it.¹⁰

Retraction

However, no more than twenty minutes after the bulletin went out, Reuters sent a follow-on message urging the newspapers, without explanation, to “suppress” it. A little later, a communiqué from the Foreign Office warned that “up to 3.30” it had received no information about the signing of an armistice with Germany, and advised the press not to give “credence” to the armistice news until “an authoritative statement” had been made.¹¹

The warning did not deny that a German armistice had been signed, only that there was no official confirmation of one having been signed. Later in the evening, however, the Press Association circulated unambiguous official denials which offered insights into the current situation, though not location, of the German delegation: “at 4 o’clock this afternoon the German emissaries had not even reached the French lines”; and “up to five o’clock the German representatives had not even presented themselves to ascertain from Marshal Foch the Allies’ terms”. In other words, the armistice news was definitely “not in accordance with fact”.¹¹Anyone recalling the earlier report that the armistice delegation had crossed the lines on Wednesday evening would have realized now that it too had been totally untrue.

Neither Reuters’ retraction nor the Foreign Office warning, however, stopped the false news spreading: “it was absolutely impossible”, the Gloucestershire Echo remarked, “to overtake tidings for which everyone was waiting with so much anxiety”.¹⁰And by early evening, it had reached most parts of Britain.

FALSE ARMISTICE DAY IN ENGLAND, SOUTH WALES, AND SCOTLAND

At the time, circumstances in Britain were hardly conducive to widespread spontaneous celebrations in response to Reuters’ armistice bulletin. The ‘Spanish flu’ pandemic was debilitating millions, and killing thousands of the population; in some places it closed theatres, dance halls, churches, and cinemas, although most public houses and music halls carried on regardless. When the news broke, it was already becoming dark and there was thick November fog in some parts of the country. But under Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) regulations and other wartime restrictions, main roads, streets, and town centres were poorly lit in the late afternoons and evenings. And many activities that usually featured in peace celebrations were prohibited. For example, lighting bonfires, setting off fireworks, ringing church bells and making loud noises had not been allowed since the start of the war, while regulations about the use of lights inside and outside buildings were introduced later.⁵⁰

When the news broke just after 4:00 pm, public houses and bars in hotels and clubs were closed and, depending upon the local licensing rules, would not be open until 6:00 pm or 6:30 pm, and then for only two or three hours. When they did open, most would have been unheated or under-heated owing to a severe shortage of coal (despite coal-rationing) affecting all parts of the country. Beer and spirits were in short supply because of wartime reductions in output, and their alcoholic strength lowered to curb intoxication, while steep increases in duties had raised prices to unprecedented levels. To top it all, customers were not permitted to buy drinks on credit or to treat others to a drink.

And yet the news prompted “jubilation” all over Britain. Ignoring flu advice about avoiding crowds, people filled the gloomy streets and dismal pubs and took risks with DORA to enliven their celebrations. Some newspapers infringed regulations by disclosing that large numbers of Allied servicemen from local bases took part in the revelries. And even after the official refutations began to spread, many people refused to go home. Convinced that the armistice news was “only premature” and “hostilities would quickly cease”, they lingered late into the night hoping for confirmation that the war was over.¹² As the Bristol-based Western Daily Press told its readers, “everybody believed the original story, and no denials, however emphatic, would have killed the belief in it”.¹³

IN ENGLAND

London and the South East

London was “filled” with “manifestly premature” peace rumours on 7 November, the Times newspaper remarked the following day; rumours which had caused “great excitement” throughout the capital, with newspaper vendors being “literally stormed” by crowds wanting to learn what was happening, according to the London correspondent of the Plymouth Western Morning News.¹⁴

The news entered Parliament “almost immediately after questions [in the House of Commons]”, the Westminster Gazette stated, and “for the rest of the day the House was but scantily attended, as members were waiting about to gain confirmation of a story which spread rapidly through London.” On the whole, the MPs reacted “calmly” to the news.¹⁵

But “in the streets, hotels, and theatres” it “caused many scenes”. Its arrival “at one West End hotel . . . interrupted tea in the crowded palm lounge, the band played ‘God Save the King,’ the guests, many officers among them, sang it, and the band struck up a victory march”. There were similar scenes “in the theatres”, while in clubs “younger and more frivolous members, in blue and khaki, long before 6.30 endeavoured to persuade the waiters to bring them refreshment, as ‘Germany had surrendered,’ and waitresses were asked for pre-war teas, with plenty of sugar and cream and lots of toast with the butter spread in pre-war fashion”. ⁸

Describing scenes in central London that evening, the Derby Daily Telegraph’s correspondent sent the following graphic account for the Friday issue:

“The rumour . . . spread through London from lip to lip early last night with amazing rapidity. Vast crowds from the Government offices in Whitehall heard it as they left business, and an unparalleled rush was made for the newspaper ‘pitches’. Within five minutes every paper on sale had been snapped up, and men stood empty-handed until fresh piles arrived. Then a great struggling mob almost fought for copies. The men ladled them out as fast as they could pick them up, giving no change. Supplies had been doubled or trebled, but they were quickly exhausted. Soldiers were conspicuous among the purchasers. A dark, thick November fog almost blotted London out of view, but people gathered round the street lamps to read what was said about the armistice and the story of the German naval mutiny.”¹⁶

Tension in the capital was “very great”, according to the Manchester Guardian correspondent. “Women weeping, men running, and in every stores or office that one went into the whole place seemed suddenly to have become vocal. It was an extraordinary change after the general quietude of these places in the war.” The news was perhaps “too big even for Whitehall”, where “in official quarters” the tension “took the form of silence and waiting, for no one liked to prophesy”.¹⁷

Later editions of papers provoked even “greater scenes of excitement”; but in these “all there was to read was that the report had been cancelled”.¹⁸

The London Globe had quickly bulletined the news in its window and attracted large numbers of cheering people. It and the “Evening News rushed out special editions which were on the streets in a surprisingly short time and were eagerly snapped up”; but these contained no more information “than was in the bulletin”. A few minutes later, the bulletin was taken down, and both the Globe and Evening News called in their ‘specials’.¹⁹ They sent out “messengers . . . in cars and on cycles to recover [them] – or such of them as had not been sold, at quite uncontrolled prices, to eager buyers”.¹⁵

The Globe explained in its “Final Night Edition” of 7 November that the armistice story, supposedly based on “official authority”, was no more than a rumour that had reached “a Foreign Embassy in London”. It now pointed out that, “geographically”, the German delegation could not “yet have met Marshal Foch and . . . capitulated”, something it and many other papers had evidently not considered until the Foreign Office issued its warning. The next day, ignoring its effects in London and other parts of Britain, the paper told of “extraordinary demonstrations” occurring in New York and Washington after the false news arrived in the United States.²⁰

London’s False Armistice lasted only a short time; but while it did the “more volatile Southerner” certainly “began to let himself go” according to one Lancashire paper.²¹A “moment of excitement” producing “a flash of rejoicing” is how one London resident described it. Obviously disappointing, it nevertheless lifted Londoners’ spirits and boosted their morale: it had the “effect of stirring the sluggish pulse of the people” who now “walk more briskly and exchange light hearted banter as they jostle each other”.¹⁹

Elsewhere in the South East, the news reached at least two aerodromes: one in the Hounslow area of West London; the other in the Manston area of Kent.

In Hounslow, American airmen training at Hounslow Heath Aerodrome created a “hot time” for the local residents. During the afternoon, “through their own official wire”, they received information about the success of General Pershing’s forces at Sedan, followed a short time later by the armistice news. A “strong contingent” decided to “wake up the district” – which they “did effectually”. To the “intense entertainment” of the local people – who came out “in force” to witness the spectacle – the “Yankee visitors in khaki” paraded around the town centre with flags, drums, fifes and bugles, playing “all kinds of music”.²²

Meanwhile, servicemen at the Manston RAF aerodrome in Kent were also celebrating. Here, however, the festivities were confined to the camp and became distinctly unruly. The armistice news undermined discipline among the Observer School servicemen there: orders from officers were ignored, beer was stolen from the base canteen, taken away and drunk in the huts. Order was not restored until the following day, when the men stopped behaving “like beasts”.²³

The South West

Papers printed the false armistice news in Gloucestershire, Devon and most likely other parts of the region.

The Gloucestershire Echo “at once circulated [it] widely” in a special “stop-press edition”, but did not subsequently say how the armistice message and then its retraction affected people in Gloucester itself and other urban areas in the county. But its following day’s edition spoke of revelries throughout Thursday night in the market town of Stroud, a few miles south-east of Gloucester in the Cotswold Hills. The celebrating here was mostly the work of Australian Flying Corps servicemen from an aerodrome near to the village of Minchinhampton.

The servicemen celebrated the peace news by travelling down to Stroud. According to the Echo, the townspeople’s “customary equilibrium” had not been disturbed by the arrival of the armistice news in the afternoon; but “wild scenes” followed later in the evening when about two hundred Australians “invaded” with their band. Apart from “several members of the fairer sex”, most of the locals apparently took no part in the celebration, whose “lively din” carried on until early the next morning.²⁴

In its Saturday 9 November issue, the weekly Gloucestershire Chronicle – “The County Conservative Organ” – noted that armistice “rumours were current in Gloucester on Thursday afternoon” but had been “quickly blown into thin air” (by the official denials), and congratulated the public for reacting with “wholly admirable calmness”. It is not clear, however, whether “admirable calmness” was here referring specifically to the people of Gloucester’s behaviour on 7 November, because this particular Chronicle item seems to be taken from a wholly inaccurate short statement in the Daily Mail’s Friday 8 November London issue alleging a national “indifference” to Thursday’s false news.²⁵

How the armistice news affected people in Gloucestershire as a whole, therefore, is unclear. But farther to the south-west, the port of Plymouth’s two sister newspapers gave quite detailed accounts of what happened there, in the cathedral city of Exeter, in other parts of Devon, and in parts of Cornwall.

The Western Morning News explained that the Reuters bulletin reached Exeter not long after 4:00 pm and spread “like wildfire”; the “greatness of the news” at first “[overwhelming] the people”. Large crowds soon gathered in the main streets, “parties of children paraded, singing patriotic airs” and a general “good humour prevailed”. But proposals to ring the cathedral bells were “very discreetly” turned down by “the authorities”, who wanted “official confirmation” of the news first.

The crowds grew as the evening wore on, though they had by then stopped celebrating. Waiting in the dark “for two or three hours”, they were hoping for some delayed official confirmation that the armistice news was true after all. Eventually, the newspaper posted the official denial in its windows. People received it “in an admirable spirit of patience”.²⁶

Plymouth, to the south-west of Exeter, witnessed similar scenes. “All classes of the community flocked to the centre of the town” on hearing the news. Crowds surrounded the newspaper building “in the afternoon and throughout the evening” hoping for more information; traffic was disrupted and “almost impossible”; but there was “general good humour”, the “attitude . . . one of pleasant anticipation”. A “further unconfirmed [armistice-signed] report” and another “subsequent contradiction” arrived “about 10 o’clock”; the crowds greeting the report “with great enthusiasm” and considering its contradiction to be “merely a postponement”.²⁷

From the town centre, people would have been aware of what was going on a short distance away in Devonport, the harbour and Royal Navy Dockyard area of Plymouth, where the news was being celebrated very loudly. Vessels in the harbour set off their sirens and hooters and discharged “rockets”. Convinced the news was true, those with the authority here did allow the church bells to be rung, adding to the “general din”. High spirits prevailed, particularly “at the places of amusement” where there was hearty singing of patriotic songs. Warnings that the peace news was unconfirmed were eventually circulated, but people refused to believe them and “openly derided” them.²⁶How long into the night Devonport and the rest of the town carried on celebrating was not noted.

According to the Western Evening Herald, in addition to the armistice news, rumours had also reached Plymouth that the German High Seas Fleet had surrendered. “The crowds hummed like hives of bees beneath the newspaper windows . . . . The telephones hardly ceased wanting to know for many hours, calls coming from [several named places around Devon and Cornwall] not to speak of local and Service rings. But there was no foundation for what they wanted to hear, and some were inclined to discuss and argue the matter, so certain were they.”²⁸

The Midlands and the North

Local papers around the industrial Midlands and North of England record that the armistice news arrived in Birmingham, Blackburn, Derby, Hartlepool, Huddersfield, Hull, Leeds, Liverpool, Nantwich, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Rochdale, Sheffield, and Stoke-on-Trent. But information about what happened in the region on 7 November is sparse.

In the West Midlands, for instance, Birmingham papers offered just brief allusions such as: “the events of yesterday” and “the spread of unofficial reports”; “yesterday rumour had another field day”; and “there was a false alarm yesterday afternoon”.²⁹How people reacted to the news – whether they left their homes and workplaces to fill the streets and towns, started celebrating, or just took it all calmly and awaited further information – was not covered.

In the East Midlands, the Derby Daily Telegraph, providing a little more information, recounted that the Reuters message – “the great hoax” – had “gripped the town and spread like a prairie fire” in a matter of minutes. People clamoured for newspapers “as they will probably never clamour for them again”. And later, when they heard the peace news had been denied, they refused to accept that the war was not over and “laughed at” the contradictory messages which then “had to be withdrawn from circulation”. For the people of Derby, the newspaper felt the whole affair had been “a very disagreeable . . . very bitter experience”.³⁰

In the North West, the news arrived in Nantwich (in Cheshire) and in Liverpool just as the local newspapers were putting together their Friday 8 November editions. From Liverpool, it spread to Prestatyn, in North Wales, where “there were rumours about the town on Thursday night that an armistice had been signed, but Friday’s news gave a denial”. The Northern Daily Telegraph, with a 7 November headline “Grand News If True”, cautiously informed Blackburn, in Lancashire, that the war was over if “the News which reaches us this evening is correct”. And it spread quickly around Rochdale where, despite “a sense of intense relief at the thought that the long-drawn-out agony was over”, the rejoicing that greeted the news was “of a subdued order”.³¹

In the North East, it “obtained wide currency” in Newcastle-upon-Tyne; was released in Hartlepool just before the arrival of the follow-on cancellation; and confirmed rumours which the Sheffield-based Yorkshire Telegraph and Star claimed had been “flying about very freely in the earlier part of the day”. Ignoring the excitement it must have caused in Huddersfield and its surroundings, the local Daily Examiner called the armistice news just another “lying jade”. Thick fog in Leeds helps explain the absence of newspaper references to any outdoor gatherings and excitement there. The Hull Daily Mail carried the news in its late afternoon edition of 7 November but said nothing about its effects on the city and port. It did, however, tell readers how similar news had affected people in New York and Washington, DC, and urged them to wait for an official peace bulletin from the Government “before permitting themselves to rejoice”.³²

IN SOUTH WALES

As it “swept over the whole of South Wales” on 7 November, the Reuters bulletin caused a “great wave of delirious delight, reminiscent of the Mafficking revelry of the Boer War days”. In Cardiff (not yet Wales’s capital city), a “long-sustained blast at 4.30 p.m.” on the siren of the local Evening Express newspaper suddenly alerted the city, and almost immediately a special edition of the paper, carrying the message in its “Stop Press”, went on sale in the streets. There was “an eager rush” to buy copies.

As the news spread, “thousands of people poured into the city” from the suburbs, on foot and by tramcar, in an “ever-increasing throng of revellers”. Cheering, singing, flag-waving people, noisy processions and parades soon filled the centre and main streets, while at least two bands played patriotic music and “popular refrains”. Servicemen – “Doughboys, Tommies, and all in naval or military uniforms” – were cheered and “ovated”. The “Yanks” in particular “became prominent among the street revellers” and a number of American officers, driving around in a motorcar, delighted the crowds with renditions of “Oh Johnny” (a popular American song of the time).

It is not clear when the Cardiff papers received the warnings about the armistice message or when they made them known to the crowds. But a meeting of the Trades and Labour Council that evening accepted the news as being “official”. And as “the evening wore on” people continued to throng the streets. Indeed, there were “great crowds” in the city centre “until a late hour”, especially in the vicinity of the Angel Hotel which housed the US Navy Headquarters and had been renamed the USS Chatinouka.³³

By this time, however, the crowds were hanging on mainly in the hope of hearing confirmation from the Americans that the armistice news was true and the war was indeed over. Even “the most authoritative circles in London”, the Western Mail claimed to have been told, were expecting “good news” and regarded the situation as “hopeful” until quite a “late hour on Thursday evening”.

Similar “peace celebrations” occurred in “all the principal centres in South Wales”. In Abergavenny, ignoring the chief-constable’s threat to prosecute him, the local mayor ordered the church bells to be rung “to proclaim the armistice”. In the Rhondda Valleys, to the sounds of hundreds of “sirens and hooters”, masses of people “jubilating to their hearts’ content” gathered outside and marched around “all the evening through”. In Merthyr Tydfil “detonators” were discharged as cheering crowds awaited the arrival of the “late paper train”; in Neath, where “huge crowds filled the streets”, rockets were produced and fired into the air and “even a few ancient cannon were discharged”; while in the coal mining area of Ystalyfera, to the north of Neath, someone brought out fireworks and set them off, creating “such excitement” as had not been shown “since the relief of Mafeking”. With huge processions and bands, and “the hostelries [everywhere] well patronised”, Britonferry, Skewen, Llanelly, the Mumbles and “many other places” were “en fete”.³⁴

The weekly Merthyr Express, published on Saturdays, related on 9 November how the armistice news “seemed to fly on the wings of the wind” and caused “great excitement” in Merthyr, where “seldom on a fine Thursday afternoon have the streets of the old town been so thronged . . . both old and young in their faces showed that they had big expectations”. And how, at “about 5 o’clock p.m.”, the newspaper received confirmation of the news by telephone from “the Cardiff [Coal] Exchange” that the “German Parliamentaires had signed the armistice at 2.30 [that afternoon]. It is effectually unconditional capitulation”. However, because nobody seems to have informed the newspaper of the official denials of the armistice news before the 9 November issue was printed for circulation, incredibly, the coverage went on to affirm that there is “Peace Once More” and “now we can breathe freely . . . . The multitude’s big expectations have been realised.” And the paper’s editorial on the following page, under “Glad Tidings of Great Joy”, declared that “the last long step towards peace has been taken by Germany. She has signed the armistice proffered by the Allies.” (It is easy to imagine how some readers reacted.) The following week’s edition completely ignored the 9 November error, and gave readers a two-page feature about Monday 11 November’s Real Armistice.³⁵

In Swansea, further west along the coast from Cardiff, there was virtually no celebrating. If the Cambria Daily Leader and the town’s other local newspaper, the South Wales Evening Post, are to be believed, Swansea was the regional exception: most people there remained calm about the armistice news and kept their “sanity” on 7 November, thanks largely to the two newspapers’ effective containment of the Reuters bulletin.

The Daily Leader received the armistice news not long after 4:15 pm, rushed out “a few dozen” issues announcing it before Reuters’ follow-on telegram arrived, and then promptly halted the distribution. All but seven of the armistice-signed papers were eventually retrieved. In a “happy circumstance”, the South Wales Evening Post was able to cancel its impending publication of the news as soon as it received Reuters’ retraction; and immediately circulated the Foreign Office warnings when these arrived around 5:30 pm.³⁶

By this account, therefore, the two Swansea papers managed to forestall any widespread dissemination of the false armistice news from their own editions. But they were unable to prevent Cardiff papers (presumably the South Wales Echo and Evening Express) spreading it around the town “for hours after we knew of the contradiction . . . giving a message we knew to be untrue”. The reason, the Daily Leader suggested dryly, was that for the Cardiff papers “the interval of time between the receipt of the [Reuters] message and the order to stop it was greater [than] with some other journals”.³⁶

For most people, their “general disposition was to remain calm and doubting”: there was “some very mild mafficking on the part of little bodies of juveniles”, but “the elders” showed commendable “restraint”. And on the whole, Swansea avoided the “bitter disappointment” that “other parts of Wales” experienced at having been so “misinformed”.³⁶

As well as the peace celebrations on 7 November, South Wales newspapers drew attention to what were considered to be serious economic consequences of the Reuters armistice bulletin. For, as the news spread, people not only left their homes to celebrate but also their workplaces. In “scores of shops, factories, and works of all descriptions” they “downed tools”, disrupting whatever productive activities they were engaged in.

At the Dowlais iron and steel works, close to the docks in Cardiff, “the furnaces were allowed to go out”, reducing output there “for some days”. In “the several works” at Neath, “labour was immediately suspended”; and in Newport and elsewhere night shifts were cancelled “in many industrial concerns”. The following day – Friday – miners from “the Main and other collieries around Skewen and Neath Abbey” stayed at home and works in Britonferry were “still idle”. The effect on coal production was “particularly serious”, in the opinion of the Daily Leader, “in view of the already grave [national] shortage of coal”. The Ministry of Shipping agreed, blaming Reuters’ armistice announcement “in certain Cardiff newspapers” for the loss of “about 50,000 tons of coal” for export shipment at a time of “serious arrears on all coal programmes”.³⁷

It is highly likely that similar disruption and losses also occurred in England and Scotland as a result of the false armistice news. But newspapers in the industrial Midlands and the North gave little information about anything that happened there on 7 November to do with the False Armistice (as noted). And papers in Scotland (below) may also have been reluctant to mention it. Reported or not, the economic consequences were a major reason why Reuters and the Press Association subsequently faced prosecution for releasing the false armistice bulletin to the papers.

IN SCOTLAND

In Scotland’s capital, the Reuters bulletin caused “a tremendous sensation” and the Edinburgh Evening News lost “not a moment in publishing it”. But as in other places, almost as soon as the news started selling on the streets, “instructions arrived to cancel [it]”. Whether there were peace celebrations in the city, neither it nor the Scotsman (also published in Edinburgh) said; but both described how the news affected the United States when it arrived there the same day.³⁸

The town of Falkirk, about thirty miles north-west of Edinburgh, was gripped “very badly” by the “peace-declared fever”. The evening newspapers’ arrival failed to “kill the canard”, the rumour persisted, and “an air of expectancy” kept many people in the poorly lit streets waiting in vain for an official confirmation of the end of the war. But any celebrations that occurred there are not mentioned. In Motherwell, south-west of the capital and a few miles south-east of Glasgow, the local weekly paper noted, without any elaboration, that the armistice news had arrived just as workmen were finishing for the day and “was received everywhere with the greatest enthusiasm”.³⁹

Across the Firth of Forth, the “absurd rumour” circulated late into the night in Kirkcaldy and Burntisland, and the “curious went to bed wondering if [the morning] newspapers would contain anything substantial”. While (not made known at the time) the armistice news had also spread to warships of the Grand Fleet stationed at Rosyth.⁴⁰

In Aberdeen, on the coast far to the north-east of Edinburgh and Glasgow, the local paper rushed out a special edition announcing the armistice news, which then spread “throughout the whole city” before it was able to print the Foreign Office warning about it. By then, people had “entered enthusiastically into rejoicings over [the] end of hostilities”, though there was also “a certain disappointment” that the Germans would escape “the horrors of invasion and the terrifying air warfare” a prolongation of the war would mean for them. The general excitement “ran high” well into the evening as people “thronged” the streets and crowded around the newspaper offices in Broad Street waiting for more information. When news did arrive – “shortly after nine o’clock” – it was that the German armistice delegation had not yet arrived at the front lines. Even then some waited “until close on midnight . . . on the off-chance of hearing later news”, before finally accepting the disappointment “philosophically”.⁴¹

In Glasgow, about forty-seven miles south-west of Edinburgh, the city’s Daily Record and Mail said very little about how people reacted on 7 November, only that neither the Reuters message nor its “rectification” had caused “any appreciable demonstration in the large centres of population”. It considered that most people viewed the news not as “perverted”, but as being “premature”: an “intelligent anticipation” of “the inevitable and triumphant end” just a few days away. All of which, it concluded, provided yet another “proof” of “our national phlegm”.⁴²

Several other papers promoted the idea of the False Armistice as a rehearsal for what they decided was a rapidly approaching genuine one. But many complained that the British public had been needlessly misled, their hopes and spirits raised one minute only to be dashed the next. Publication of the false armistice news, they asserted, was a “piece of very bad work” about which people had every “right to be affronted”.⁴³ And they were quick to name who they assumed was to blame for what had happened.

BLAME FOR THE FALSE ARMISTICE IN BRITAIN

At the time, when the US Army was fully engaged in the Allied offensive forcing the Germans back along the whole Western Front, any explicit public criticism of the Americans over the false armistice message would have been unthinkable. Indeed, regardless of circumstances, adverse press comments about the actions of any of Britain’s Allies would have been considered disloyal. They would presumably also have displeased the censors.

Newspapers therefore refrained from asking probing questions about the source of the armistice message. The most a few said about it were brief remarks such as “the report emanated from the American Embassy in London”; “the original statement was inaccurate and was due to a mistake at the Embassies”; “[it] was a misunderstanding of a message in high American quarters [in London]”; and “how the alleged ‘official’ American message got out remains for the present a mystery.”Most, however, avoided mentioning it.⁴⁴

Reuters’ part in the events surprised many papers. As two Scottish ones put it, “the most reliable foreign news agency in the world” had been associated with “an erroneous message on a matter of such momentous concern”.⁴⁵ But they did not criticize it for releasing the American news. Rather, Reuters’ sound reputation, affirmed by many papers, served for some to justify their own readiness to rush the bulletin into print. As the Yorkshire Telegraph and Star explained, the bulletin “seemed to us, and to anyone familiar with dealing with news, to be absolutely reliable, and on the strength of this [we published it]. We regret that any of our readers should have been misinformed through us, but really this was not our fault.”⁴⁶

It was taken for granted that the fault lay, not with Reuters, but with the Official Press Bureau in London, the country’s wartime censors, who were readily accused of being responsible for what had happened on 7 November. The “false alarm yesterday afternoon,” declared the Birmingham Daily Gazette, “is blameable to the stupidity of the Press Bureau.” Their “ineptness”, the Western Times implied, was the reason the so-called “official American message” had been “put on the wire” in the first place.⁴⁷Taking it for granted that the armistice news had “passed the official censorship”, they concluded that the Bureau must have approved it for publication without bothering to confirm it with the Foreign Office or War Office.⁴⁸

The Press Bureau censors, however, had not blundered. As it happened, they did not see the armistice bulletin before Reuters telegraphed it to the Press Association. Entirely legitimately under the wartime so-called ‘voluntary press censorship’, Reuters issued the news without first submitting it to the censors for approval.

Nevertheless, in a normal course of events on 7 November the censors would still have received the unsubmitted bulletin before it went out, checked its details, found them to be wrong and blocked its publication. And there would have been no False Armistice in Britain. This is because, under the cable censorship regulations, press telegrams sent within the country from one newspaper to another, containing information specifically about the war, had to be diverted by Post Office Telegraph Service clerks to the cable censors at the Official Press Bureau.

The telegram from Reuters to the Press Association was a press telegram; the message it carried was clearly about the war. It should therefore have been forwarded straight to the censors. But it was not. Instead, clerks at the Central Telegraph Office in London immediately transmitted it, and Reuters’ American Embassy armistice misinformation thus bypassed the Official Press Bureau.

Had the news been true, Reuters and the Press Association would have enjoyed a memorable scoop over their rivals; as it was, by circulating what turned out to be false war news they broke DORA Regulation 27 prohibiting the publication of “false reports” or “false statements”. This, and the adverse effects on industrial production attributable to it, led the directors of the Press Bureau to refer the two agencies to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP). He in turn referred them to the Attorney-General. But it was eventually decided not to take the agencies to court, and Reuters and the Press Association were thus spared prosecution. Instead, the DPP formally rebuked both of them for what they had done.

For its Telegraph Service clerks’ crucially important failure to divert the Reuters bulletin for censorship on 7 November, the Post Office received a letter of complaint from the Press Bureau directors.

To the editors of newspapers that had published its bulletin on 7 November, Reuters’ manager wrote a “strictly private & confidential” letter the following month setting out what had happened. He assured them that the agency had “acted in entire good faith” but, he confided, it had been “misled” by “American authorities [who] were in the same position”.⁴⁹

ENDNOTES

1. Arthur Hornblow, ‘The Amazing Armistice. Inside Story of the Premature Peace Report.’ Century Magazine, November 1921, p15. (USA). Hornblow was stationed in Brest (France) in November 1918.

2. Stanley Weintraub, A Stillness Heard Round the World. The End of the Great War: November 1918, p38. (USA 1985). His account of the False Armistice in the opening chapter of his book is the first by a professional historian. It deals with various aspects of the story, drawing extensively on a range of sources.

3. Nicholas Best, The Greatest Day in History. How the Great War Really Ended, p71. (London. 2008).

4. Unless stated otherwise, the digitised newspaper pages cited below were accessed through the British Newspaper Archive (BNA). http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk

The exceptions, separately referenced, were accessed from: the National Library of Wales (NLW) online newspaper collection (Welsh Newspapers Online ). http://www.newspapers.library.wales

Gale Cengage Learning websites (Gale) http://www.gale.com

A list of copyright statements for the newspapers cited follows these ENDNOTES.

5. For example, the South Wales Daily Post Final Edition of 6 November 1918 announced in its front page Stop Press: “GERMAN PEACE DELEGATION LEAVES FOR THE FRONT. A P.A. REUTER’S AMSTERDAM MESSAGE SAYS THAT ACCORDING TO A BERLIN TELEGRAM A GERMAN DELEGATION TO CONCLUDE AN ARMISTICE AND TAKE UP PEACE NEGOTIATIONS HAS LEFT BERLIN FOR THE WESTERN FRONT.”

6. The Western Mail (Cardiff), 7 November 1918, p2, under ‘LONDON LETTER’; and p3 under ‘ARMISTICE DELEGATES CROSS THE ALLIED LINES’. The South Wales Daily Post, Thursday, November 7, 1918, p3, under “SEVENTY-EIGHT HOURS TO DECIDE”. The Daily News (London and Manchester), 7 November 1918, front page under ‘GERMAN ARMISTICE ENVOYS’. The Staffordshire Sentinel, Thursday, November 7, 1918, under ‘LONDON, Thursday [7], 11 45 a.m.’, p3. Daily Express, London, Thursday, November 7, 1918, front page, under “ARMISTICE DELEGATES IN THE ALLIED LINES”. The British Parliamentary Archives seem not to contain any records of the receipt of the Wednesday evening report or its discussion in the Lobbies (result of an enquiry by the writer in March 2017).

7. The Washington Herald, Thursday, November 7, 1918, front page. Available online through the US Library of Congress Chronicling America portal. (Copyright statement: “The Library of Congress believes that the newspapers in Chronicling America are in the public domain or have no known copyright restrictions. Newspapers published in the United States more than 95 years ago are in the public domain in their entirety.”)

8. The Evening News (London), Friday, November 8, 1918, page 2, under‘OFFICIAL RUMOUR’, and ‘DIARY OF A MAN ABOUT TOWN’, ‘The Armistice Rumour’ and ‘Puzzling the Wives’. By November 1918, like some other foodstuffs, milk, sugar, tea, jam, butter, margarine, cheese, and lard were all rationed.

9. For a more detailed account of how Reuters obtained the news see A False Armistice Cablegram to the American Embassy in Britain in the website article ‘False Armistice Cablegrams from France’.

10. The Bristol Times and Mirror, 8 November 1918, p2 under ‘ARMISTICE OR REVOLUTION?’; The Gloucestershire Echo, 8 November 1918, p4 under ‘PREMATURE ANNOUNCEMENT CAUSES WILD EXCITEMENT’.

11. The Evening Express (Aberdeen), 7 November 1918, p3 under ‘STOP PRESS NEWS’; and 8 November, p3 under ‘REUTER EXPLAINS’. For a more detailed account of these events see, James Smith, ‘Reuters and the False Armistice of 7 November 1918’. The Baron, Archives. 6 April 2017.

http://www.thebaron.info/archives/reuters-and-the-false-armistice-of-7-november-1918

12. The Northampton Mercury, 8 November 1918, p5 under ‘CLOSE TO THE END’.

13. The Western Daily Press, 8 November 1918, p3 under ‘LONDON LETTER’.

14. The (London) Times, 8 November 1918, p7 under ‘Suspense’; and the Western Morning News, 8 November 1918, p4 under ‘OUR LONDON CORRESPONDENT’.

15. The Westminster Gazette, 8 November 1918, p3 under ‘Our London Letter’.

16. The Derby Daily Telegraph, 8 November 1918, p3 under ‘Scenes in the Street’.

17. The Huddersfield Daily Examiner, 8 November 1918, p2 under ‘DAILY JOTTINGS’.

18. The Western Morning News, 8 November 1918, p4 under ‘OUR LONDON CORRESPONDENT’.

19. Alice Z. Snyder and Milton V. Snyder, Paris Days and London Nights. ‘Letter CLXXII, London, November 7, 1918’, pp367-368. (New York. 1921)

20. The Globe, 7 November 1918, p1 under ‘NO SURRENDER YET’; and 8 November 1918, p4 under ‘A LITTLE TOO SOON’.

21. The Rochdale Observer, 9 November 1918, p4 under ‘NOTES AND COMMENTS’.

22. The Middlesex Chronicle, 9 November 1918, p7 under ‘VICTORY CAKE-WALK’. The newspaper did not divulge that the Americans were airmen from a local aerodrome.

23. Stanley Weintraub, A Stillness Heard Round the World, p24. (New York. 1985). The information is from a letter, dated 8 March 1978, written by E. E. Seeder to Alan Haydock “of the BBC”. ‘Chapter Notes’, p 427.

24. The Gloucestershire Echo, 7 November 1918, p4 under ‘REPORTED SIGNING OF ARMISTICE’; and 8 November 1918, p4 under ‘ARMISTICE CELEBRATION AT STROUD’. The Australians were airmen from the nearby Minchinhampton airbase. For some background details, see ‘Minchinhampton Aerodrome in 1918 and Curzon Felix Hamel’ at https://community.stroud.gov.uk

25. The Gloucestershire Chronicle, 9 November 1918, p4 under ‘CITY & COUNTY NOTES’; and the Daily Mail, 8 November 1918, p2 under ’THE WHITE FLAG PARTY’.

26. The Western Morning News, 8 November 1918, p5 under ‘RUMOURS NOT CONFIRMED. EXETER AND PLYMOUTH SCENES’.

27. Same. It is possible the “10 o‘clock” error arose from another confusion arising from confirmed news that the German delegation had finally crossed the French lines during the late evening.

28. The Western Evening Herald, Friday November 8, 1918, p3 under ‘Notes of the day’.

29. The Birmingham Mail, 8 November 1918, p2 under ‘Waiting Patiently’; the Birmingham Post, 8 November 1918, p4 under ‘Waiting for the End’; and the Birmingham Gazette, 8 November 1918, p2 under ‘WAITING FOR THE EVENT’.

30. The Derby Daily Telegraph, 8 November 1918, p2 under ‘NOTES ON CURRENT EVENTS. The Great Hoax’.

31. The (Nantwich) Guardian, 8 November 1918, p4 under ‘THE FINAL PHASE’; Liverpool Daily Post And Mercury, 8 November 1918, p4 under ‘The Armistice Rumour’; the Prestatyn Weekly, Saturday, November 9, 1928, front page under ‘IS IT PEACE?’; the Northern Daily Telegraph, 7 November 1918, cited here from ‘How Blackburn Celebrated Armistice Day 1918’, cottontown.org. Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council digitisation project; the Rochdale Observer, 9 November 1918, p.4 under ‘NOTES AND COMMENTS’.

32. The Newcastle Daily Journal, 8 November 1918, p4 under ‘GERMANY’S FATEFUL HOUR’; the Northern Daily Mail (Hartlepool), 7 November 1918, p4 under ‘LATEST NEWS. THE ARMISTICE’; and the Yorkshire Telegraph and Star (Sheffield), 8 November 1918, p2 under ‘By the Way’. The Huddersfield Daily Examiner, 8 November 1918, p2 under ‘GERMANY IN EXTREMIS’. Fog in Leeds is mentioned in the Yorkshire Evening Post, 8 November 1918, p5 under ‘Leeds Tram Tragedy in the Fog’. The Daily Mail (Kingston upon Hull), 7 November 1918, p4 under ‘ARMISTICE REPORTED SIGNED’; and 8 November 1918, p2 under ‘THE DELEGATES ARRIVE’, and p4 under ‘A Premature Rejoicing’.

33. See ‘Cardiff Time Line’ http://www.cardiffians.co.uk

34. From the (Cardiff) Western Mail of 8 November 1918, p5 under ‘SOUTH WALES SCENES’, and 14 November 1918, p5 under ‘ABERGAVENNY BELLS’; the Cambria Daily Leader (Swansea), 8 November 1918, p2 under ‘SCENES IN THE DISTRICTS’; and Labour Voice Llais Llafur, 16 November 1918, p2 under ‘YSTALYFERA NOTES’.

35. The Merthyr Express, 9 November 1918, pp6-7; and 16 November 1918, pp7-8. (British Newspaper Archive)

36. The Cambria Daily Leader (Swansea), 8 November 1918, p2 under ‘THE CONTRADICTION’ and ‘FEELING AT SWANSEA’.

37. From the Western Mail (Cardiff), 8 November 1918, p5 under ‘PEACE CELEBRATIONS IN ALL PARTS’; and the Cambria Daily Leader (Swansea), 8 November 1918, p2 under ‘SCENES IN THE DISTRICTS’ and ‘THE CONSEQUENCES’. The Ministry of Shipping comments are quoted here from: The National Archives, HO [Home Office] 139-37-156 [021], letter dated 8 November 1918.

38. The Edinburgh Evening News, 8 November 1918, p4 under ‘THE REPORT IN EDINBURGH’ and ‘AMERICA AND THE RUMOUR’; and the Scotsman, 8 November 1918, p3 under ‘EXTRAORDINARY DEMONSTRATIONS IN NEW YORK’.

39. The Falkirk Herald, 9 November 1918, p2 under ‘JOTTINGS OF THE WEEK’; and the Motherwell Times, 8 November 1918, p5 under ‘Armistice Signed Yesterday’.

40. The (weekly) Fifeshire Advertiser, 9 November 1918, p3 under ‘BURNTISLAND NOTES AND NEWS’ and p4 under ‘THE END’ For detailed information about the Grand Fleet false armistice news, see Two British Naval Signals and Addendum in the website article ‘Roy Howard’s Search for Information about the False Armistice’.

41. From virtually identical items in the Aberdeen Daily Journal, 8 November 1918, p2 under ‘THE ARMISTICE RUMOUR’ and ‘Scenes in Aberdeen’; and the (Aberdeen) Evening Express, 8 November 1918, p2 under ‘Great Excitement in City Streets’.

42. The Daily Record and Mail (Glasgow), (“The All-Scotland Newspaper”), 8 November 1918, p4 under ‘THE OUTLOOK. PREMATURE’; and p5 under ‘ARMISTICE AT HAND’.

43. The Yorkshire Telegraph and Star (Sheffield), 8 November 1918, p2 under “By the Way”; and the Derby Daily Telegraph, 8 November 1918, p2 under ‘NOTES ON CURRENT EVENTS’.

44. The Edinburgh Evening News, 8 November 1918, p4 under ’YESTERDAY’S CURIOUS MUDDLE’; the Evening Despatch (Birmingham), 8 November 1918, p4 under ‘A MISTAKEN REPORT’; the Staffordshire Sentinel, 8 November 1918, p3 under ‘LAST NIGHT’S UNFOUNDED REPORT’ (quoting the Manchester Guardian’s London correspondent); and the Cambria Daily Leader(Swansea), 8 November 1918, p2 under ‘A MYSTERY MESSAGE’.

For a more detailed account of how Reuters obtained the news see, A False Armistice Cablegram to the American Embassy in Britain in the website article ‘False Armistice Cablegrams from France’.

45. The Evening Express (Aberdeen), 8 November 1918, p2 under ‘ARMISTICE REPORTS’; and the Edinburgh Evening News, 8 November 1918, p4 under ‘THE REPORT IN EDINBURGH’.

46. The Yorkshire Telegraph and Star, 8 November 1918, p2 under ‘By the Way’.

47. The Birmingham Daily Gazette, 8 November 1918, p2 under ‘WAITING FOR THE EVENT’; and the Western Times (Exeter), 8 November 1918, p12 under ‘ARMISTICE RUMOUR’.

48. The Edinburgh Evening News, 8 November 1918, p4 under ‘YESTERDAY’S CURIOUS MUDDLE’; the Birmingham Daily Gazette, 8 November 1918, p2 under ‘WAITING FOR THE EVENT’; and Derby Daily Telegraph, 8 November 1918, p2 under ‘The Great Hoax’.

49. For more about these events see James Smith, ‘The Press Censors and the Reuters Armistice Bulletin of 7 November 1918.’ In The Baron, Archives, 10 July 2017. http://www.thebaron.info/archives/the-press-censors-and-the-reuter-armistice-bulletin-of-7-november-1918

50. The Rev. Edgar Reeves, vicar of Little Walsingham (North Norfolk), appeared at the local Petty Sessions court of law on Monday 4 November to face two charges under the Defence of the Realm Act: first, that he allowed the lights in his church to show through “unscreened” windows, and an “unshaded” light to be placed outside on the church steps; and second, that he allowed the church bells to be rung during the evening, and the church clock to strike “throughout the night”. The offences had occurred on Sunday 13 October. The church lights would obviously have been visible to German aviators; and it was considered that the sound of the bells and clock could have been “audible at such a distance [and] capable of serving as a guide for hostile aircraft”. The local postmistress had given the vicar the news that Germany had accepted President Woodrow Wilson’s conditions for peace (the Fourteen Points), which he thought signified that the war was over and DORA Regulations no longer applied. The court fined him a total of 28 shillings (£1,8 shillings, the equivalent of around £68 in 2025 values according to the Bank of England Inflation Calculator). From the Norfolk Chronicle, Friday, November 8, 1918, p3, under ‘PREMATURE PEACE REJOICINGS. NORFOLK VICAR FINED’. The Eastern Daily Press featured the vicar’s case in its 10 November 2018 issue under “‘People poured into the streets decked with flags’: From Beccles to Thetford – how your town celebrated the 1918 armistice.” (Available online.)

Image Copyright Statements of Newspapers Cited

1. British Newspaper Archive. http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk

The Daily News, 7 November 1918. The Fifeshire Advertiser, 9 November 1918. The Globe, 7 & 8 November 1918. The Guardian (Nantwich), 8 November 1918. The Prestatyn Weekly, 9 November 1918.

The South Wales Daily Post 6 & 7 November 1918. The Staffordshire Sentinel, 7 & 8 November 1918. Bristol Times And Mirror, 8 November 1918. Western Evening Herald, 8 November 1918. Birmingham Mail, 8 November 1918. Liverpool Daily Post and Mercury, 8 November 1918.

The Western Mail (Cardiff), 7, 8, & 14 November 1918. Daily Record and Mail, 8 November 1918. Huddersfield Daily Examiner, 8 November 1918. Rochdale Observer, 9 November 1918. Middlesex Chronicle, 9 November 1918. Birmingham Daily Gazette, 8 November 1918. Birmingham Post, 8 November 1918. Birmingham Gazette, 8 November 1918. Rochdale Observer, 9 November 1918. Newcastle Daily Journal, 8 November 1918. The Daily Mail (Kingston upon Hull), 7 & 8 November 1918. The Merthyr Express, 9 & 16 November 1918. The (Glasgow) Daily Record and Mail, 8 November 1918. The Evening Despatch (Birmingham), 8 November 1918.

The Echo (Gloucestershire), 8 November 1918. Western Daily Press, 8 November 1918. Western Morning News, 8 November 1918. The Derby Daily Telegraph, 8 November 1918. Western Morning News, 8 November 1918. Gloucestershire Echo, 7 & 8 November 1918. Gloucestershire Chronicle, 9 November 1918. The Western Times (Exeter), 8 November 1918.

Evening News (London), 8 November 1918. The Westminster Gazette, 8 November 1918. Northern Daily Mail (Hartlepool), 7 November 1918. Yorkshire Telegraph and Star (Sheffield), 8 November 1918. The Norfolk Chronicle, 8 November 1918.

Evening Express (Aberdeen), 7 & 8 November 1918. Aberdeen Daily Journal, 8 November 1918.

The Northampton Mercury, 8 November 1918. Yorkshire Evening Post, 8 November 1918. Edinburgh Evening News, 8 November 1918. The Scotsman, 8 November 1918. Motherwell Times, 8 November 1918. Falkirk Herald, 9 November 1918.

2. The National Library of Wales (NLW) online newspaper collection (Welsh Newspapers Online ). http://www.newspapers.library.wales

The Cambria Daily Leader (Swansea), 8 November 1918. (NLW accompanying information: Copyright unknown. Later merged with the ‘South Wales Daily Post’ and ‘South Wales Evening Post‘.)

Labour Voice Llais Llafur, 16 November 1918. (Copyright unknown.)

3. Gale Cengage Learning. http://www.gale.com

The Daily Mail, 8 November 1918. (Daily Mail Historical Archive, 1898–2004).

The (London) Times, 8 November 1918. (The Times Digital Archive, 1785-2014).

Website copyright statement: “Gale Cengage’s historical newspaper archives, like British Library Newspapers and The Times Digital Archive, are generally under copyright, requiring permission for non-personal reproductions, but small quotations with proper attribution . . . are often permissible.”

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