This article is in three parts: first, a copy of the Report itself; second, an Analysis of the Report’s Findings; and third, Clarifying and Additional Information.
Part 1
False Report of Signing of Armistice
AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES,
November 9, 1918.
From: Asst. Chief of Staff, G-2, S.O.S.
To: Commanding General, S.O.S.
1. Report on the matter of the false information, given in many quarters as official throughout American circles that the Armistice terms had been signed on the morning of Thursday, November 7, is hereby made. At about eleven-thirty of this morning this office was in conversation over the telephone with Captain H.J. Whitehouse, Acting Director of the Liaison Service at No. 45, Avenue Montaigne, Paris. Captain Whitehouse stated that the Armistice had been signed. Surprise was expressed by this office, as well as doubt, but Captain Whitehouse stated that his information was absolutely reliable and authentic. A half hour later this office again rang up the liaison office, not having been able to get information from the French 2d Bureau that this was correct. The liaison office once more assured this office of the correctness of the statement that an Armistice had been signed that morning. It was felt, however, by the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, S.O.S., that it was incredible that this report, however authenticated, could be correct. For example, it would have seemed physically impossible for the German delegates to have left Berlin at the time wired, and, given the conditions of the railroads and war-destroyed traffic roads, to have reached the point designated in the French lines; and, as a matter of fact, the delegation did not reach the designated point until ten o’clock that night, and met the Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Forces at nine-fifteen the following morning. (‘Abbreviations Notes’ follow the Report.)
2. Meanwhile, G-2, S. O. S., between the first telephone messages from the liaison office, sent the following telegram to G. H. Q.: “Rumor stated by responsible parties to have been received from the Ministry of War states that German signed Armistice terms at ten o’clock this morning. This is sent with all reserve.” Headquarters S. O. S., Tours, was communicated with by telephone and given the information, but was informed by this office that despite the apparent authenticity, this rumor should be accepted with the greatest reserve.
3. At one o’clock on this day Major Warburton, Military Attache to the American Embassy, stated to the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, S. O. S., that he had received authentic information, and had sent a cable to Washington during the morning to the effect that the Armistice had been signed. There is reason to believe that he also was called up on the telephone by the liaison service. However, other departments did not treat the matter cautiously as did G-2; despite the fact that we answered all inquiries by stating that the Chief of the French 2d Bureau and the representatives of Marshal Foch in Paris both refused to confirm the rumor, it was nevertheless telegraphed to Brest, and it is believed to one or two other points. Having been sent as official, the French at Brest assumed that it was correct, and a celebration on a large scale ensued. There were celebrations at other points, notably at Le Mans, although there is much evidence to show that at this latter place the information came from French sources. Some members of the French Staff Departments undoubtedly telephoned the rumor to various banks in Paris, and it spread at a remarkable rate and was generally believed in Paris by all those who are apt to accept such information without question.
4. Investigation by this section reveals the fact that the liaison office obtained the information from a member of the staff of General Alby, Chief of the 2d Bureau. (This is Captain Stanton, representative of the liaison service.) He is accustomed to inform his chiefs in the liaison service of any information he may have picked up. In this case some reports stated that Captain de Cartusac had been the one to inform Captain Stanton of the liaison service. The liaison officer with the Chief of the 2d Bureau who gave the information to the Acting Director of the liaison service, and other sources, has been interviewed by this office. He states that as a part of his duty he had been accustomed to send any news he received whether informally or officially, to his liaison headquarters. In this case he states that he was told by the Chief of Cabinet of the Head of the 2d Bureau, but that he gave the message as all other messages of this type, unofficially and personally: he believed that it was true, but did not pass it along in any official sense. Messages from the French War Office were going out the entire day, stating to people the so-called news, and French officials originally circulated the rumor. These are the facts thus far ascertained by this office.
5. The matter seems to have assumed a more serious aspect as a result of the cables sent by the Naval and Military Attaches in Paris to the United States. It appears that all the American morning papers gave out as a fact the news that the Armistice had been signed, and that Washington has now cabled over for an investigation.
6. Vice Admiral Henry B. Wilson, Commanding U. S. Naval Forces in France, received this information from Captain Jackson, the Naval Attache, who has just been relieved by Rear Admiral Andrew T. Long, Naval Attache, Paris. The American Embassy, it appears, received the news also through the liaison service, which source was again traced to Captain Stanton. The latter states that in the absence of the Chief of Cabinet of the General in Command of the 2d Bureau, he answered the telephone and was talked to by M. Audibert, editor of the newspaper L‘Information. The latter stated that the Armistice had been signed. Captain Stanton repeated this to various French officials, merely as news, without stating it was official in any way. Immediately various members of the Ministry began telephoning it. The banks were also informed. The news spread quickly around France. For example, at Chartres at six o’clock in the afternoon it was reported semi-officially, and a celebration was held.
7. The Consul-General gave it out as a fact at the American Club luncheon, but had to retract afterwards. Captain Jackson, the American Naval Intelligence Officer in Paris, wired it as authentic to Admiral Wilson at Brest, who informed Roy Howard, head of the United Press, who cabled it to the newspapers of the United States. Major Warburton cabled it to the State Department and the War Department, but it did not get out to the press of the United States in this way.
8. From the information received by this office, it would appear that the original source of the mistake was the fact that a number of officers here caught a wireless telegram stating that an order had been given to cease firing at 3 o’clock on that afternoon. This, as it since appears, was to allow the German Armistice Delegates to get through the lines, and was only local in its scope. It was, however, interpreted as being a signal that the Armistice had been signed.
9. It should be stated that the Intelligence representatives at G. H. Q. and in Paris both answered all inquiries by stating that it was a rumor that should be taken with the greatest caution, and that official confirmation could not be obtained from the Chief of the 2d Bureau, or the representative of General Foch in Paris.
10. In conclusion, it should be stated that, although in American circles the liaison service, through their Captain Stanton, gave out the information and stated it was correct, they did so in each case as a personal message, and in no case stated or acted on it as official. The French reported it, and their dissemination of the news from semi-official sources was much more widespread than that through our American sources.
CABOT WARD,
Lieut. Colonel, General Staff. Endnote 1
Abbreviations Notes:
S.O.S. = Services of Supply: generally speaking, the various branches of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in France having some rôle in supporting US combat units.
G-2 = the Second Section: the Military Intelligence Organisation of the General Staff of the American Expeditionary Forces. S.O.S. had its own G-2 organization and specific operations, as did other AEF components.
G-3 GHQ AEF = the Third Section of the General Staff of the American Expeditionary Forces at General Pershing’s Headquarters in Chaumont, about 300 kilometres south-east of Paris. It was responsible for “Operations”.
Lieutenant Colonel Cabot Ward was the Assistant Chief of Staff, S.O.S. G-2 in Paris. His headquarters were at 11 Avenue Montaigne in Paris, on the Right Bank of the Seine, across from the Quai d’Orsay and French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The S.O.S. Commanding General in November 1918 was Major General James G. Harbord. Services of Supply Headquarters were in Tours, about 250 kilometres south-west of Paris.
Part 2
An Analysis of the Report’s Findings
The G-2 (SOS) Report was one of at least four reports by American officials about the false armistice news that reached the United States from France. The other three were sent from Paris to the US War and State Departments by US Military Attaché Major B. H. Warburton, the US Ambassador William Sharp, and Special Representative Edward House.2 Most of their information can be found in the Report, which contains far more about the genesis of the false news and those considered responsible for spreading it. It was put together by Colonel Cabot Ward, Assistant Chief of G-2 (SOS) Staff in Paris, and sent to the Commanding General of SOS, James G. Harbord. It is not certain whether Harbord, or anyone else, had ordered Ward to investigate the 7 November armistice news or whether Harbord circulated the Report to others.
The information in the Report’s ten numbered sections is repetitive and contradictory in parts, and was probably collected by more than one G-2 (SOS) agent between Thursday 7 and its dispatch on Saturday 9 November. However, answers to questions which could be considered central to an investigation of the 7 November armistice news are not provided; no distinction is made between the morning armistice news Major Warburton sent to the US War Department and the afternoon armistice news received by the American Embassy in Paris, a copy of which Roy Howard sent from Brest to the United States; and there is no information about the spread of the news to Britain, Australia, and New Zealand.3
Those Responsible for Spreading the False News
The G-2 (SOS) investigation found that two American Army Liaison Service officers, Captain H. J. Whitehouse and Captain Stanton, were responsible for releasing the armistice news to some American and French “circles” in Paris. But it concluded that the French were mostly to blame for spreading the news thereafter.
Captain H. J. Whitehouse
In a telephone call at about 11:30 am on 7 November, Captain H. J. Whitehouse, the Acting Director of the Liaison Service, told the G-2 (SOS) office in Paris that the “Armistice had been signed that morning”. He said his information was “absolutely reliable and authentic”. (The Report does not expand on this or subsequent claims about the authenticity of the armistice news.) Colonel Cabot Ward had strong doubts about the news and tried – unsuccessfully – to obtain verification of it from the French Military Intelligence Service, the Deuxième (Second) Bureau. (No details given about its location in Paris). He spoke again to the Liaison Service office around midday. They “once more assured [him] of the correctness of the statement that an armistice had been signed that morning”.4
Ward then sent the following telegram to General John J. Pershing’s AEF Headquarters in Chaumont, which identified the French War Ministry as a source of the misinformation: “Rumor stated by responsible parties to have been received from the Ministry of War states that German[s] signed Armistice terms at ten o’clock this morning. This is sent with all reserve.”5
(The impression given is that Captain Whitehouse made the 11:30 am telephone call to the G-2 (SOS) Paris office, and Colonel Ward made the midday one to the Liaison Service office.)
Ward remained unconvinced that the news, “however authenticated”, was true. He considered it to be “physically impossible” for the German armistice delegates to have reached Marshal Foch and have agreed to an armistice in the morning of 7 November so soon after leaving Berlin the previous afternoon. As well as AEF Headquarters in Chaumont, his office therefore advised SOS Headquarters in Tours and other American facilities not to trust the news, informing them that, despite its “apparent authenticity”, both “the Chief of the French 2d Bureau and the respresentatives of Marshal Foch in Paris both refused to confirm the rumor”.6
At 1:00 pm, Ward spoke to Major Warburton, the American Military Attaché, who told him he “had received authentic information, and had sent a cable to Washington during the morning to the effect that the Armistice had been signed”. Ward had “reason to believe” that the Liaison Service had telephoned the information to the attaché.7 (It is not clear whether Ward or Warburton initiated this conversation. In his reports to the War Department, Warburton gave the impression that it was he who contacted Ward. He also stated that the Embassy gave him the armistice news and alleged that Ward had confirmed it to him.2)
The investigation ascertained that the American Embassy started circulating the armistice news “received [by it] through the liaison service”: the American Consul-General, Alexander Thackara, announced it “as a fact” during a luncheon event at the American Club in Paris; Captain R. H. Jackson, described as the “Naval Attache” and “Naval Intelligence Officer in Paris”, sent the news to the headquarters in Brest of Admiral Henry B. Wilson, the Commander of US Naval Forces in France; Admiral Wilson then released Jackson’s news to the local French population, and gave a copy of it to Roy Howard, President of the United Press news agency, who cabled it to the USA. But it does not record Jackson’s message (‘armistice signed at 11:00 am, hostilities ceased at 2:00 pm, Sedan taken by the Americans’), state that it also came from the American Embassy, or specify when during the day he supposedly had it dispatched to Brest (mid-afternoon). In fact, G-2 (SOS) investigators do not appear to have spoken to Jackson himself who, they reported, had “just been relieved by Rear Admiral Andrew T. Long, [as] Naval Attache, Paris”. 8
(The Report here is confusing the morning false armistice news in Paris which Captain Whitehouse sent to the Embassy with the afternoon Jackson Armistice Telegram news which had arrived at the Embassy from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.9)
Captain Stanton
The Report states unequivocally that Captain Stanton, the AEF “liaison officer with the Chief of the 2d Bureau . . . General Alby [ Major General Henri Alby]” was responsible for giving the armistice misinformation to Captain Whitehouse, the Liaison Service Acting Director, who then forwarded it to the G-2 (SOS) Office and the American Embassy. (No information to confirm General Alby’s connection with the French Second Bureau has been found for this article.) Captain Stanton, therefore, was the American liaison officer who initially released the armistice news to American circles in Paris.10
According to “some reports” a Captain de Cartusac (presumably French and a Second Bureau officer) “had been the one” who gave the news to Stanton. (No background information about Captain de Cartusac has so far been found.) But Stanton himself apparently did not name de Cartusac as his source when he was interviewed. Rather, in Section 4 of the Report, Stanton is said to have stated that the “Chief of Cabinet of the Head of the 2d Bureau” (not named) gave it to him. In Section 6, however, he reportedly stated that he received it from “M. Audibert [Monsieur Pierre Audibert], editor of L’Information”, in a telephone call Audibert made to the Second Bureau. Stanton explained that he took the call because the ”Chief of Cabinet of the General in Command of the 2d Bureau” was absent at the time.11 (L’Information, a Paris daily newspaper, dealt mainly with economic and financial affairs.)
These details about who gave Captain Stanton the armistice news – either Captain de Cartusac, or the unnamed Second Bureau Head’s Chief of Cabinet, or L’Information editor Monsieur Audibert – are clearly contradictory, and certainly do not help to identify Stanton’s source. And the obvious question of where Stanton’s source – whoever he was – had acquired the news is not addressed. (Stanley Weintraub states that L’Information was the “Second Bureau’s newspaper” and that Audibert, its editor, was responsible for confirming “the news to callers”. However, there is no evidence to corroborate that L’Information was the French Second Bureau’s mouthpiece during the First World War or that Pierre Audibert was associated with the Bureau.12)
Stanton admitted that he believed the news to be true and had passed it on to Captain Whitehouse, being “accustomed to inform his chiefs in the liaison service of any information he may have picked up”; that he also “repeated” it to “various French officials” and that “immediately various members of the Ministry began telephoning it”. But he claimed that he “did not pass it along in any official sense”. He issued it, he said, “personally”.11 (The “Ministry” referred to here is the French Ministry of War, named as such or as the “War Office” in separate parts of the Report. It was situated in the Rue Saint-Dominique. By implication, therefore, Stanton passed the news along to French War Ministry officials from wherever he was at the time.)
Evidently, Captain Stanton’s explanation was believed: the Report’s conclusion (Section 10) acknowledged that “through [him]” the Liaison Service had passed on the false information and even “stated it was correct”; but accepted that he had given it out “in each case as a personal message” and “in no case stated or acted on it as official”. On this basis, therefore, the Report absolved Stanton of any major blame for spreading the 7 November armistice news.
The French
According to the Report, the main blame lay with the French. Based on “the facts thus far ascertained”, it asserted that “French officials originally circulated the rumor”; that the Ministry of War sent out messages about an armistice “the entire day”, giving 10:00 am as the time of its signing; and that “members of the French Staff Departments undoubtedly telephoned the rumor to various banks in Paris”. Overall, the Report concluded, “dissemination of the news from [French] . . . sources was much more widespread than . . . through . . . American sources”.13 Exactly which “French officials originally circulated the rumor” is not made clear in the Report, although its evidence points to the Second Bureau officers Captain Stanton was with at the time.
Genesis of the False Armistice News
The Report’s findings on how and why the armistice news arose during the morning of 7 November are in Section 8, the only part of the Report where these fundamental questions are approached.
Section 8 reads:
“From the information received by this office, it would appear that the original source of the mistake was the fact that a number of officers here caught a wireless telegram stating that an order had been given to cease firing at 3 o’clock on that afternoon [7 November]. This, as it since appears, was to allow the German Armistice Delegates to get through the lines, and was only local in its scope. It was, however, interpreted as being a signal that the Armistice had been signed.” (My italics.)
(Evident here is Military Attaché Warburton’s short explanation to the US War Department on 8 November that everyone in Paris believed the armistice news because of an intercepted wireless message about an afternoon cease-fire on 7 November.2)
There is no clarification of this brief “original source of the mistake” assumption; but it seems to be saying that an order for a 3:00 pm cease-fire, contained in an intercepted wireless telegram, was misconstrued by the officers who intercepted it to mean that the German armistice had been signed; and that they misconstrued it because, in hindsight (“as it since appears”), the order was for a local cease-fire to enable the German armistice delegation to cross the front lines safely (and not for a general cease-fire covering the whole Western Front). In other words, the officers thought an armistice must already have been signed if a cease-fire was due to come into effect at 3:00 pm – a cease-fire whose limited scope they were not aware of at the time.
At what time the officers intercepted the telegram is not given, but as the false armistice news started circulating in Paris before midday on 7 November, logically they intercepted and misinterpreted its message sometime that morning. And there is very little about those officers themselves: most obviously missing are any details about who they were, their ranks, nationalities and military rôles. What it does say is that they were “here” when they “caught” the transmission, which must mean they were in Paris at the time rather than somewhere else in France. As for the release and spread of the 7 November armistice news, the implication is that those unnamed telegram-intercepting officers gave the misinformation to Liaison Officer Captain Stanton’s French Second Bureau colleagues. And it may well be that they were also part of the same French Second Bureau team to which Stanton was attached and which was based in a building where wireless telegraphy equipment was in use.
Part 3
Clarifying and Additional Information
The AEF Liaison Service was established in February 1918 “for the purpose of facilitating the transaction of business between the Allies and the A.E.F.” Its “scope of service” covered “liaison with the French bureaus and administrations in Paris; liaison with the regions, [and] liaison with the armies”. But it excluded “tactical liaison”.
Liaison officers were required to have (ideally) “a knowledge of French customs and language, a certain amount of military experience, an adaptability to circumstances, and a great deal of tact and good judgment”. They were subject “not only to the orders of [their] immediate American commander, but also to orders of the Allied authority to whom … attached”. They were “to transmit all orders, all requests for information and all demands of any kind formulated by the Allied authority to the competent and interested American authority, and vice versa”.14
Captain H. J. Whitehouse, on 21 November 1918 (after the Armistice), was listed as a US Army representative on the Inter-Allied Committee on Franco-American War Affairs. He is shown as being a member of the A.S.S.C. – the Aviation Section, Signal Corps. How long he had been a representative on this Committee is not known, and his name has not been found in available US Army Directories for 1918 and 1919.15
The Liaison Service building, from where Captain Whitehouse made his telephone calls, was at “No. 45, Avenue Montaigne, Paris”.16 It was not far from G-2 (SOS) Headquarters at 11 Avenue Montaigne. (Avenue Montaigne was across the river Seine from the Quai d’Orsay and French Foreign Ministry building.)
Captain Stanton is not given any forename or initials in the G-2 (SOS) Report. There are four Stantons listed in the Army Directory, August 1918, only one of whom has the rank of captain – “Ernest N. Stanton “inf. American Exped. Force”.17 But an Internet search shows that he was a front-line combat officer and clearly not a liaison officer based in Paris. Whether any details about the Liaison Service Officers Stanton and Whitehouse are to be found in other AEF military Directories is not known.
Where Captain Stanton was on 7 November 1918 is open to question. If he was the American liaison officer with the French Army General Staff Second Bureau, as the Report implies, then he was in their premises on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, a few minutes’ walk away from the Quai d’Orsay. However, it is possible that he was actually attached to a team of Second Bureau officers based in the French War Ministry on the Rue Saint-Dominique.
In an article he wrote in 1928 about the 7 November 1918 armistice news, General Henri Mordacq, Head of the Military Cabinet under French Prime Minister and Minister of War, Georges Clemenceau, refers to the “liaison officers of my staff and of the G-2 of the French army at the ministry”. If the G-2 (SOS) Report is mistaken about Captain Stanton’s attachment as an American liaison officer to the French Army General Staff Second Bureau, then he was most likely the American liaison officer with the French Military Intelligence team in the War Ministry. And this would place him, his French Intelligence colleagues, and War Ministry officials in the same building at the same time that the false armistice news was being sent out from there.
Colonel P. M. Lydig was the American liaison officer attached to the French War Ministry itself (as distinct from the American liaison officer with the French Second Bureau team there). It is not known whether he was interviewed about the 7 November armistice news or whether any of the information in the G-2 (SOS) Report came from him. He kept a diary during his liaison service at the War Ministry, but in it there is no mention of the armistice news or of what happened there that day.18
According to historian John Toland, “several weeks [after 7 November] Captain Whitehouse was relieved from duty as liaison officer”. Toland offers no reason for this, but the implication is that it was because Whitehouse passed on the false armistice news he received from Captain Stanton. Continuing, he adds that “no action was taken in the case of Captain Stanton” – again, no reason given, but presumably because the G-2 (SOS) Report concluded that he had not played a significant part in spreading the news.19 However, attempts to locate the documents Toland cites as sources for these comments have proved unsuccessful. And his statement that Captain Whitehouse was “relieved from duty as liaison officer” is true only in the sense that Whitehouse was re-assigned to another post and responsibility after the Armistice, rather than in the sense that he was dismissed because of his handling of the false armistice news – assuming, that is, that the Liaison Service Captain H. J. Whitehouse and the US Army representative with the same name who served on the Inter-Allied Committee on Franco-American War Affairs were the same person.20
Lieutenant Colonel Cabot Ward and Major Warburton
Military Attaché Warburton’s claim that Cabot Ward, the G-2 (SOS) Assistant Chief of Staff in Paris, had confirmed the armistice news to him when they spoke about it at 1:00 pm on 7 November, completely contradicts what the Report maintains: that from the very beginning G-2 (SOS) treated “the matter cautiously” and “answered all inquiries” about the news by stating it was “a rumor that should be taken with the greatest caution” and for which there was no official confirmation.7 And although Ward did not record in the Report what he said to Major Warburton – only what Warburton said to him – on balance, it is unlikely that he would have told Warburton at 1:00 pm on 7 November that the armistice news had been confirmed and was therefore true. It seems more likely that Warburton misunderstood or recalled incorrectly what he claimed Ward told him, and had taken the information about the French War Ministry to mean that Ward accepted its armistice announcement as official verification rather than as information to be treated with reserve.
In correspondence about a separate matter, US Secretary of State Lansing warned Special Representative Edward House in Paris, that Warburton – a “nice man but not discreet” – did not have the “full confidence of military intelligence” at the US War Department. “Strongly” advising him “to be very careful with Warburton”, Lansing told House it would be “better all around if you did not take him into your confidence”.
Lansing made these “absolutely confidential” comments in response to a cablegram in which House had commended Warburton for providing “a great deal of assistance to us” and taking “no end of trouble in our behalf”, and had confided that “we have given him certain information respecting negotiations of the past week” on condition that he did not report it to “the military intelligence in Washington”.
“Negotiations of the past week” apparently referred to recent discussions in the Allied Supreme War Council (based in Versailles), and General Churchill, head of the Military Intelligence Division of the US War Department, had been demanding information about the discussions from Warburton, who was assisting General Tasker H. Bliss, the US military representative on the Council.
For some reason, House did not want Warburton to pass the information on to Churchill. And he had asked Lansing to explain to Churchill that he expected the latter to obtain “all information of this character” from President Wilson. The warning comments to House about Warburton followed not long afterwards. House must have been taken aback by them. For he agreed to follow the Secretary of State’s advice “carefully” and, in a change of tone, now claimed he had “no illusions with respect to this man”, that Warburton had been given “no information of any value whatever”, and that his “service to us” had been only “in . . . minor matters”.21
© James Smith (Re-arranged November 2020. Reviews from November 2021to June 2025.)
ENDNOTES
1. United States Army in the World War, 1917-1919. Volume 10, Part 1, The Armistice Agreement and Related Documents. G-3, GHQ, AEF : Fldr. 1205. ‘False Report of Signing of Armistice. November 9, 1918’, pp 46-47. (Washington. 1991) Available online.
2. For a discussion of these reports in their context, see ‘False Armistice Cablegrams From France’ on this website.
3. On the spread of the news to Britain, see A False Armistice Cablegram to the American Embassy in Britain in the article ‘False Armistice Cablegrams From France’ on this website.
4. Report, Section 1.
5. Report, Section 2.
6. Report, Sections 1, 3.
7. Report, Section 3.
8. Report, Sections 3, 6, 7. The statement that Jackson had been relieved as Naval Attaché could be taken to imply that Jackson was very quickly dismissed for sending the armistice message to Admiral Wilson. But it means simply that Admiral Long (who had been in London until late September 1918) was replacing Jackson on the latter’s transfer to Washington, DC.)
9. See ‘The Jackson Armistice Telegram’ on this website.
10. Report, Section 4.
11. Report, Sections 4, 6.
12. Stanley Weintraub, A Stillness Heard Round The World. The End of the Great War: November 1918. (Paperback 1987), p39.
13. Report, Sections 2, 3, 4, 6, 10.
14. Extracts from Sections 1 and 5 of ‘ORGANIZATION OF LIAISON SERVICE, A.E.F. General Headquarters A.E.F. France. February 13, 1918. General Orders. No. 28’, in United States Army in the World War, 1917-1919. Volume 16. General Orders. GHQ, AEF. (Washington, DC, 1948; 1991) Online.
15. Papers Relating To The Foreign Relations of the United States, The Paris Peace Conference, 1919, Volume 1: ‘The Commander in Chief of the American Expeditionary Forces (Pershing) to the Special Representative (House). General Headquarters [AEF], 21 November, 1918. Statement of Inter-Allied Committees and A.E.F. Members. Committee on Franco-American Affairs’.(Available online)
16. Report, Section 1.
17. Army Directory, August 1, 1918, p84. Google Books.
18. Philip M. Lydig, Diary of Lieut. Col. Philip M. Lydig, Infantry, liaison officer A.E.F. with the French Ministry of War from January 1, 1918 to March 9, 1919. (Undated typescript.) Harvard University, Houghton Library, Massachusetts.
19. John Toland, No Man’s Land: The Story of 1918. (London. 1980). Chapter 15, ‘The False Armistice’, p548 *footnote; and p628 ‘Notes to page 547: False Armistice. Memoranda, December 4,
7, Gen. Hq., AEF, subject: Captain H. J. Whitehouse.
20. Result of enquiries made by the writer regarding the cited memorandums, sent during October-November 2015, to the US Army Center of Military History, Washington, DC; and to the National Archives and Records Administration, Maryland.
21. ‘Edward House to Secretary of State. Number 52. November 6, 1918, 4pm.’ File# 121.54/1718; ‘Lansing to House. Number 17. Special Cipher. November 7, 1918.’ File# 121.54/1718; ‘Edward House to Lansing. Number 65. November 8, 1918. 7 p.m.’ [Page 2, in response to Lansing’s number 17.] File# 763.72119/9100. Department of State Records, Record Group 84, United States National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland.
The False Armistice, 7 November 1918 