Today -100: November 8, 1918: Wild with joy

Headlines of the Day -100: 

The United Press Association wire service spreads the news of an armistice in the hundreds of afternoon papers it services. There is no armistice. Evidently UP mistook a temporary ceasefire, called in a small section of the front line to allow the German armistice delegates to cross over, for the end of the war. The censors didn’t stop them transmitting the story, because their job is to prevent military secrets being printed, not false stories. Despite getting a denial of any armistice from the State Department, the UP is standing by its story “until we are proved wrong.” Hawkins of the New York office points out that UP sometimes gets news, like the landing of US marines at Vera Cruz in 1914, before the government does.

So it’s party time on the streets of New York (and a whole bunch of other places). “More soldiers were kissed yesterday in New York than on any other day in history.” A NYT editorial says, “It will never be said again that the American people do not know how to ‘celebrate’”. 1,500 women workers in the State Dept and War Dept gather in front of the White House, waving flags. Pres. Wilson and the first lady, no doubt with bewildered looks on their faces, appear on the portico and wave handkerchiefs.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Some people just do “peace” badly, beating up or killing Germans and suspected Germans. An iron worker in New Jersey, hassled because he’s wearing a yellow chrysanthemum, shoots his hassler (which isn’t a word, but should be) to death.

Headline of the Day -100:  

The NYT catches up with the Kiel mutiny. Which has spread to most of the German Navy.

Austrian soldiers are returning home (well, many of the POWs released by Italy are trying to enter Switzerland, where they hear there is food. And chocolate. Switzerland is not best pleased because it doesn’t want to share its chocolate. Why am I suddenly hungry?). The soldiers are plundering as they go (which may not mean more than taking food in a country which doesn’t have a lot of it), crowding the roads, and generally adding to the chaos.

Bavaria may be threatening that if there isn’t an armistice pronto it will unilaterally withdraw its troops from the war.

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