Wilson by A. Scott Berg

Author:A. Scott Berg
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, General
ISBN: 9781471130557
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2013-09-10T04:00:00+00:00

13

ISAIAH

The Spirit of the Lord God is vpon me, because the Lord hath anointed me, to preach good tidings vnto the meek, hee hath sent me to binde vp the broken hearted, to proclaime libertie to the captiues . . .

—ISAIAH, LXI:1

At noon on Thursday, November 7, 1918, the United Press Association’s office in Paris cabled its headquarters in New York that Germany and the Allies had signed the Armistice. Within three minutes, the national censors had approved its dissemination; and within half an hour, word had spread nationwide.

By one o’clock, all of New York City’s bells and sirens had sounded, and similar demonstrations across the country followed. People in Manhattan poured into the streets—in what The New York Times called “a delirious carnival of joy which was beyond comparison with anything ever seen in the history of New York.” Factories in Boston closed, and parades spontaneously erupted through the town. Chicago’s stores, offices, munitions plants, and City Hall shut down, while its opera company interrupted rehearsal and broke into “The Star-Spangled Banner.” In Columbus, Ohio, the massive crowds surrounding the State House demanded remarks from Governor James M. Cox. And in Washington, D.C., people gravitated to the South Lawn of the White House, where the euphoric crowd, dancing and tossing their hats in the air, waited for the President to appear. Nell McAdoo was leaving the Treasury Building, only to have a total stranger throw his arms around her and kiss her. Edith Wilson bustled to her husband’s study, urging him to the portico, where he might address the gathering below, but he refused. He was one of the few men in the world who knew for a fact that this national hysteria was based on a false report.

Correspondents in Europe soon got their stories straight, and the next day the New York Globe characterized the misinformation as “the greatest and most cruel hoax in the history of journalism.” The source of the falsehood was never discovered, but many suspected a German agent had perpetrated the deception “to create popular desire and demand among the Allied people for the German-sought armistice.” Wrote Arthur Hornblow, Jr., a young intelligence officer, “From a psychological point of view the best possible way of making the public want an armistice would be to tell them that there was an armistice, and let them taste of the joy that would naturally await upon the news.” That very day, in fact, German delegates were on their way to surrender at a secret site.

Marshal Foch spent the night on the outskirts of the village of Rethondes in the forest of Compiègne. At dawn, a train carried him, his staff, and British officers to an obscured railroad siding. Around seven, another train—including a carriage still marked with Napoleon III’s coat of arms—shuttled the German plenipotentiaries to another siding in the woods. At nine, the German representatives walked the heavily guarded hundred yards that separated the trains and entered the Wagon Lits Company car 2419D. After formal salutations, the teams sat across from each other at a long wooden table.

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