It was one of the great "Oops!'' moments of history. The armistice that was not the Armistice. People around the world celebrated Germany agreeing to end the First World War on November 7, 1918. Crowds flocked into streets and joined impromptu processions and dances, mayors donned chains and spoke from town hall steps, and returned soldiers, many recovering from wounds, joined in the happy chaos.
The Germans had surrendered. It said so in an early edition of the Evening Star, rushed out into the streets from its Bond St headquarters.
But then came a later edition and, around the same time, a cable from Wellington, saying it was all a mistake.
People went back to work, the dancers drifted from the streets, the returned men went back to their homes or hospitals.
It had been widely reported over the previous few weeks that the German army had run its race and was close to collapse, that the high command had sent peace feelers to the American president, Woodrow Wilson, and that the French marshal in charge of the Allies' military effort, Ferdinand Foch, was ready for a surrender.
It took several hours for the official denials from London, Paris and Washington to catch up. People everywhere wanted an end to war.
Given the time difference, the instant celebrations in Dunedin and the rest of New Zealand were on Friday, November 8, 1918. Four days later, people poured into the streets to do it all over again and this time it was official; the war was over. Technically, the war was not all over at all and that didn't happen until a peace agreement was finalised in June the following year. But that was not on minds on November 12, 1918. The important thing was that the shooting had stopped, and the guns were silent for the first time since August 4, 1914.
The Armistice had been signed in the pre-dawn of November 11 in a Napoleonic-era railway carriage near Compiegne, in northern France; the official announcement was made in Paris at 11am, giving coincidental rise to the evocative phrase, "the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.''
The British Colonial Secretary, Walter Long, cabled the Governor-General, Lord Liverpool, in Wellington with the news and the cable was passed on to the Prime Minister, William Massey. It was late at night and Massey chose not to make the news public until the morning, angering morning newspaper editors who argued with justification that they could have got the news into late editions.
In the morning, the plan had been for a salvo of six guns to signal the news in Dunedin, but factory whistles and bells got in first by a few minutes. As the Otago Daily Times noted, the guns were fired "a few minutes after the whistles had begun to shriek and the bells to clang out tidings that would cheer the heart of everyone in the community.''
Telegraph was the preferred and quickest method of communication from city to city; within a city, word of mouth and the ever-constant bush telegraph proved their worth again.
Crowds gathered in Dunedin in the late morning, choking the Princes St-George St artery for hours; people were packed into the Octagon like a Carisbrook terrace crowd on big match day. Trams stopped running in the central city - they couldn't run because of the crowds. The crowd was almost as dense at The Triangle, later renamed the Queens Gardens, where the cenotaph would be built in future years. Many businesses closed and in some that remained open, staff just walked out anyway. The Post Office gave up after an hour or so and it too closed; so too pubs and theatres. Hundreds of workers at the Hillside railway workshops formed up outside and marched into town, with others tagging along behind as they made their way along King Edward St and into Princes St.
Headmasters and schoolteachers soon divined the mood of the day and sent their charges out into the streets, first telling them of the historic importance of what they would see and hear.
The Mayor, Jim Clark, stood on the steps in front of the Town Hall behind a hastily-draped Union Jack and read the armistice telegram he had received from Massey. The Otago Daily Times reported some of his words: "Our one thought today was rejoice! Rejoice! Rejoice! We rejoiced that right had triumphed over might; that our glorious flag still floated triumphant over the world and that Britons never should be slaves. We rejoiced that the Kaiser had met his doom [he had actually abdicated and lived in exile in the Netherlands until 1941], and the German nation, which had shown itself unfit to take its place among the nations of the world, was down and crushed. He hoped it would not rise again until it had proved itself worthy.'' (Clark died in 1936, three years before the World War 2).
The Rev Robert Evan Davies, the Welsh-born minister at Knox Church, also spoke from the Town Hall steps, while other ministers and civic leaders spoke to the crowds gathered in Lower High St.
The impromptu celebrations were the first wave. The second was organised. Church bells rang out across the city, bandsmen who had been at work now appeared in their uniforms and crowds gave way for them to march. The occasion dictated the repertoire: Tipperary, Soldiers of the King, Rule Britannia and the 100th Psalm Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands.
The Times reporter noted: "In looking around the sea of faces one could not help realising that it was sober, earnest people who had assembled to do honour to a great occasion.''
As the afternoon wore on and the singing of the [British] national anthem signalled the end of formal proceedings, people began to drift off. It had been a heady few hours. But by the early evening, the streets started to fill up again. Some of the revellers had taken the opportunity to visit pubs and a few incidents were reported, including one in which an empty beer bottle was flung at overhead wires near the Bank of New Zealand building [on the corner of Princes and Rattray Sts]. "Fortunately,'' the paper said, "the bottle missed striking anyone in its descent and was broken to pieces on the pavement.''
The scenes in Dunedin were replicated throughout New Zealand; indeed, throughout the world.
But there were sobering contrasts to the general mood of joy. A group of uniformed soldiers in Dunedin visited several business premises and demanded they close; such intimidation was resisted in some places and the police eventually talked to the men and persuaded them they could perhaps mark the end of the war in other ways.
More sobering still was the continued publication of the names of war dead and warnings of the deadly danger of the influenza epidemic that exacted a war-like toll.
- Ron Palenski
