The New York Times/1918/11/11/News of Armistice Flashed to City
NEWS OF ARMISTICE FLASHED TO CITY
Signing of Truce Tidings Wafted Afar by Searchlight on Times Building.
CROWDS GATHER IN STREETS
Whistles Throughout City Proclaim Glad News, and Thousands Awake to Get the Tidings.
When the first bulletin of the signing of the armistice, with the acceptance of the terms of the Allies, came into the office of The New York Times shortly before 3 o'clock this morning orders were given immediately for the lighting up of both The Times Building and The Times Annex, and they remained lighted throughout the rest of the hours of darkness.
A few minutes after the first word had reached the newspaper office the searchlight on the tower of The Times Building played its rays all over the city. It had been put into operation to announce the results of the election on last Tuesday, and the flashing of more momentous news attracted crowds to Times Square.
In such a few minutes that it was almost beyond the belief of persons who have never seen a great city rejoicing over the greatest of former victories and over events of a magnitude to stun the mind, the Square was filled with many hundreds of persons. It was a mystery to all where they came from. Many came out of the subway, others came out of the restaurants, cigar stores, and other places that remain open all night.
This throng was increased by drivers who left their milk wagons, their newspaper wagons, by men on their way to work, by taxicab chauffeurs, by street car conductors, and by many other folk who had heard the tooting of sirens in their neighborhoods and who arose from their beds to find out just what was the latest event of a day that will be marked forever in history.
The display of large bulletins in the windows of The Times Building saying that the armistice had been signed, together with the news in the earlier editions of the paper that the former German Kaiser had fled from just retribution, moved these many hundreds to full-throated and full-lunged jubilance.
The same bulletins were displayed in the windows of the offices of The Times in other parts of the city, and soon they were the centre of crowds that had forgotten completely that the city had already had one day of celebration over what had been a false report of the event all longed for.
Celebration began all over again, and at that late hour it looked as if the city would outdo its "fake rumor" day, or London's Mafeking Day, and every other day where millions rejoiced.
Police sirens and bells all over the city again took up the Swan Song of the Kaiser, of militarism, and thousands were waked from their slumbers by the din. Hundreds got up from their beds and walked the streets in tousled clothes to get confirmation of the news they had been expecting. Other hundreds saw the flashing of the searchlights from the tower of The Times and telephone calls by the hundreds began to pour into the newspaper office.
The invariable question was: "Has the armistice been signed?" and when the question was answered with the affirmative, with the additional information that the Kaiser's right to rule had passed with him in unroyal flight, there were cheers at the other end of the wire.
Among the hundreds around the bulletin boards in Times Square were many sailors and soldiers who had service stripes on their sleeves, some of them having more than one stripe. Many had medals, and many more had scars, scars put upon them by the soldiers of the man whose downfall was reported.
At first these men were unable to comprehend the news. The crowds of civilians were not so slow. They seized the soldiers and sailors and made them prisoners to admiration. The crowd waltzed the soldiers and sailors on their shoulders and bounced them around, pounded them on the backs, cheered them, set them down and tried to force them to make speeches, and then drowned their first words with cheers.
Groans and cries went up from the crowd when the name of William Hohenzollern was mentioned. "Poor Bill! He tried to pinch off the world! He's gone! Bill's dead," one man cried. The man who was taken seriously only a few weeks ago had suddenly become a joke because the allied armies had beaten him so decisively and because he had run away, with his Crown Prince, his General Staff, and a train full of food.