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Show 1 mTlie First "Armistice Day" m Washinqton Resiqninq His Commission, Dec. 23, 1783 ctrumbull) e sua own; By ELMO SCOTT WATSON from I N THE eleventh hour of the but a I m . eleventh day of the eleventh month :e and if VJJ in the year 1918 the guns, which ; Wk, for more than four years had been yrM-'W roaring in western Europe all along ivT" nUf t'ie ne rom Switzerland to Hol- lnnnnrir lano- wei-e silenced and to a wait-. wait-. I gj? Ing world was flashed the welcome sWUDJr' message "The Armistice has been er" signed !" That is the event which TrSllS we celeDrate eacl1 year on November 11 and which we regard as the "end of the World war." As a matter of fact, it wasn't. The World war didn't end for us officially until nearly three ORY years later. True, actual hostilities ended on November 11, 191S, but there still remained the signing of peace treaties with our late enemies r "that e "Treaty of Versailles with Germany on June ifasire 28, 1919 ; the Treaty of St. Germain with Austria in "j on September 10, 1919; the Treaty of Neuilly t with Bulgaria on November 27, 1919 ; the Treaty ake ! the Grand Trianon with Hungary on June 4, n, ui 1920; and finally the Treaty of Sevres with Tur key on August 10, 1920. Even with these treaties signed, the actual J . "end of the war" was still a year away. For peace treaties must be ratified by the United ) States senate and because the Treaty of Ver-v.-i sailles Included a provision for American mem-'11 mem-'11 bership in the newly organized League of Na-.0 Na-.0 tions, the senate on March 19, 1920, rejected the treaty which President Wilson had presented to Idaho It for ratification. Immediately thereafter Sena- " tor Philander C. Knox of Pennsylvania Introduced Intro-duced a resolution repealing the declarations of India, I war and reserving to the United States all the n and I benefits given it in the Versailles treaty. This r have I resolution passed both houses of congress In ; their I April and May, 1920, but on May 27 President , been I Wilson vetoed It as "an ineffaceable stain upon world I the gallantry and honor of the United States." Meanwhile the Treaty of Versailles had been ratified by Germany and the principal allied pow- ers and the League of Nations had come into Htl existence. But when Woodrow Wilson retired from the White House, a broken man with his most cherished project rejected by the country, ! the United States was still outside the League of 5 Fre, Nations, the treaty was still unratified and, offl-r offl-r the clally. we were still at war with the Central "weak- Powers. When Warren G. Harding became Pres-r-ontact Went, the Knox resolution was revived in con- keepct I Kress, again passed and on July 2, 1921, President Presi-dent Harding signed it. So July 2, 1921, rather than November 11, 1918, marked the official "end &BSi of the World war" for the United States. There is an Interesting parallel between the 11 length of time which elapsed from the cessa- -. j tion of hostilities to the official end of the world war and a similar period in bringing to a conclusion conclu-sion the first war in which we, as a nation, ever ST. engaged the Revolution. Ask the average Amer ican when the Revolution ended and he will Probably say: "Why, when Cornwallis surrendered, surren-dered, of course !" But In saying that he is just as incorrect as he Is In regarding November 11, ieiice 1918, as the final curtain on the drama of the World war. el' 0n October 19, 17S1, a British army marched out from Yorktown, Va., to the tune of "The World Turned Upside Down" and handed over its arms to the combined French and American ;eS armies commanded by Count de Rochanibeau and Gen. George Washington. Within 24 hours couriers cou-riers mounted on swift horses were speeding e. northward, rousing "every village and farm" with the thrilling word "Cornwallis is taken!" Everywhere the news was received with delight by the Patriots and with dismay by the Loyalists or Tories. Impromptu celebrations In honor ot rss the glorious news were organized in many places, ut much of the hysteria and wild jubilation . eric which swept the w'hole country on November 11, f l, w 1918' was lacking in October, 1781. j With no telegraph, telephone or radio or other means of quick communication there was no way """Jjj ot spreading the news simultaneously throughout 'rtjjJJ ' tne 13 states which then comprised the nation, '"!diiar i ce no one day was given over everywhere to 'rt?e,r tte ceebration as there was 1G years ago this ,j 1 month' Fr instance, it was not until October city' ; 24, five days after the sm-rendc,., that there ap- l flU Pcarea on the streets of Philadelphia, only 200 ).VJ miles from Yorktown, a broadside which said: ILLUMINATION jfl I Colonel Tilghman, Aide de Camp to his Ex cellency General Washington, having brought official accounts of the SURRENDER of Lord Cornwallis and the Garrisons of York and Gloucester, those Citizens who chuse to ILLUMINATE on the Glorious Occasion, will do it 'this evening at Six and extinguish their lights at Nine o'clock. Decorum and harmony are earnestly recommended to every ev-ery Citizen, and a general discountenance to the least appearance of riot. Although the school book histories give us the impression that the Revolution ended abruptly ab-ruptly with the surrender of Cornwallis, it was far from being as simple as all that. Charleston and Savannah were still held by the British. So was New York where Sir Henry Clinton, although al-though outwitted by Washington in his quick dash to trap Cornwallis, still had a strong army that was a perpetual threat against the American Ameri-can line of defense along the Hudson. The surrender at Yorktown was a stunning blow to British prestige, but it did not mean that the stubborn Briton was ready to give up yet. True, as our school book histories tell us, Lord North, upon receiving news of the disaster, "threw up his arms as though struck by a cannon ball and cried out: 'My God, it is all over ! It is all over !' " But when parliament convened, King George III made a speech which Indicated his determination to continue the war, and, hearing of this, Washington knew that his task was far from being ended. So he sent urgent appeals to the states not to relax their efforts, made plans for a stronger army than ever before be-fore and, after a brief stop at Mount Vernon and a short stay in Philadelphia where he conferred with a committee from congress on the measures necessary for the next campaign, marched his Continentals back to Newburgh on the Hudson, where for the next few months he lay watching Clinton in New York. But' Clinton showed no desire to make a move and for the next year the two armies adopted a policy of "watchful waiting." During this time there was some raiding by marauding bands of Tories and Patriots, but there were no major military movements in the northern theater of war. The conflict there had become a stalemate. Down In the South a bitter partisan warfare was stiH being waged. After Yorktown, "Mad Anthony" Wayne had been sent to help Gen. Nathaneal Greene regain South Carolina and Georgia from the enemy and in a series of minor skirmishes he defeated the Creek Indian allies of the British, scattered parties of Tory raiders and ousted several small British garrisons from the towns they were holding. Then he marched against Savannah, forced the British to evacuate evacu-ate it In July, 17S2, and joined Greene in the siege of Charleston which the British gave up In December. So in both the North and South hostilities had virtually ceased by the middle of the year. But out in the West the war was still raging In a fearful form unknown on the Atlantic seaboard except In the blood-drenched Mohawk valley of New York. Indian scalping parties, led by British Brit-ish and Canadian officers, were assailing the Pennsylvania and Virginia borders and the Kentucky Ken-tucky settlements. In August, 17S2, the men and women of Bryant's Bry-ant's Station successfully withstood such an attack, at-tack, only to have their victory followed by the disaster at Blue Licks on August 19 when the flower of Kentucky's man power was destroyed In this "Last Battle of the Revolution," so called because it was the last pitched battle between forces of any considerable size. On September 11 a wave of savage fury once more beat against the palisaded walls of Fort Henry (Wheeling, W. Va.) where Betty Zane won Immortality with her dash through a hail of bullets to carry powder to the defenders of the fort This attack was also repulsed as were others against other outposts of the frontier, but for many months afterwards there hung over the West the shadow of fear of the redskins, a kind of fear which the Redcoats had never beeh able to inspire in the East. In the meantime the march of events across the Atlantic was rapidly bringing the war nearer and nearer to an end. Even "before Yorktown the Fngllsh nation was tired of a war which gave It more debts than victories and which had been denounced more than once by members of the Whig party. After Yorktown King George was about the only one who wanted to keep on witn the war, but eventually even he gave up all hope of subduing the Americans. However, he stubbornly stub-bornly insisted that he would never give up Georgia or Charleston or New York. On March 5, 1782, par'..ment passed a bill to enable the king to make peace with America. Fifteen days later Lord North, bowing to the storm of opposition to the king's plan of renewing renew-ing hostilities, resigned, and the Whigs, under Lord Rockingham, formed a new ministry with the understanding that American independence should be acknowledged. Rockingham died in July and was succeeded by Lord Shelburne, who was also committed to a policy of making peace, Shelburne had been a friend of Benjamin Franklin, who was then our minister to France, and through his agent, Richard Oswald, a Scotch merchant, the British minister opened negotiations negotia-tions with his American friend to discuss peace terms. Franklin had the assistance of John Jay, who had been in Spain seeking an alliance with that country; John Adams, American minister to Holland ; and Henry Laurens, then a prisoner in England ; and during the summer of 1782 their negotiations .with Oswald proceeded smoothly. Finally on November 30, Franklin, Jay, Adams and Oswald signed a preliminary treaty of peace, which was not, strictly speaking, a treaty but a protocol, the articles of which were to be subsequently subse-quently incorporated In a formal treaty after Great Britain had come to terms with France, America's ally. This protocol of November 30, 1782, Is analogous analo-gous to the armistice of November 11, 1918, in that, under Its terms, hostilities in America were to cease at once and upon completion of the treaty the British fleets and armies were to be Immediately withdrawn from every place which they held within the limits of the United States. It Is also analogous in that It was the first written writ-ten agreement between representatives of the two nations at war looking toward a formal treaty of peace. So November has a double significance sig-nificance to Americans as the "month of the armistice" the armistice of the Revolution and the armistice of the World war. Even with this important step taken, nine months were to elapse before the final treaty of peace was signed and another nine months before ratification of the treaty definitely ended the war. On January 20, 1783, the preliminary articles of the treaty of peace were signed in Paris. The news arrived in America on March 23, In a letter to the president of congress from Lafayette and a few days later Sir Guy Carleton, who had succeeded Sir Henry Clinton as British Brit-ish commander in New York, received his orders from the ministry to proclaim a cessation of hostilities on land and sea. A similar proclamation, made by congress, was formally announced to the army by Washington. He chose April 19, the anniversary of the Battle of Lexington, as the date for this historic announcement. an-nouncement. After this proclamation Washington granted furloughs to most of the army and the weather-beaten weather-beaten Continentals scattered to their homes and tried to adapt themselves to civil life again. On November 3 the army was formally disbanded and three weeks later Sir Guy Carleton's army sailed away from New York. On December 4 occurred that profoundly touching incident In Fraunce's Tavern where Washington said farewell fare-well to his officers. He was on his way to Annapolis, An-napolis, where congress was in session, to resign his commission and on December 23 that historic scene, which has been immortalized in Trumbull's Trum-bull's painting, was enacted. Then Washington hastened on to Mount Vernon, there to spend the first happy Christmas he had known for nine years. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, another impor- 1 tant episode in the drama of the Revolution had taken place. One September morning, to the lodgings In Paris of David Hartley, agent of the British who had succeeded Oswald, came his friend, Benjamin Franklin. The great philosopher-diplomat was accompanied by his little grandson, Benjamin Franklin Bache, by John Adams, John Jay and Henry Laurens. There on September 3, 1783, the definitive treaty of peace was signed. Early in 17S4 congress accepted the treaty and In May ratifications of It were exchanged ex-changed by Great Britain and the United States. The Revolution was over. Q by Western Newspaper Union. J |